Brussels, 29 September 2015 – In May this year, the European Commission published its strategy for the creation of a Digital Single Market (DSM). The EC communication comprises a roadmap of 16 actions that will be put in place in order to achieve the DSM.

Among its key actions, the Commission plans initiatives to tackle unjustified geo-blocking, assess the role of online platforms in view of potential harm to competition, reduce VAT burden on cross border transactions and identify a priority list of standardization projects.

All these initiatives are now been prepared by the European Commission that will soon announce concrete measures. As a first step, the Commission wants to gather input from companies and other stakeholders on concrete issues that actually exist and on what EU measures could better address these issues.

So, the Commission announced the launch of a set of public consultations on the following topics:

• ICT Standards in support of the DSM
• Online platforms, cloud & data, liability of intermediaries, collaborative economy
• Tackling unjustified geo-blocking
• Legislative proposals to reduce the administrative burden on businesses arising from different VAT regimes

Any European citizen or stakeholder are invited to have their say and contribute to these consultations, which will be available until the beginning of December 2015.

All consultations are accessible from the European Commission website: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/consultations

Once the consultation period is over, the results of the feedback received from the respondents will be made available by the Commission, which will use them to justify new specific actions in each of the above fields related to the DSM.