Two Tiers: Responsibilities of Platforms and Competition Rules for Gatekeeper Platforms

Digital Services Act (DSA)

On 15 Dec 2020, the European Commission has released a draft of the Digital Services Act, the most significant reform of European Internet regulations in two decades. The proposal, which will modernize the backbone of the EU’s Internet legislation—the e-Commerce Directive—sets out new responsibilities and rules for how Facebook, Amazon, and other companies that host content handle and make decisions about billions of users’ posts, comments, messages, photos, and videos.

We have published a first assessment of the Digital Services Act Proposal: ANALYSIS

Digital Markets Act

The Commission also presented a new standard for large platforms that act as gatekeepers in an attempt to create a fairer and more competitive market for online platforms in the EU. These platforms will have to comply with a set of anti-monopoly obligations, including rules on "preferential ranking" of platforms' own offerings in their search results. For example, if you search for an address, Google will have to show you the best map preview for that address, even if that's not Google Maps. Other rules aim at fostering data portability options for users.

We have published a first assessment of the Digital Markets Act Proposal: ANALYSIS

There is space for improvement in both legislative proposals and we will work with the EU Parliament and the Council, which must agree on a text for it to become law, to make sure that the EU fixes what is broken and puts users back in control.