Electronic commerce - brief history, conceptual aspects and doctrinal definition and regulation

The expansion of the market - which has become an international one - has made modern means of communication included in the sphere of trade, thereby increasing the speed of concluding commercial legal relations. Thus, the conclusion of commercial relations through the computer or through other modern means of communication has been imposed, in the last decades, in our country as well. These means of communication are very diverse: telex and fax - through which words and images can be transmitted at adistance and in a short time, and means of storing information and documents made by traders - magnetic tapes, microfilms, compact discs, which can be used at any time, occupying a small space. The Internet is the present and the future of contractual relations. Although the issues raised by contracts concluded via the Internet are affected by traditional principles, they nevertheless present new and exciting aspects from a technical and legal point of view. In the case of electronic contracting, legal challenges arise from the spatio-temporal freedom offered by the Internet environment and reflect, above all, on the place and time of the conclusion of the contract. We are convinced that the actuality and importance of electronic commerce and the electronic sales contract resides in the strategic objective of the internal and external policy of Moldova to join the EU, the present work subjects to an extensive analysis the provisions of European legislation in the field of international commercial contracts. This objective also explains the special attention we paid to the community normative framework, an analysis which, we believe, will be useful to the competent national authorities in the activity of adjusting the provisions of the national legislation to the community acquis. The advantages of electronic commerce are known to all those who have resorted at least once to procuring products or services online. Beyond saving time, online stores offer the convenient opportunity to view the assortment of products and the conditions of the sale or service offer.