From 8^th to 9^th March 2012 the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority hosted the second meeting of the working group on e-commerce.

It is the working group within FLEP grouping (Food Law Enforcement Practitioners) which associates representatives from European inspection authorities enforcing food law in practice and deal with harmonization of approaches to the food inspection within the EU. FLEP works on the basis of the European Inspection Authorities Cooperation Agreement which was signed in Dutch Haag in 1990. The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority participates in the FLEP meetings regularly from year 1995.

In 2010, the working group for solving national and European questions related to e-commerce inspection, short “e-commerce”, of which members the representatives of CAFIA are as well, was found. The aim of the working group is to identify the best approach and the instruments of the e-commerce inspection and to rephrase the recommendation for the European Commission and for the FLEP member states too.     

The meeting was attended by 15 representatives from 7 countries: The Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia and Great Britain. The European Commission also showed the interest in the topic and sent its representative.  

Within the agenda, reports on activities from each of the member states were introduced. The presentations of legislation related to food shopping on the internet (e-commerce of food) and the presentation of the expert on internet addresses and domain names followed. The afternoon part of the meeting was focused on databases of websites and products, software used during the e-commerce and other questions related to e-commerce. Issues such as internet sellers inspections, registration of websites of e-commerce operators, loophole in legislation, consumers notification, etc. were discussed. 

Discussions continued on the second day of the meeting and the working day was closed by the formulation of recommendations of the working group to be addressed to the European Commission. It is a case of draft of specific amendments taking into consideration the e-commerce in the Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 on official controls, which is being amended now.

Another meeting will take part in the Netherland in the end of September 2012.

Non-working program led the participants into the Tugendhat villa which was after the exacting reconstruction opened from 6th March 2012 to public again.