Workshop:

The international diffusion of Electronic Commerce raises new questions on international

trade regulations and this article presents the more important ones. We show in the part 1 that

the importance of the international Electronic Commerce is currently relatively low but its

growth potential is significant. Moreover, the existence of so called “digital goods» obliges to

redefine the traditional nomenclatures and in particular the difference between goods and

services which is the basis of international trade negotiations in the context of liberalization.

In the part 2, we analyse the consequences of the trend leading to exempt Electronic

Commerce from custom duties and the creation of the « duty free Cyberspace ». In the part 3,

we show that the development of Electronic Commerce has potentially major consequences

on direct and indirect taxation rules.