The period of stricter measures and staying at home due to lockdown during fight against COVID-19 disease showed full potential of e-commerce and practical application of new legal solutions of the Law on E-commerce after further alignment with EU regulations.

Namely, e-commerce that is realised by offering, ordering and selling goods/services through the Internet, as one of the forms of retail and provision of services in terms of the Law on Trade, has been breaking the records in scope since March, both in Serbia and worldwide.

E-commerce is particularly realised through electronic sale of goods/services through e-shops, e-commerce platforms or through “dropshipping“ as a form of e-commerce in a situation when goods are delivered to the consumers directly from manufacturers or wholesalers. Other forms of remote commerce are on a much lower scale in practice, although they involve numerous means of communication between sellers and buyers (catalogue sale, TV sale, sale via regular mail, printed packages, phone, voicemail, etc.).

Providers of information society services for commercial purposes are now both legal and natural persons who need to be registered for specific activities in accordance with the law (e.g. entrepreneurs, farms etc.). It should be taken into account that sending of commercial messages electronically by service providers is only allowed with previous consent of the person that such messages are intended for. Therefore, under the threat of misdemeanour penalties and high fines, service providers are legally bound to regularly verify and accept the withdrawal of consent expressed by the persons who do not wish to receive such commercial messages.

Additional consumer protection has been implemented by introduction of mechanisms for removal of unpermitted and unlawful contents from the Internet. Increasing number of cases of inappropriate contents on the Internet imposed a need for amendment of domestic legislation in such a manner so as to enable competent authorities to pass the acts at the request of a party or ex officio whereby they would order information society service providers to immediately and no later than two working days upon the receipt of the act remove the unpermitted content from the Internet.

In terms of the regulations of the Republic of Serbia, a contract may be concluded in electronic form and such contract cannot be denied the validity only due to its form. However, there are certain exceptions to the rule – contracts that cannot be concluded in electronic form subject to a special law, contracts that are concluded in form of publicly certified (solemnized) document or in form of public notary act or if their validity requires that signatures of the parties are certified, as well as contracts on guarantees if the guarantor is a person who acts outside the scope of commercial, business or professional activity.

Remote contracts shall be concluded between sellers and consumers within the scope of organised sale or provision of services without simultaneous physical presence of seller and consumer, by use of one or more remote communication means. Therefore, the provisions of the Law on Consumer Protection also apply to contracts in electronic form concluded in terms of the Law on E-commerce, whereas the seller shall be obliged to notify the consumer in a clear and eligible form about numerous information relevant for contract conclusion (e.g. the address of its business, e-mail address for consumer complaints, total selling price, terms, deadline and procedure for exercising the right to contract waiver etc.). Also, sellers shall be obliged to provide service or deliver goods within 30 days after the conclusion of remote contract and contract concluded outside business premises, unless otherwise agreed. If the delivery of the agreed goods or provision of the agreed services is not possible, the seller shall be obliged to immediately inform the consumer thereof.

A consumer shall be entitled to waive the remote contract i.e. contract concluded outside business premises within 14 days (from the day of delivery of goods into consumer’s property), without stating any reasons and without additional expense by default. The right to waiving the contract shall be exercised by statement that may be given in a special remote contract waiver form or in other undeniable manner.

The entities whose prevailing activity is wholesale shall also be allowed to perform retail sale as auxiliary activity through regular mail or through the Internet. This activity is under code no. 47.91, which does not require registration of trade through fiscal register, in accordance with the Regulation on specification of activities that are not subject to mandatory registration of trade through fiscal registers. The Ministry of Finance is of the opinion that a necessary precondition will be for a business entity to adopt a decision on the outset of this activity and to include it in the company’s act of incorporation. Therefore, it is not necessary to change the prevailing activity, but only to explicitly include this activity in the stated act as well.

Considering all benefits of e-commerce, despite the normalisation of situation caused by the pandemics of Covid-19 disease, one can reasonably expect that the scope of this form of trade in Serbia will increase, as well as further alignment with EU regulations for the purpose of more sophisticated consumer protection and creation of an optimal legal framework for remote trade.

This article is to be considered as exclusively informative, with no intention to provide legal advice.
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