"Need to base E-commerce legislation on Facts and Figures - not Scare Stories," says Lib Dem MEP

12.00.00am GMT Wed 7th Mar 2001

In a speech to the recent meeting of The Hague Conference on International Law, (Ottawa, 26 Feb - 2 March) where e-Commerce and International Jurisdiction was being discussed, Diana Wallis, Liberal Democrat MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber suggested that perhaps The Hague process could learn from the experience of the passage of the Brussels Regulation through the European Parliament.

She said:

"In the European Union, we now have our Brussels Regulation on Jurisdiction (and e-Commerce) - our equivalent of what you are working on in a global context.

"I can speak from detailed and unique experience when I say that it is not an easy thing to take the sort of document you are drafting here, on an expert intergovernmental basis, through the democratic process, as I had to do through the European Parliament.

"You will know that our discussions tended to be dominated by the issue of consumer contracts, which is one of the many issues that are dealt with in the document in front of you now."

In this context, Ms Wallis suggested that there was a desperate need for more data on the current level of cross-border 'business to consumer' disputes.

She told the assembled experts:

"My view is that we seem to have a potential problem with B to C e-Commerce, but we have no idea of the size of the problem or indeed, if it really exists at all. Evidence as does exist shows a very limited, tiny number of cross-border consumer claims, basically because as we know, the procedures are too complicated and too expensive to be used except by the most determined and well-off consumer.

"If we are both to reassure business and assist consumers, we desperately need to get some really reliable data about the level and nature of cross-border consumer claims. My own country is as much at fault as any other, the DTI and the Lord Chancellors' department tried to assist me, but ultimately it was no more than informed guesswork.

"In this crucial policy area, we need to do much better than this if there is to be better regulation in the future. If your organisation, or those of you who are here today individually can do anything to take this forward, it would be a worthwhile achievement."

Ms Wallis' call was taken up positively by those present, especially by the International Consumers Association. She commented that this would be an informed way of dealing with those critics of the Brussels Regulation who have painted a doomsday scenario in respect of businesses being put off from trading on the web by fears of being drawn into foreign jurisdictions.

She commented: "We have to deal with these fears on the basis of informed facts and figures. This will be especially critical when, in the near future, the European Parliament comes to consider any proposal on the Rome Convention on Applicable Law in relation to e-Commerce."