Making online commerce the engine of European recovery, through the removal of barriers between countries and the creation of a common market on the web: this is the objective of the European Commission, which today presented the Green Paper for the European integration of telematic payments. Objective: to double the volume of online purchases by 2015 (from the current 3,5% to 7%) and to double European GDP online. As? Facilitating payments, guaranteeing more transparency, extending and strengthening consumer protection directives, breaking down the obstacles that hinder purchases in third countries, creating a defense IT system that resists cyber-attacks guaranteeing the protection of personal information. The project falls within the Single market act, the act for the single market, which provides for a series of measures to stimulate the European economy and create jobs. The objectives are precisely these: to relaunch growth and generate jobs throughout Europe, through a sector with great potential. The numbers in this sector are provided by John Dalli, European Commissioner for Consumer Support Policies, Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, and Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the EU Commission.
"In some countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, e-commerce contributes a net 25% of job growth”, emphasizes Barnier. Furthermore, “the digital economy creates 2,6 jobs for every job that is lost in the real market”. Furthermore, Dalli and Kroes continue, considering that on-line purchases represent "huge savings" for consumers, "if all cross-border barriers could be abolished and a market share of 15% could be reached, the consumers would benefit from 204 billion euros, equal to about 7% of European GDP, for average annual savings of 11,7 billion".
The Green Paper therefore envisages the creation of a single multimedia platform that allows payments throughout Europe. For this reason, the measure identifies “the top twenty obstacles” to a free movement of goods on the web in Europe: among these the high cost of shipping the products from one country to another, the impossibility of paying with a credit card issued in a state other than the one in which payment is to be made. For this reason, the EU Commission invites the interested parties to "submit, by 11 April, opinions which allow for the identification of the obstacles to further integration of the market and the ways to eliminate them". Michel Barnier has no doubts: “Europe has the opportunity to give new meaning to the concept of 'making a payment'. However, we will not be able to achieve this with the current level of market fragmentation”. Secure, efficient, competitive and innovative electronic payments "represent an essential element for consumers, traders and businesses to fully enjoy the advantages of the single market, while stimulating the growth of electronic commerce".
The challenge is crucial: as we have seen, the benefits of a single telematic market are enormous, from an economic point of view. The costs of not achieving the objectives would be no less: the failure of this project, let the European Commission know, would cost 4,1 percentage points of GDP between now and 2020, almost 500 billion euros, the equivalent of 1.000 euros for every citizen of the European Union.
