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By Bloomberg

The European Union is gearing up to tear down digital barriers that block access to Internet-based services across the region with a series of measures and an e-commerce antitrust probe just weeks after it accused Google Inc. of abusing its market power.

The European Commission on Tuesday promised to deliver on 16 proposals by the end of 2016 that will combat online barriers that thwart EU shoppers from using websites outside their home country and will examine whether extra regulation is needed to curb Web companies’ market power. The plans will affect everyone from room-sharing website Airbnb Inc. to e-commerce and search companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Google.

“I want to see pan-continental telecoms networks, digital services that cross borders and a wave of innovative European start-ups,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement. “I want to see every consumer getting the best deals and every business accessing the widest market –- wherever they are in Europe.”

Rebooting Europe’s digital economy is a focus for regulators concerned that Europeans are failing to seize opportunities to buy, sell or view content across the 28-nation bloc. The e-commerce probe announced today adds to EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s continuing four- year-old antitrust investigation of Google’s search engine looking at allegations that the company favors its own services and paid ads over rivals.

Online Retailers

Vestager in March said she will seek information from broadcasters, manufacturers, online retailers and online platforms about possible legal and technical barriers to wider EU trade.

The commission intends to start an assessment of online platforms, including search engines, social media services and price-comparison websites, “to evaluate if further action,” such as stricter regulation, is needed.

The Brussels-based commission also seeks to reduce the differences between national copyright laws with new plans this year to make it easier for e-books, movies and TV shows to travel across countries. It also will propose rules to end the practice of “geo-blocking,” in which companies make some products unavailable to other European countries or change prices based on the customers’ location.

Only 15 percent of people shop online from another EU country and online barriers block Internet companies and start- ups from growing and expanding, the EU said in a statement. If successful, the EU’s executive body hopes to contribute 415 billion euros ($466 billion) annually to its economy with the measures and “create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.”