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15 December 2020 The legislative proposals should provide for an improvement in enforcement compared to the current situation, in which large digital platforms risk little for violations of EU regulations: even the fines that are imposed, although sometimes high in absolute numbers, are often limited if compared to the turnover of giants that bill tens and tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. 



"Today in the college of commissioners we will adopt a package to regulate digital platforms," ​​said EU president Ursula von der Leyen.

A proposal for a regulation on digital services (Digital Services Act), another proposal for a regulation on markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act), as well as, separately, a proposal for a directive on measures for a common high level of cybersecurity in the Union .



Digital services and markets

The first provision, the regulation on digital services (Digital Service Act), imposes obligations and constraints on content intermediaries with an update of the e-commerce directive twenty years ago.

The second concerns the regulation on the markets (Digital Market Act) which will impose specific obligations for companies defined as 'systemic' which include, among others, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.



The Digital Service Act (DSA) is the EU legislative package that will regulate online digital platforms, including marketplaces, social media, search engines, arcade games and other internet services.

It is the first legislative initiative for the sector since 2000 (the year of the Directive on electronic commerce).

It will impact internet governance, not just in Europe, but globally. 



The criterion takes into account above all the number of users in the European market and the extent of the business.

The Commission proposes a new instrument of competition rules to be able to intervene without the solicitation of appeals from competitors, in order to intervene quickly, even in new sectors such as blockchain, cloud, IoT - internet of things.



The approach reflects the will to equip Brussels with preventive powers that can be exercised quickly, based on a list of prohibited practices.

The EU Court of Auditors had recently indicated that the Commission 'must raise the level of market surveillance to cope with globalization and digitization, improving its ability to proactively detect violations'.



The head of competition and vice-president of the Commission, Margrethe Vestager, had indicated on several occasions that it is necessary to make certain data accessible to companies that use the platforms and also that large players must not favor their own services to the detriment of those of other competitors.



Obligation to cooperate

"The Internet cannot remain a Far West", the Commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, repeated several times, who anticipated the contents of the regulations with the Vice-President of the Commission Vestager.



The Digital Services Act (Dsa) will oblige all online service intermediaries to cooperate with regulatory authorities


to remove illegal content.

Large platforms will need to have sufficient moderators to act quickly in case of notification and will be audited by the Commission every six months.

Each Member State must designate a national authority responsible for regulating social networks: The authorities will be part of a permanent council at European level to ensure proper compliance with the laws in force.



E-commerce platforms are often accused of lack of control over their retailers, carrying out scams, others selling counterfeit products and other products that violate European standards.



The DSA will require online sellers to "check the identity of retailers before admitting them to their platform," Vestager said.

Another important issue, the larger players will have to provide the Brussels authorities with "more information on how their algorithms work".

Vestager added that "they will have to tell us how they decide on the information and products they recommend to us, which ones are hidden with the possibility of influencing decisions. They will have to tell us who pays which of the ads we see and why we are targeted advertising."



A reference, it is emphasized, to anti-competitive practices such as those of which the Antirust EU accuses Google, for having set up its own search engine to make its offers more visible than those of competitors.



"The people who control the data, control the algorithms and thus the new economy," Alexandre de Streel, digital expert and professor of law at the University of Namur, explained to AFP. "If you establish competition on the basis of equality , the solution is to share the data ".



Brussels also wants to prohibit "systemic platforms" from profiting from corporate customer data to compete with them, such as Amazon, which is accused of doing so with the same retailers hosted by its platform.

Furthermore, they will no longer be able to use the data collected by the various services to profile users against their will.



Commissioner Breton has promised "dissuasive sanctions": the DSA provides for fines that can reach up to 6% of the turnover of the digital service provider and, "as a last resort", the regulator will be able to ban the service in Europe.

The DMA provides for fines of up to 10% of turnover and the possibility of 'breaking up' the company.