Good news for people buying at online shops.

Croatian customers will no longer be discriminated against when purchasing via the internet within the European Union countries. Online retailers will no longer be able to tell consumers from Croatia that they do not sell or deliver their goods to Croatia. That is a result of the directive on geo-blocking and other forms of discrimination at the online market which was approved by the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection of the European Parliament, reports Jutarnji List on April 25, 2017.

“This directive is of the utmost importance for Croatian consumers because we as citizens of a small and new EU member state, are often discriminated against during online shopping. Most often, web stores refuse to sell us or deliver something, and in some cases buyers are being automatically redirected to local sites with different products and prices. In addition, sometimes we are even charged at a higher price than buyers from some other EU member states,” said Biljana Borzan, a Croatian Member of European Parliament, who has worked on the directive and whose amendments have been approved. She has advocated for a ban on automatic redirection of customers to sites with different offers and prices, unless the customer explicitly accepts this option.

Borzan is also the European Parliament's rapporteur for the regulation on cross-border delivery, and has also suggested that delivery must be enabled to as wide a number of consumers as possible on the internal EU market. All her amendments have been adopted.

“Consumer associations estimate that delivery to smaller member states is twice as expensive as to the larger ones, and our citizens complain that shipping to Croatia very often is not even offered, so they have to cross borders to receive their shipment. At the EU level, as much as 25 percent of consumers complain that they cannot shop online in another country. This directive, as well as the regulation on cross-border delivery, is a major step forward for these consumers,” said Borzan.