A new report on "Barriers to E-commerce", presented on March 5 2009 by European Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kouneva says that online shopping is increasingly
popular in the European Union, but warns that barriers to cross border trade are holding back its development.

The report presents a detailed analysis of current trends in e-commerce across the EU - including per country, most purchased items and obstacles for consumers and business online.

Between 2006 and 2008, the proportion of EU consumers buying at least one item over the internet increased from 27 per cent to 33 per cent.

"These average figures mask the huge popularity of online shopping in countries like UK, France and Germany where more than 50 per cent of internet users have made online purchases in the past year," an EC media statement said.

In the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) the proportion of internet users who bought products and services online was 91 per cent in 2008.

Countries like Italy and Spain are also fast growing markets.

Against this pattern of fast growing national markets, the extent of online purchasing cross border remains small, at only seven per cent in 2008 (compared to six per cent in 2006).

The report warns that numerous obstacles - linguistic, practical and regulatory as well as important trust issues - are holding back the development of online shopping in the EU.

"Consumers have everything to gain from the internet. It expands the size of the market they operate in and gives them access to more providers and more choice," Kouneva said.

"It makes it possible to compare products, suppliers and prices on an unprecedented scale. Internet use for retail shopping is destined to become pervasive," she said.

Already 150 million consumers shop online, although only 30 million shop online cross border.

"We must see to it that adoption of the internet platform will not be unnecessarily slowed down by a failure to remove important regulatory barriers or to address important trust issues for consumers."

In September 2009, Kouneva will present the results of independent "mystery shopping" to identify how and where consumers are being prevented from shopping online across the EU.

As part of the Commission's monitoring of the retail sector, Kouneva last autumn launched a Commission-wide process to screen for barriers to e-commerce. The Commission's final report on the retail sector is due in Autumn 2009.