MPs want to close online shopping

People’s deputies from BPP has offered to give the state foods and consumer service the right to close the online shopping.

Deputies registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine the draft law that will toughen identification requirements of online merchants and service providers, as well as will entitle the State service of Ukraine on food safety and consumer protection (state foods and consumer service) close the sites to offenders who will not comply with its requirements.

The initiators of the bill No. 6754 are members of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko.

“A substantial distribution in the last five years, acquired the activity of selling goods (works, services) remotely using the Internet and other communication systems. In the Ukraine a significant part of economic activity involving the sale of goods (works, services) continues to be implemented in the sector of shadow economy”, – explained the authors.

So, the initiators propose a number of changes: first, to oblige the sellers to provide information about themselves and to increase the amount of the penalty for lack of necessary, accessible, reliable and timely information about the products or the seller; second, to provide the state foods and consumer service authority to issue to the sellers of orders on elimination of violations of information to be disclosed; third, to provide the state foods and consumer service to make decisions on the suspension of access to the site if violations are eliminated.

According to deputies, the necessity of changes is caused by the fact that the e-Commerce industry in Ukraine is still not regulated. So the law On electronic Commerce dated September 3, 2015 no clearly defined requirements for the identification of the seller of goods/services “in order to protect consumer rights and ensure the possibility of carrying out checks on compliance with tax, currency and other legislation”. Effective mechanisms to respond to violations of it is also not spelled out, nor resolved the issue of execution of payment operations, the authors note.

“The online store that provides products at a distance must provide access to information about organizational-the legal form, full name of the legal entity or surname, name, patronymic of the individual entrepreneur; location of legal entity or place of registration and place of actual residence of a natural person-entrepreneur; e-mail address and/or address of the online store, as well as information on the procedure for making a complaint. Therefore, the absence of such information makes it impossible for the state foods and consumer service full and objective review of consumer complaints by conducting unscheduled inspections of such Internet stores,” — said in an explanatory run to the document.

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