It's over with the Wild West, there's a new sheriff in town.

This is what was said when the EU Commission announced its plans for new digital legislation two years ago.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton were particularly open-minded and boastful.

There will be a basic law for the digital world, everything that is permitted and forbidden in the analog sphere will find its equivalent on the Internet, the times of the law of the stronger - i.e. the digital giants like Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple or Twitter – be over for good.

Michael Hanfeld

responsible editor for feuilleton online and "media".

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In view of the Russian war of aggression and annihilation in Ukraine, the EU Commission has now given up appearances with – in a figurative sense – smoking guns.

They would also be inappropriate.

Anyone who, like the EU, has done and is continuing to do so against Russia with very good reasons, imposes sanctions that also affect media freedom, is well advised to formulate soberly.

The laws want what is right

And the EU's two internet laws – the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) – also want the right thing.

The DMA should finally ensure fair competition and put the economic oligopoly of the digital giants in their place, as EPP MP Andreas Schwab, who was responsible for the law, wrote at this point (FAZ from April 1).

The law is as good as through, it only has to be confirmed once again by the Council of the EU States and the European Parliament.

The last deliberations of the "Digital Services Act" are coming up these days.

The DSA does not deal with what is happening on the market on the Internet, but with the societal, political and social implications of the Internet.

The law is a blessing simply because it replaces the twenty-year-old EU e-commerce directive, which exempts network companies from responsibility for what happens on their platforms.

Silicon Valley corporations have benefited from this policy, which gives them a clean bill of health, in court cases up until the very recent past.

Now things are different: counterfeit products, disinformation and false information, hate speech, discrimination, violations of data protection and the privacy of users - the DSA takes action against this.

The law holds platform companies accountable for the content they transport and forces them to be transparent about their deletion decisions and the direction of their recommendation algorithms.

Everything is fine, everything is fine, we could say at this point and point out that we already have much (actually everything) of what the EU's "Digital Services Act" is supposed to bring in national law.

But here comes the catch: EU law collides with national laws, it claims priority and threatens to undermine hard-won standards.

This applies above all to the implementation of the law.

According to the will of the EU Commission, they themselves, a “European Digital Services Board” and 27 national “Digital Services Coordinators” should be responsible for this.

What does that mean specifically?

A cross-border dispute arises, the national digital coordinator presents it to the board, and in the end – the EU Commission decides.

That led to bureaucratic chaos and would be very useful for the digital corporations.

Does anyone in the EU have any idea what's going on online?

In Germany alone, the state media authorities responsible for us have identified more than 20,000 legal violations over the course of a year, a fifth of them across the EU border.

These would approach the new control structure – mind you from just one EU country.

In terms of content, this is also faced with the dilemma that what is forbidden in another EU state can be permitted – for example showing symbols of National Socialism.

And finally, the EU Commission's media supervision is not "remote from the state".

However, "remote from the state" is a must for media supervision in our country.

There is still time to ensure that the DSA takes into account the existing national media regulators - i.e. specifically names those responsible - and does not vice versa destroy them.

The federal government allegedly wants to intervene in this regard in the EU negotiations on the DSA this Friday.

May her success be granted.