Plans to reverse the fragmentation of internet shopping and other online services have been unveiled by the EU executive, which called for a digital single market in Europe covering everything from e-commerce to broadband spectrum, courier and parcel delivery rates, and uniform telecoms and copyright rules.

Setting out an ambitious digital strategy that will run into fierce resistance in some of the 28 EU countries, the European commission vice-president, Andrus Ansip, said Europe would be left behind if it did not create a level playing field for internet shoppers and firms. Expected to take years to even partially realise, the proposals would also boost digital services across the EU, which lags far behind the US. Currently, not a single market leader among internet providers in the EU is European.

Cross-border internet buying and selling is an unnavigable maze in the EU, hobbled by varying VAT rates, company tricks, the deliberate blocking of services and price rigging, while shoppers are also deterred from buying online in another country because they feel too much personal information is demanded.

Ansip, the former prime minister of Estonia, said: “I want people to buy like at home and companies to sell like at home. We have to hurry up.”

He said European GDP could be increased by €415bn (£308bn) a year if a harmonised market in digital services was established.

“The aim of the digital single market is to tear down regulatory walls and finally move from 28 national markets to a single one,” said the commission.

Only 15% of online shoppers in the EU buy something in another country, according to commission figures, while only 7% of small and medium-sized businesses sell across national borders.

But Wednesday’s proposals included no specific calls for legislation and Ansip and Günther Oettinger, the commissioner for digital services, acknowledged that national governments would try to slow things down.

Ansip complained that national leaders in the EU frequently agreed on policy moves only to have the policies sabotaged by national bureaucracies and politicians.

The commission said it would convert Wednesday’s proposals into legislative initiatives by the end of next year. The problems will be formidable on everything from national VAT rates to broadband infrastructure investment and how national spectrum allocation can be harmonised. Development of 4G and 5G in Europe are suffering because national governments jealously guard their prerogatives over spectrum allocation.

Ansip said there would be no possibility of a digital single market in Europe without “deep cooperation in the field of spectrum”.

While Ansip unveiled his proposals, another arm of the commission responsible for policing the single market said it was launching an inquiry into possible e-commerce abuses and malpractices.

Washington is increasingly alarmed that the EU is targeting US internet giants such as Google and Amazon, blaming governments and industry lobbies in Germany and France for forcing Brussels to get tough on the big American companies that utterly dominate web browsers and search engines.

Oettinger, Germany’s commissioner in Brussels, has acquired a reputation for representing the views of his country’s big online publishing lobbies, which are eager to rein in Google. On Wednesday, in remarks that will be construed as directed at the US, he said that the EU had to regain the “digital sovereignty” it had forfeited and reassert its digital independence.