Quo vadis information society? Notification of draft rules on e-services in the EU1

From its inception the European legislator has adopted a mixed approach to the regulation of a novel and complex phenomenon of the Internet based commerce. The idea of harmonisation or approximation of laws has been accompanied by a parallel process of monitoring of draft laws pertaining to e-commerce, known as the notification procedure under 98/34/EC directive related to information society services. The aim of this paper is to analyse the notification principle in the light of the Notification Directive as well as the practice of states as evidenced by data gathered in a database of submitted drafts.