EU Trolling Us?

The hypocrisy is rife within the EU (not such a great shock it has to be said), but it is such a glaring “we don’t know what the fuck we are doing” type that I simply couldn’t resist putting finger to key. Ya see, as any business knows, distance selling is one of many keys to success. More often than not, products and services are sold to other territories. This takes distance selling to a different pot. Cross-border. Businesses aren’t just having to apply local laws and so forth, once their product crosses an international border, it has to comply with the destination laws too.

This is one of those times when, fundamentally the Single Market™ is a benefit. That is, the Single Market without all the political rubbish that goes with it. The vast majority of EU diktat has in it somewhere “to harmonise the operation of the internal market” – I’d go as far as saying that they all do. After all, the Single Market (for all its flaws) is in fact a useful benefit to the EU in general – it does not outweigh the negatives associated with the Commission, Parliament or Council.

Most will of course be aware of the Tobacco Products Directive (Directive 2014/40/EU), and in this case Article 18 – Cross-border distance sales of tobacco products whereupon the EU have decided in their infinite wisdom to allow the 28 (soon to be 27) Member States to decide whether or not to prohibit cross-border distance sales. The Directive states:

So Finland, in their infinite wisdom have decided that, for now at least cross-border sale is legal, it’s actually illegal to receive the shipment. Oddly enough, this insanity only applies to business to consumer, not business to business or consumer to consumer. Their reason? “it’s too hard to effectively oversee”. So much for market harmonisation then.

Thing is, the European Commission are sure to be trolling us with their article on Geo-Blocking with the opening commentary of:

Quite. Restricting who can, or cannot order from a digital business purely based on their digital location (which can be spoofed) does nothing to help the “harmonisation of the internal market”, yet that is exactly what they are doing by allowing Member States to dictate who can or cannot buy a “tobacco product” under Article 18 of the TPD. So under this new GeoBlocking proposal I should be allowed to buy a “tobacco” product from any Member State regardless of my “digital” location, yet the TPD allows Member States to prohibit cross-border sale of “tobacco” products.

If cross border sale on a non-discriminatory basis – i.e. not allowing businesses (or even Member States) from buying (or selling) over borders is such a problem, then why allow Member States to prohibit just that in the TPD? After all, this new proposal (and draft Directive) for addressing GeoBlocking was made after the TPD was voted through.

So are they going to suddenly get rid of Article 18 of the TPD? Of course not. In fact, the revised TPD is nowhere to be found in the draft on GeoBlocking, natch.

Yet more evidence on how inept the EU truly is when it comes to matters of “public health” (among other things).

(Image credit Pressmaster/shutterstock.com)