Digital is already economically important for Europe, growing at seven times the rate of the rest of the economy. This makes the EU’s recent proposal for a Digital Single Market all the more important to the sustainability of this crucial economic sector.

In such a single market, the buying/selling experience to other Member states should be the same as buying within the home country, but according to a recent survey of European companies that bought goods or services from another EU country in 2014, several problems are hampering progress.

Two issues were seen as a major or minor problem for the majority of those surveyed: High delivery costs (57 percent) and the expense of resolving cross-border complaints and disputes (53 percent). However, more companies said the resolution of cross-border disputes was a major problem (32 percent), while another 28 percent said the same about high delivery costs.

Nearly one in five cited a lack of language skills as a major problem, which was followed closely by the issue of payments not being secure enough.

Meanwhile, copyright restrictions, product labeling and interoperability were the least of the issues companies felt were a problem area.