After the European Commission withdrew its proposed Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (‘the CESL’) and presented its Digital Single Market Strategy, the ELI set out detailed suggestions on a general approach for a new legislative proposal that would help unlock the potential of the Digital Single Market, in its 2nd Supplement to the ELI Statement on the Proposal for a Regulation on a CESL. On 9 December 2015, the European Commission published three legislative proposals under its Digital Single Market strategy. The successful ELI Conference on New Rules for Contracts in the Digital Single Market provided a first opportunity to discuss and consider the substantial impact that these new Digital Single Market instruments were likely to have. Since then the project team has continued to scrutinize the instruments with the aim of providing constructive criticism.

The newly available ELI Statement on the European Commission's Proposed Directive on the Supply of Digital Content to Consumers [COM (2015) 634 final] focuses on the proposal of the so called ‘Digital Content Directive’ (DCD). The DCD offers important clarity and protection to consumers, particularly to consumers in Member States (the vast majority) that do not have legislation that specifically applies to contracts for the supply of digital content. In this Statement, the Project Team identifies a number of issues where it believes the draft DCD still needs to be improved.

The project team is chaired by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, with ELI Vice-President, Christiane Wendehorst, and Executive Committee member, John Sorabji as co-reporters. Further members of the drafting committee are: Hugh Beale, Axel Metzger, Reiner Schulze, Hans Schulte-Nölke and Fryderyk Zoll. The Advisory Committee comprises Ole Lando (special advisor), Carole Aubert de Vincelles, Remo Caponi, Sjef van Erp, Hans Micklitz, Denis Philippe and Lajos Vekas.

You can find the Statement here.