PURPOSE: to repeal the Regulation on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) by discontinuing the European Online Dispute Resolution Platform (the ODR Platform).
PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.
BACKGROUND: the European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform, set up by Regulation (EU) No 524/2013 on online dispute resolution for consumer disputes, has been operating since 2016 as a fully multilingual digital infrastructure where consumers can request online traders to solve a dispute using an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) entity.
Despite a high number of visits, the ODR platform is only enabling on average 200 cases EU wide to be treated by and ADR entity per year. However, only a minority of visitors use the platform to launch a complaint, and only 2% of those actually receive a positive reply from traders so that their request can be transmitted to an ADR body listed on the platform.
This level of performance does not justify the costs incurred by the Commission to maintain the tool, nor the cost borne by public administrations and by online businesses to comply with their obligations under the ODR Regulation.
There was a consensus that the useful effect of the ODR Platform was very limited and thus not cost-effective.
CONTENT: this proposal aims to repeal the ODR Regulation, thus discontinuing the ODR platform and remove the obligation on the online businesses to provide a link to the ODR platform and manage an email for communication.
The Commission should inform users of the platform with open ADR cases of the discontinuance of the platform by two months after the date of entry into force of this Regulation and offer assistance to retrieve case data accessible to them if they wish to do so.
The discontinuation of the ODR platform would permit to save costs for businesses, Member States and for the Commission, while the cost for ADR entities would not be impacted. Discontinuing the platform therefore does not have any negative budgetary implications.