Author: Dragoș Iordache, Avocat Partener SCA Simion, Nere & Iordache

The year 2020 will remain for sure in history as a benchmark. Regardless of the industry in which they were acting, turnover or the stage in which they were, companies have been influenced, in most cases affected, by the general situation created by the coronavirus pandemic. Most probably, the impact on the economy, generated by the exceptional measures enforced last year, is still difficult to quantify.

Without making a classification, we are not getting ahead of ourselves by saying that among the most affected sectors are tourism, transports, HoReCa and services destined to public (such as events’ organization, concerts). Finally, by domino effect, these negative effects influenced other sectors as well.

In this context, more and more companies saw online commerce (e-commerce) as an opportunity to keep alive their activity during this crisis, and as a development direction in the future.

Of course, this buying process hardly could we say that it is something new, as it is constantly evolving. In this sense, figures published on the Romanian Online Stores Association’s site show that at the European level, our country, even though is among the countries with the lowest number of persons buying online, recorded the highest growth in this type of sales.

The same uptrend is seen all across Europe. Electronic commerce sales increase reached 636 billion EUR in 2019, thus expanding by 14.2% compared to the previous year. Estimations were that European electronic commerce turnover will expand by 12.7%, reaching 717 billion EUR in 2020. (Cited source – press release of Europe 2020: Ecommerce Region Report, published by Ecommerce Europe and EuroCommerce.)

From a legal point of view, the rollout process of this particular sales process represents certain specificities compared to classic commerce. Of course, from a point of view, it is cutting a lot of red tape, for instance paperwork needed to open a classic store.

New challenges appear though – avoiding electronic fraud, personal data safety, confidentiality issues, adequate customers’ information, challenges that our firm met while assisting our clients using this sales process. At the same time, as it is a sector with complex implications (tax-related, processing of personal data, consumer protection), all of such have to be closely monitored and to implement all applicable legislative updates.

Thus, electronic commerce represents a process undergoing a continuous growth and development, it has been a chance for many companies to overcome this particular last year’s situation and it represents as well an opportunity for the future. In order to maintain the favourable character, our advice is to not neglect the needed legal protection while implementing this type of sale.

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