E-Commerce Overview in the European Union

Abstract

This paper investigates the landscape of the e-commerce in the European Union (EU), from several angles, bringing into discussion issues related to the concept of electronic commerce, trends and new legislative framework of this domain adopted at the EU level. At the same time, based on Eurostat data, a statistical analysis of the evolution of the e-commerce sector during the 2012-2021 interval with a focus on current period was carried out in terms of the number of companies and the turnover in this, both on aggregate levels of the EU region and of its member states in trying to achieve a deeper understanding of the trends and dynamics of this field. The paper below also drags into discussion aspects related to online sales’ platforms and marketplaces as alternatives to the sales made by the firm through its own website and its own online applications. Last but not least, the prevailing business models in EU electronic commerce (business-to-business, business-to-consumer and business-to-government) are specified.

Keywords

• e-commerce
• web sales
• marketplace online
• e-business models
• european union