Geo-blocking Regulation: what a shop selling into the EU may and may not do

The Geo-blocking Regulation applies to you if you sell to customers in the EU, also from a shop outside the EU. You may choose which EU countries you deliver to, and you may run a different site, with different prices, for each country. You may not block or redirect EU visitors because of where they live, sell on worse terms to a foreign customer who wants the same delivery as a local, or refuse a payment because another EU country issued the card. Each EU country enforces the rules and sets its own penalties. It is part of EU consumer law.

What you do:

1. Keep every version of your shop open to every EU customer, unless a legal requirement forces a block (see the callout and the section on blocking below). Do not block or limit access by country, IP address, chosen language or the country a payment card was issued in (Art. 3(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; recital 6 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
2. Send a visitor to the version made for his country only if he has agreed to it. Keep the version he first opened easy to reach (Art. 3(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
3. Fix the countries you deliver to. Every buyer whose delivery address is in one of them gets the same terms, price and delivery conditions as a buyer who lives there. You do not have to deliver anywhere else (Art. 4(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; recital 23 and recital 28 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
4. Set the prices and terms of each country site as you like, as long as everyone who orders for that country gets them (Art. 4(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
5. Accept each payment type you offer from every EU country. A card of a brand and category you accept is accepted whichever EU country issued it (Art. 5(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
6. Read your supplier and distributor contracts. A clause that makes you refuse unsolicited foreign customers in a way these rules forbid is void (Art. 6(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
7. The authority and the penalty are national, and they differ by country. Three countries are set out below to show the range (Art. 7 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).

The Regulation covers a shop outside the EU

The Regulation applies equally to all traders operating within the Union, whether the trader is established in an EU country or in a third country (recital 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). A trader is anyone acting for trade, business, craft or professional purposes, and the definition says nothing about where the trader is established (Art. 2(18) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The Commission services say the same in their Questions and Answers: the Regulation applies to all traders offering goods or services to consumers in the EU, whether established in the EU or in a non-EU country. That document says it contains no authoritative interpretation of the Regulation.

The only situations the Regulation leaves out here are those in which all the relevant elements sit inside one EU country (Art. 1(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The trader’s place of establishment is one of those elements (recital 7 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). A shop outside the EU is not in that group.

The Regulation protects a customer. A customer is a consumer who is a national of, or lives in, an EU country, or a business established in an EU country, that buys for its own end use (Art. 2(13) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). A buyer who is neither is not a customer under the Regulation. The Commission services say, for example, that it is not directly applicable to customers in Switzerland. A non-EU national who lives in the EU is covered (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, questions 2.1.8 and 2.1.10). Businesses are covered when they buy under your general terms and not to resell, process, rent or subcontract (Art. 2(13) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; recital 16 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).

A seller on a marketplace is a trader in its own right, and the marketplace is subject to the Regulation when it acts as a trader (recital 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.1.14).

You may not block or redirect EU visitors because of where they live

A trader must not, through technology or otherwise, block or limit a customer’s access to its online interface because of the customer’s nationality, place of residence or place of establishment (Art. 3(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). An online interface is any website, part of a website or app that lets customers reach your goods or services with a view to a transaction (Art. 2(16) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).

The test is the reason, not the tool. The Regulation names the signals a shop can use to tell where a customer is: the IP address, the delivery address, the language chosen, and the EU country that issued the payment card. It treats their use as discrimination when it leads to the same result as using nationality or residence directly (recital 6 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The Commission services say a shop may not block or reroute customers by the country where their card was issued (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.2.10).

You may keep country versions of your shop, in their own language and layout. Two things come with that. A visitor can be sent to another version only if he has explicitly consented (Art. 3(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). Once he has consented, the consent may be valid for his later visits, including a preference saved to his account, and he may withdraw it at any time (recital 20 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The version he first asked for must stay easily accessible.

You need not translate your shop into any language (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.2.1).

You choose your delivery countries, but not who may buy for them

The Regulation does not oblige you to sell, or to deliver across the EU (recital 18 and recital 28 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). You decide where you deliver. What you may not do is treat customers differently because of nationality, residence or establishment in three situations (Art. 4(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302):

For a shop that sells goods, the first row is the one that matters. An example: you deliver to Germany and France only. A customer who lives in Belgium orders from your site. You must sell to him on the terms a customer in Germany gets, if he gives a German delivery address, or collects the goods where you offer collection. He can arrange the cross-border delivery himself. You do not have to ship to Belgium (recital 23 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.9).

At checkout you may refuse a delivery address outside your delivery countries. You may not refuse a customer because of his passport or home address when the delivery address is one you serve.

The Regulation changes no tax rule (Art. 1(4) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). Recital 23 adds that where the goods go to a country you deliver to, serving a customer from another EU country needs no VAT registration in the customer’s own country (recital 23 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The Commission services say it creates no duty to register in the business register, or in waste schemes, of each country where someone might buy (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.10). VAT stays under the VAT rules, in the country where the goods are supplied (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.18): EU VAT for online sellers.

Obeying the ban does not by itself oblige you to meet the customer’s country’s labelling or other non-contractual requirements (Art. 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The Commission services add that the ban does not release a trader from the EU or national rules that apply to it (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.15). Whether the product safety rules reach your goods is on does GPSR apply to you.

A country site with its own prices and terms is allowed

You may offer conditions, net sale prices included, that differ between countries, within a country, or for specific groups of customers, if you offer them on a non-discriminatory basis to everyone on that territory or in that group (Art. 4(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Art. 2(14) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). Setting up a site for each country is expressly allowed (recital 27 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). You may also give different terms for reasons that have nothing to do with nationality, residence or establishment, such as membership of an association.

What a country site cannot do is lock a foreign visitor out of it. Another example: you run a German site and a French site at different prices, and a customer from France orders on the German site with a delivery address in Germany. He gets the German site’s prices and terms, because that is the site he ordered from. The Commission services also say that a customer who orders on one version cannot demand the delivery options of another (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.8).

The Regulation does not set price levels. In principle it does not cover a price that moves for reasons unrelated to nationality, residence or establishment, and it leaves VAT rates to tax law (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, questions 2.3.5 and 2.3.18). You may charge a different delivery price for a different destination. Delivery to some or all EU countries is a free marketing choice that your terms state (Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.3.6).

You may not refuse a payment because the card or bank is in another EU country

Within the payment types you accept, you may not apply different conditions to a payment because of the customer’s nationality, residence or establishment, or because of where the payment account is, where the payment provider is established, or where the instrument was issued in the Union. The ban covers an electronic payment by credit transfer, direct debit or a card of the same brand and category, where the authentication requirements of Directive (EU) 2015/2366 are met and the payment is in a currency you accept (Art. 5(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).

What stays free:

• Which payment types you accept. You may accept debit cards of one brand and no credit cards of that brand. You may accept different types on different sites. If you accept a type on a site, you accept it from customers of other countries too (recital 32 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, questions 2.4.1, 2.4.2 and 2.4.4).
• Your currency. The ban covers payments in a currency you accept.
• Waiting for the payment. Where objective reasons justify it, you may hold back delivery until you have confirmation that the payment was properly initiated (Art. 5(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
• Some charges for the payment instrument: for a card whose interchange fee is not regulated, and for payment services outside Regulation (EU) No 260/2012. They may not exceed your direct costs, and may not be charged where the law of the EU country your operation is subject to bans them (Art. 5(3) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).
• Credit you give yourself. Financial services are outside the Regulation (Art. 1(3) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, question 2.4.5).

A supplier contract cannot make you break the Regulation

Where you resell goods under an agreement with a supplier, a clause that obliges you to break the access, goods or payment rules in a passive sale is automatically void (Art. 6(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). A passive sale is one you make because a customer approached you, not because you went looking for him. The Commission services give the example of a French supplier barring a Spanish trader from serving French customers who found its Spanish website through a search engine. Restrictions on active sales are not affected by this Regulation. Competition law decides them (Art. 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, questions 2.5.1 and 2.5.2). Active sales are sales you seek out. Under the current vertical block exemption they include approaching customers by letters, emails or calls, or by targeted advertising, in particular territories or to particular customer groups, running a website with a top-level domain that matches a territory, and offering on a website languages commonly used in a territory where they differ from those commonly used where the buyer is established (Art. 1(1), points (l) and (m) of Regulation (EU) 2022/720).

Each EU country enforces the Regulation and sets its own penalties

Each EU country designates one or more bodies to enforce the Regulation and lays down the measures for a breach. The measures must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive, and each country reports them to the Commission, which publishes them on its website (Art. 7 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). Each country also designates a body that gives practical help to a consumer in a dispute with a trader (Art. 8 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The Commission keeps a page for every EU country with its body and its rule, on the page for geo-blocking.

Where the customer is a consumer, the Regulation is on the list of acts covered by the consumer protection cooperation system, so the authorities of the countries involved can work together (Art. 10(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; recital 38 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). That Regulation gives each competent authority minimum powers against the infringements it covers. They include fines and periodic penalty payments. Where no other effective means are available and there is a risk of serious harm to the collective interests of consumers, they also include the power to restrict access to an online interface, to order a hosting service provider to remove, disable or restrict access to it, and to order a domain registry or registrar to delete a domain name (Art. 9(4), points (g) and (h) of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394).

The 2025 review: no report published by 5 October 2026

Art. 9Regulation (EU) 2018/302, Geo-blocking RegulationThe whole regulationClick opens the law on the EU Publications Office. of Regulation (EU) 2018/302Regulation (EU) 2018/302, Geo-blocking RegulationThe whole regulationClick opens the law on the EU Publications Office. told the Commission to report on the Regulation by 23 March 2020 and every five years after, with a proposal to amend it where necessary (Art. 9(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302). The first report was adopted on 30 November 2020. In July 2024 the Commission sent the Parliament and the Council a staff working document from a stock-taking exercise. It found that the Regulation had reduced geo-blocking by traders in the areas it regulates. It named other barriers that remain: diverging national rules, tax requirements, the cost of parcel delivery, and multinational traders who organise distribution country by country.

The Commission ran a call for evidence from 11 February to 11 March 2025 and an open public consultation from 6 October 2025 to 5 January 2026. The Bundesnetzagentur reports that the replies to the call for evidence came mostly from businesses and mostly concerned extending the Regulation to audiovisual services. When this page was last checked, on 5 October 2026, the Commission’s page for the evaluation listed the evaluation report as planned for the third quarter of 2026. No report and no proposal to amend the Regulation was published there. Until the Regulation is amended, the text on this page is the law.

What happens if you do nothing

A consumer you turn away can ask the consumer-assistance body of his country for help, and may refer the breach to the enforcement body where the rules of that country so provide (Art. 7 and Art. 8 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302; Commission services’ Questions and Answers, questions 3.3 and 3.5). The authority can be given the power to order you to comply (recital 35 of Regulation (EU) 2018/302), and it can penalise you under its national rule. In Ireland a breach is an offence. A supplier clause that tells you to refuse such customers does not protect you: it is void (Art. 6(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/302).