Black Friday Across Borders: What The EU Geo-Blocking Regulation Lets You Do When the Shop Is In Another Country

Plenty of people assume a shop in another EU country can refuse them because of where they live. If you read Fizzy from Berlin and your Black Friday wishlist is split between a Paris label and a Milan sneaker store, that belief can stop a basket before it starts. On paper, it is wrong. Regulation (EU) 2018/302, the Geo-blocking Regulation, became applicable on 3 December 2018. According to a special report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the Regulation bars traders from blocking or limiting customers' access to their online interfaces for reasons of nationality or place of residence. Living in Berlin is no reason to be kept off a French site.

Shoppers were treated like locals about one time in three

The checkout is where that promise gets tested. According to the ECA's mystery shopping surveys, around 65% of all the websites assessed in 2016 and 2019 applied some geo-blocking. Put differently, cross-border shoppers in the EU could buy in the same way as domestic shoppers in only around 1 in 3 attempts. That is not quite a verdict on the rules, since the first survey came before the Regulation applied. The ECA found the two results broadly similar, though, and that is a fair warning that a right on paper and a smooth checkout are two different things.

Some services answer to a different rulebook

The Regulation also has edges, and they matter as much as its promises. According to the ECA, it does not apply to activities under Article 2(2) of Directive 2006/123/EC, with financial, transport, healthcare and audiovisual services given as examples. Anyone expecting one set of rights for everything bought online will find that a jacket is not treated like a train ticket or a bank account.

Online gambling is expressly excluded from the Regulation: Article 2(2)(h) of the same Directive covers games of chance played for a monetary stake, casino games and betting included. A gambling site may therefore lawfully be built for one licensing country, and a page of blackjack tables online set up for Ireland says as much in a heading, with the licences behind its services listed further down. For a reader in Berlin, that heading signals that the shop-like-a-local rights described here stop at the page. Gambling for money always carries a risk of losing it, whichever licence sits behind a site, so anyone who chooses to take part should gamble responsibly.

Local terms reach only the countries a shop serves

Delivery causes the next misunderstanding. Traders are not obliged to deliver to the country you live in; what the ECA calls the shop-like-a-local principle entitles you to delivery in the member states the trader serves, on the same terms as local customers. A Milan store that ships only within Italy would offer a Berlin buyer Italian terms, with the parcel going to an Italian address. Many baskets stall right there. According to the ECA, the share of mystery shoppers who could register with a website but were stopped before the delivery stage rose from 37.8% in the first survey to 43.0% in the second. Registering, it turns out, is no promise of a parcel.

Your card is the last hurdle, and the rule here is narrower than it sounds. The ECA's summary says there must be no discrimination in means of payment, but traders are free to decide which ones they accept. A shop that takes no card of your type is therefore within its rights, which is worth knowing before an argument with customer service. Payment issues at the final stage of cross-border online shopping, the ECA reports, rose slightly, from 8.6% in 2015 to 10.4% in 2019.

Check the delivery list before you fill the basket

Smaller makers are where this pays off. If your heart is set on a made-to-order leather sneaker built in Italy, look for the list of countries the shop delivers to before you spend an evening on the design, since the local-terms rule reaches only those countries. A pop-up offering to send you to another country's version of the site can be declined, too: a redirect based on your location needs your consent first.

None of this means a cross-border order will arrive. The rules secure access and local terms in the countries a trader serves, not delivery to your door and not your favourite way to pay, and the ECA's special report on geo-blocking sets out the survey figures used above. For Black Friday, the delivery page matters more than the discount banner. If your country is not on it, the Geo-blocking Regulation will not add it.