Nowadays, however, the purchase of the goods of your dreams is sometimes only a few clicks away. However, the internet still is unable to provide an all-encompassing solution to the legal-social regulation of the complex relationships beween two or more contracting parties. In other words: even if the realization of your dream is now a few clicks away, what happens if the product you ordered online still does not get delivered to your house in the agreed deadline? What if the trader cannot or cannot fully comply with the terms of the "electronic agreement"?

The European Commission might have the answer to your question. In February 2016, the European Commission launched an online dispute resolution platform, whose aim is to elimite the discomfort of consumers that may arise from disputes in relation to online trading.

When one thinks about „online dispute resolution”, probably the first thing that comes to mind is a modern, efficient and transparent tool, where resolution of the dispute might be as easy as a click on the mouse and where there is no need of paperwork or any other complicated legal beaurocracy.

Unfortunatelly, this dream does not appear to come entirely true under actual online dispute resolution platform under the European legal regime. So far, it seems like the platform does have the potential of becoming a useful tool, but so far it looks like simply another search engine (a new “Google”), just specifically for the consumers who shop online. 

Indeed, the new platform is available all across the EU member countries in 23 languages, which enables the multicultural and multilingual citizens of the EU to submit and manage complaints in their own language. However, as soon as a consumer submits the complaint, the platform only provides the service of detecting the ADR scheme (which would be able to resolve the given claim), but afterwards the consumer is on his / her own to handle the multiple issues that follow. One may thus conclude that the platform works just like a mere receptionist in a hotel, who will show you to your room, but then provides no further services after you entered your room.

It will be therefore interesting to see how this new European platform will develop in the future to provide a more complete service to aggrieved European consumers.