EU governments agreed Monday to increase the rights of consumers who shop online...

EU governments agreed Monday to increase the rights of consumers who shop online and across borders, a change that the European Commission considers crucial to encouraging e-commerce. Internal market, industry and research ministers in the Competitiveness Council said they want to standardize requirements such as the information that long-distance shoppers must receive and the right to pull out of contracts, to increase confidence in trading outside their home countries. The draft consumer rights directive, originally proposed by the EC in 2008, applies to remote and off-premises contracts between a public or private trader and a consumer, except in industries including gambling, the council said. Digital content such as computer programs, games or songs not burned onto tangible media aren’t considered goods, but CDs, DVDs, memory cards and the like are, it said. Digital downloads made under service contracts entered into electronically and performed immediately will also come under the directive, but consumers won’t have the 14-day cooling-off period that other remote buyers get, it said. The measure requires merchants to give consumers all mandatory information clearly and comprehensibly and get consent before imposing extra charges on sales transactions. The EC called the council action a “breakthrough” that will make it easier for people to shop online and will increase legal certainty for cross-border sellers. But the European Consumers’ Organization said the council vote was “something of an anticlimax” in relation to what was supposed to become a milestone of EU consumer legislation. There are several advances -- the measure counters problems with online purchases such as Internet cost traps -- Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl told us, but that shouldn’t distract from a recommendation of full harmonization of rights, diluting national consumer laws and foreclosing tougher rules. The council also “walked away from the opportunity” to provide what’s really needed, a set of modern rights for digital products, she said. European consumers have no clear entitlements, so in effect they have no protection in buying downloaded music, video and software, Pachl said. The directive is the right vehicle for this but the council chose instead the consumer-unfriendly approach of excluding the right of withdrawal from such products, she said. What remains is merely a review of the current remote and off-premises selling directive, which doesn’t add much value for consumers, she said. The European Parliament Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee votes on the proposal Feb. 1, and a plenary vote is likely in April, a committee spokeswoman said.