Ecommerce Europe’s Secretary General, Luca Cassetti, was recently invited to speak at a public hearing organised by the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) of the European Parliament on the revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation.
In its Report on the application of the CPC Regulation, the European Commission identified several shortcomings and areas where cooperation could be improved. The hearing aimed to gather stakeholders’ views on the main limitations of the CPC framework, including the challenges related to traders established outside the European Union, and possible solutions ahead of the Commission’s upcoming revision.
Ecommerce Europe sees the revision of the CPC framework as one piece of a complex puzzle needed to restore a level playing field in e-commerce and ensure that all e-commerce players active in the Single Market play by the same rules, regardless of where they are based. At the hearing, Ecommerce Europe stressed that the EU has one of the strongest consumer protection frameworks in the world. However, the EU also faces serious gaps in the enforcement of these rules. The current country-by-country enforcement model of the CPC has proven to be limited, slow and unable to cope with the sheer volume of goods entering the EU market.
During the hearing, Ecommerce Europe highlighted that the effectiveness of the CPC framework is hampered by diverging interpretations of consumer rules among national authorities and by differences in how enforcement powers are implemented across Member States. At the same time, several national authorities find themselves in a weak position due to limited financial, human, IT resources, heavy workloads and time pressures. As a result, only a few Member States may have the capacity to take on the largest non-compliant actors operating in the EU market, and even then, success remains limited so far.
This lack of consistent and decisive enforcement is particularly problematic in a context where the volume of goods entering the EU continues to grow rapidly. In 2025 alone, around 5.8 billion items were imported into the EU, increasing the risk of potentially non-compliant and dangerous products entering the market. In such a situation, isolated or even coordinated national enforcement actions do not provide sufficient deterrence.
For this reason, Ecommerce Europe argued that the European Commission should be given a strong and clear mandate to act as an enforcer in cases of EU-wide infringements of consumer law affecting millions of Europeans, regardless of where the e-commerce actors are based. At the same time, Ecommerce Europe noted that such an approach would require careful consideration due to related significant changes to parts of the existing consumer acquis. Another question concerns the sanctioning system under a future centralised EU enforcement model, which may need to go beyond fines and also include delisting and takedown measures in severe cases.
In conclusion, Ecommerce Europe emphasised that while the CPC Regulation has provided a valuable framework for cooperation between national authorities, it now needs to be adapted to reflect today’s market realities. At the same time, businesses and consumers cannot wait for new legislation alone: the effective enforcement of existing EU rules remains essential to at least partially address unfair competition and ensure a level playing field in the Single Market.
For more information, you can watch the video of the hearing of 25 February (from 09:18) and read as the presentations of the speakers, on the IMCO website.