Will eBay be banned in France?

As read some minutes ago in this (german) post from the respected newschannel zdnet.de, the governmental authorities of France attack eBay heavily: they are demanding to forbid eBay to offer their services in France! The reason they give for this is, that eBay is just “hiding” as a intermediary between seller and buyer to cut their own responsibilities all commercial websites have in European Union by law. Ebay is in this way not protecting the customer enough and is breaking therefore a european law from 2000 reglementing online and offline auctions.

Ebay is (of course) rejecting all these complaints. A final decision in this case is not expected earlier than in 2 to 3 months. We’ll see then, how this will affect other’s european governments decisions. Maybe eBay in Europe will have a bad 2008!

Update 5. 12. 2007

Unfortunately my french isn’t as good as it had to be to fully translate the article above for you. But the main issue is clear: France is increasing the pressure on eBay. During the last months some luxury labels like Hermès, LVMH and Rolex fought heavily in court against eBay in several european countries. They blame eBay to be the main source of faked products of their brands, that come in masses mainly from China into european markets. The last victory they won was some weeks ago in Germany, where ROLEX finally won against eBay. The highest german court sentenced eBay to do everything technically possible to block offers with products that are either fake or violate a brand in any other manner. In parallel it was reported that sales on eBay went down by 16% in Germany over the year 2006 with an even more downward trend of loss in marketshare of eBay in Germany for 2007. May be the reason is somehow related to the wide presence of faked or falsified brand products on eBay.de and consequently a loss of customer trust in eBay offerings.

So that now France is spearheading the battle to finally wipe off eBay from the whole EU makes nobody wonder. France is known for the worldwide operating luxury companies like LVMH (e.g. Louis Vuitton), Chanel or Hermès - all heavily affected by eBay “uneffective” battle against brand piracy. The news from yesterday will shake eBay very seriously: in all cases ever fought the High European Court decided in the way now argued by France government against those companies who tried to maneuver around european law like eBay tries now. And -as european law is harmonized all over the EU- this would finally mean, that not only France but whole European Union is affected.

eBay has either to change it’s business model heavily (e.g. offering themselves(!) 2 years of warranty on every - even a used- products sold on eBay) or shut down their services completetly in europe.

This, again, would create some nice new business opportunities for other eCommerce sites in 2008.

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