Financial services and products, already widely dematerialised in the developed economies, easily lend themselves to being offered on the Internet. This sector, a fully committed member of e-commerce, is experiencing a dazzling expansion. Europe has already been caught up in the phenomenon. However, such a development raises a number of legal problems. We are going to look at a few of these.
State is governed by the Treaty of Rome.
2. unsolicited offers by e-mail originating from financial service providers are covered by that provision. The applicable law will therefore necessarily be that of the consumer in such a case. However, some situations are more difficult to define. For example, a financial services provider could, with the help of a marketing company specialising in the subject, arrange for a banner leading directly to his interactive business site to appear on the screen of a search engine, associated with the marketing company, each time a net-surfer inputs a key word, suggestive of the services offered by the provider, in the engine's dialogue window. Such a technique, being used more and more frequently, could come under active canvassing, since the net-surfer did not initially request the service offered, so that the applicable law would have to be that of the consumer.