E-commerce legal requirements in the Netherlands come from three layers of rules: the identification and information duties in Book 3 and Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek, BW), the European consumer directives implemented in the same code, and directly applicable EU regulations on data protection, product safety, geo-blocking and platform services. Together they determine what a webshop must show before the order button, what the customer may cancel afterwards, and what the seller must be able to demonstrate to the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).
The practical risk is not usually a fine. It is that a contract concluded without meeting the formal requirements can be undone: a withdrawal period that runs for a year longer than expected, an order the consumer is not bound by, or a set of general terms that cannot be relied on because they were never properly made available. This article sets out the requirements that apply to a Dutch webshop selling to consumers in the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union, and what has changed most recently.
Establishing the business and identifying it online
A business selling online in the Netherlands is registered in the Commercial Register kept by the Chamber of Commerce (Kamer van Koophandel), which issues the registration number that has to appear on the website. Registration is a matter of fact rather than form: the obligation follows from carrying on a business, not from the legal vehicle chosen, and the same applies to the obligation to register for VAT. The mechanics of registering and filing are set out in our article on electronic filing in commercial registers.
Article 3:15d BW obliges every provider of an information society service to make a defined set of details easily, directly and permanently accessible: the name of the business, the address where it is established, contact details including an e-mail address that allows rapid contact, the Commercial Register number and the VAT identification number, and, where the activity is subject to authorisation, details of the supervisory authority. A footer link to a page carrying these details satisfies the requirement; a contact form on its own does not, because the consumer must be able to reach the trader directly.
Article 6:230m BW adds the information that must be given before a distance contract is concluded. It includes the main characteristics of the product, the identity and address of the trader, the total price including taxes and all delivery and other charges, the arrangements for payment and delivery, the duration of the contract, the existence of the legal conformity guarantee, and the conditions, period and procedure for exercising the right of withdrawal, together with the model withdrawal form. Where the trader fails to state that the consumer will bear the cost of returning the goods, the trader bears it.
The order process and general terms
Dutch law sets specific requirements for the ordering step itself. Immediately before the consumer places an order, the trader must display the main characteristics, the total price, the duration and the minimum term of any continuing obligation. The button used to place the order must be labelled unambiguously to indicate that the order carries an obligation to pay; if it is not, the consumer is not bound by the contract. The website must also provide appropriate technical means allowing the consumer to identify and correct input errors before the order is placed, and the trader must confirm receipt of the order electronically without delay.
General terms and conditions only apply if the consumer had a reasonable opportunity to take note of them before or when the contract was concluded. In an online contract this means the terms must be made available in a way that allows the consumer to store them and to consult them later; a link that opens a page which cannot be saved is not enough. Terms that fail this test can be annulled clause by clause. Book 6 BW additionally contains a list of clauses that are always unreasonably onerous in consumer contracts and a list of clauses presumed to be so, covering matters such as far-reaching exclusions of liability, unilateral changes to the product and unreasonable notice periods. Business-to-business sales are not subject to that regime, which is why separate sets of terms for consumer and business customers are worth the effort. Drafting them is part of our legal advice for businesses.
The right of withdrawal and returns
A consumer who buys at a distance may withdraw from the contract within fourteen days without giving reasons. For goods the period starts on the day after the consumer, or a third party designated by the consumer, receives the goods; for services and for digital content it starts the day after the contract is concluded. If the trader has not informed the consumer about the right of withdrawal in the prescribed manner, the period is extended by twelve months, which is the most expensive single mistake a webshop can make.
Once the consumer has withdrawn, the goods must be returned within fourteen days and the trader must reimburse all payments received, including the standard delivery costs, within fourteen days of being informed. The trader may withhold payment until the goods have been received back or the consumer has provided proof of dispatch. The consumer bears the direct cost of returning the goods only if the trader informed them of that in advance, and is liable for any diminished value of the goods resulting from handling that goes beyond what is necessary to establish their nature and characteristics.
The exceptions are limited and exhaustive. They include goods made to the consumer specifications or clearly personalised, goods that spoil quickly, sealed goods that are not suitable for return for reasons of health protection or hygiene once unsealed, sealed audio and video recordings and software once unsealed, newspapers and magazines, accommodation, transport and leisure services for a specific date, and digital content not supplied on a tangible medium where the consumer expressly consented to immediate performance and acknowledged losing the right of withdrawal. An exception applies only if it is actually communicated to the consumer before the order.
The right of withdrawal is separate from the statutory conformity guarantee. Under Book 7 BW the product must possess the properties the consumer could reasonably expect, and in a consumer sale a defect that appears within one year of delivery is presumed to have existed at delivery, so it is for the trader to prove otherwise. There is no fixed statutory guarantee period after which the trader is automatically free; what matters is what could reasonably be expected of the product concerned. Digital content and digital services carry their own regime, including an obligation to supply updates for as long as the consumer can reasonably expect.
Prices, promotions and advertising
Prices shown to consumers must be the total price including VAT and any unavoidable charges, and additional costs must be visible before the order is placed. Since the modernisation of the consumer directives was implemented in 2022, three further rules apply. When a price reduction is announced, the trader must state the lowest price applied during at least the thirty days before the reduction. Where search results are ranked, the main parameters determining the ranking and their relative importance must be disclosed, and paid placement must be identified as such. Where reviews are displayed, the trader must state whether and how it verifies that they come from consumers who actually bought the product; presenting unverified reviews as verified is a misleading practice.
Those rules sit within the general prohibition of unfair commercial practices in Book 6 BW, which covers both misleading acts and omissions and aggressive practices, and which the ACM enforces with administrative fines and orders. Interface design that pushes consumers towards a choice they would not otherwise make, such as artificial scarcity messages or a pre-ticked extra, falls squarely within it.
Data protection, cookies and accessibility
Every webshop processes personal data and therefore needs a lawful basis for each purpose, a privacy statement covering the categories of data, the purposes and legal bases, the recipients, the retention periods and the rights of the data subject, processing agreements with the parties that process data on its behalf, and technical and organisational security measures. Transfers outside the European Economic Area need one of the transfer mechanisms in the GDPR. The higher tier of GDPR fines applies to breaches of the basic principles and of data subject rights, and is calculated on worldwide annual turnover where that produces the larger figure.
Cookies have a Dutch peculiarity worth knowing. The consent requirement for placing and reading information on a user device is contained in the Telecommunications Act and is supervised by the ACM, while the processing of the personal data collected through those cookies falls to the Dutch Data Protection Authority. Consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, so a pre-ticked box or a banner offering only an accept option does not qualify, and refusing must be as easy as accepting. Functional and strictly necessary cookies, and analytics that meet the conditions for a minor privacy impact, do not require consent.
A newer obligation is easily missed. Since 28 June 2025, the European accessibility requirements implemented in Dutch law apply to e-commerce services, which means that the ordering process, product information and payment functions of a webshop must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for users with disabilities. Micro-enterprises providing services are exempt, but the exemption is narrow and is defined by staff numbers and turnover, not by the size of the website. Compliance is assessed against harmonised standards, and the obligation applies to services offered to consumers in the European Union regardless of where the trader is established.
Product safety, platforms and selling across borders
Product safety is governed by the General Product Safety Regulation, which has applied since 13 December 2024 and replaced the earlier directive. It requires that a product placed on the EU market be safe, that a responsible economic operator be established in the Union, and that distance offers show the identity of that operator, product identification and any warnings before the purchase. It also imposes duties to notify accidents and to conduct recalls in a prescribed way, including direct notification of affected customers where their details are known. Sector rules on conformity marking continue to apply on top of it.
Traders selling through a marketplace also feel the Digital Services Act, which has applied in full since February 2024. Platforms must collect and verify identifying information about the traders they host before allowing them to sell, and must be able to trace them; a seller who cannot supply that information is removed. In the Netherlands the ACM acts as digital services coordinator. The interaction between those rules and the obligations of the seller is set out in our article on the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
Selling to consumers elsewhere in the European Union brings two more rules. The geo-blocking regulation prohibits blocking or restricting access to a website on the basis of the customer nationality or place of residence, automatic redirection without consent, and applying different general conditions of access on that basis; it does not oblige a trader to deliver everywhere, but it does prohibit refusing a customer who arranges collection or their own carriage. Under the Rome I regulation, a trader who directs activities at consumers in another member state cannot deprive those consumers of the mandatory protection of their own country, so the local rules on withdrawal, guarantees and unfair terms continue to apply alongside the chosen law. Sales to consumers in the United Kingdom fall outside the EU framework altogether and require separate advice on the rules applying there.
Complaints and disputes
One requirement has recently disappeared. The European online dispute resolution platform ceased to operate on 20 July 2025 and the regulation underlying it was repealed, so the obligation to place a link to that platform on a webshop no longer exists. Links and references to it should be removed, because a dead link to a defunct dispute mechanism is itself misleading information. What remains is the obligation, where the trader is bound to an alternative dispute resolution body by law, membership or its own terms, to inform consumers of that body and of how to reach it.
In the Netherlands most consumer disputes about webshops are handled either by the disputes committees to which many traders are affiliated through a trade association or quality mark, or by the subdistrict court, which hears consumer claims regardless of amount and before which a lawyer is not required. The ACM does not settle individual complaints; it enforces in the general interest, but a pattern of complaints is what draws its attention. Reserving a genuine complaints procedure with a stated response time, and documenting how complaints are handled, is therefore both a contractual and a supervisory safeguard.
A practical order of priorities
Start with the items that make contracts unenforceable or extend liability: the identification details on the site, the pre-contractual information set, the wording of the order button, the availability and content of the general terms, and the withdrawal information including the model form. Next come the rules that attract supervision: price transparency and the thirty-day reference price, review and ranking disclosures, cookie consent, and the privacy documentation. Then address the requirements that depend on what is sold and where: product safety documentation and the responsible operator in the EU, accessibility of the ordering process, and the position in each member state where activity is directed. Questions of VAT registration and the one-stop-shop scheme belong with a tax adviser; they are not answered by the legal analysis. A structured approach to the whole is described in our article on types of legal compliance.
Law & More advises online retailers and platforms on the legal requirements for selling in the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union: general terms and conditions for consumers and business customers, the information and withdrawal regime, privacy and cookie documentation, product safety and platform obligations, and disputes with consumers or with the ACM. If you are launching a webshop or reviewing an existing one, contact Law & More for an assessment of where the gaps are.
