The Directorate of Consumer Services of Madeira said today that it continues to receive complaints about electronic sales being blocked to the region. Although geo-blocking and discrimination in online sales for consumers in the autonomous regions have been prohibited since January 2022, the authority has already logged four complaints this year. Cristina Gonçalves told the Madeiran parliament that the number of cases has fallen from 12 in 2021 to 9 in 2022 and now to 4 in 2026. She was speaking to the Permanent Specialised Committee on Economy and the Sea of the Regional Legislative Assembly during a hearing on “For the supervision of the provisions of Law No. 7/2022, of January 10.” The law bars unjustified geo-blocking and any direct or indirect discrimination based on a consumer’s place of residence or establishment, and it also forbids traders from blocking access to online interfaces for those reasons. Cristina Gonçalves said consumer awareness actions have been promoted, but argued that the problem would be easier to address if European legislation were revised because some companies do not know the national law and the current European framework does not cover the outermost regions. Complaints are first sent to the Regional Authority for Economic Activities (ARAE) and then passed on to the Food and Economic Security Authority (ASAE).
