Guidance

Geo-blocking from 1 January 2021

Geo-blocking rules when selling to and buying from the EU.

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Overview

You do not need to make any changes to how you provide goods and services to customers based in the EU if you already comply with the EU Geo-Blocking Regulation.

Selling goods and services into the EU

You must follow the EU Geo-Blocking Regulation to sell certain goods and services in the EU from 1 January 2021. You will not be able to discriminate between customers in different EU countries, for example between a customer in France and a customer in Germany.

This means you cannot treat EU customers differently when they are buying:

  • goods online
  • electronically supplied services – for example, web hosting or cloud storage
  • services provided in a physical location – for example, tickets to a theme park

These regulations do not apply to selling online copyrighted material like e-books and streamed movies. The rules do apply to physical copies like CDs and paper books.

You also cannot block access to, or automatically redirect customers away from a website or decline a payment card because of where it was issued in the EU.

Selling goods and services in the UK

You do not need to follow EU Geo-Blocking Regulation rules when selling goods and services in the UK to UK customers.

Buying goods and services from the EU

As a UK customer, you may be treated differently from EU customers when you buy goods and services from the EU. EU businesses will not have to follow the EU Geo-Blocking Regulation when they sell to the UK.

Published 9 August 2019