Focus on European Commission’s proposal for a Digital Services Act
- Articles and memoranda
- Posted 24.02.2021
On 15 December 2020, the European Commission published the Digital Services Act Package, which includes two significant proposals:
- a proposal for a Regulation on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act or “DSA”) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (the “e-Commerce Directive”),
- a proposal for a Regulation on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act).
These proposals are expected to affect various types of providers of digital services (such as marketplaces, social media platforms, content-sharing platforms) in the European Union (the “EU”) and to create a safer and more open digital space while further developing the European Single Market for digital services.
The choice of a regulation that will be directly applicable in all Member States (instead of a directive) shall guarantee the implementation of uniform rights and obligations for users and providers throughout the EU and improve legal certainty. It is specified that these proposals are “Texts with EEA relevance”.
The proposal for a Digital Services Act (the “DSA Proposal”) clarifies and upgrades the responsibilities and the accountability of the digital service providers with respect to any illegal content they intermediate or disseminate without wiping out past principles. The DSA Proposal sets out several layers of obligations, which shall apply to the digital service providers depending on the type of services they provide in the digital space.
If you want to receive more information on the following topics with respect to the DSA Proposal, please read our full article here.
What is the context?
Entities targeted by the DSA Proposal
What would be the key obligations imposed by the DSA Proposal?
Implementation of strengthened supervisory framework
New sanctions for non-compliance
What’s next?
As for the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), it will impose obligations for large online platforms (e.g. online search engines, video-sharing platform services, cloud computing services) that behave as “gatekeepers”, such status being more fully defined in the DMA. The DMA aims to refrain from anti-competitive and unfair practices and ensure that gatekeepers themselves act in a way that guarantees an open online environment.
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