JAKARTA, 30 March 2023 – The ASEAN Committee on Consumer Protection (ACCP) in cooperation with the ASEAN Coordinating Committee on E-Commerce and Digital Economy (ACCED) launched the ASEAN Guidelines on Consumer Protection in E-Commerce to promote consumer protection practices within the e-commerce space and the greater digital economy in ASEAN.

With the rapidly growing e-commerce market in ASEAN, the region’s policy and decision-makers need a soft law instrument to guide them in establishing, improving, and enforcing the consumer protection agenda. As a response to the demand, the publication on e-commerce guidelines was prepared. The publication contains general principles and current best practices and a comprehensive and principle-based framework to develop and refine regulatory responses and institutional mechanisms for consumer protection in e-commerce.

The guidelines aim to direct ASEAN Member States to modernise their respective legal frameworks and instruments so that deceptive, abusive and unfair business practices in e-commerce can be effectively checked.

The development of the guidelines and the publication are part of the ASEAN Strategic Action Plan on Consumer Protection 2025 as well as a deliverable under the Implementation of the ASEAN Agreement on Electronic Commerce in line with Principle 8 of the ASEAN High-Level Principle on Consumer Protection where consumers in e-commerce are protected.

The guidelines were prepared with the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH through the Consumer Protection in ASEAN (PROTECT) project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany.  

For more information visit the ACCP website: www.aseanconsumer.org.

Download the Guidelines: https://asean.org/book/asean-guidelines-on-consumer-protection-in-e-commerce/

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