The draft regulation to promote fairness and transparency for companies using online intermediation services was generally welcomed by the Competitiveness Council on Monday 28 May.
This was the first official reaction from member states since the proposal for a regulation was put forward one month ago. The text is based on a gradual approach: first of all, it introduces transparency and recourse measures based to a large extent on self-regulation. In parallel, it sets up a group of experts – the observatory on the online platform economy – whose recommendations could give rise to more coercive measures (see EUROPE 12010).
During a round-the-table discussion, ministers hailed the progressive approach chosen by the European Commission. Hungary’s vice minister of state for European judicial cooperation, Krisztian Kecsmar, said: “The proposal seems to leave sufficient room for the platforms – it prescribes results but does not bind the hands of the platforms. It does not give one single way of complying with the rules”.
Other delegations have already expressed reticence regarding a second, more regulatory stage after the observatory’s comments. Claudia Dörr-Voss, Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology of Germany, said: “It is important, on one hand, to increase transparency and to have special conciliation procedures and, on the other, to follow the development of platforms. It will be difficult for us to envisage a third scenario, with more binding legislative measures, mainly because this would require a detailed analysis of cost and profit”.
SME: Several delegations also called for small businesses to be safeguarded, after the fashion of the Netherlands and Hungary. Lithuania, for its part, called for start ups and micro-businesses with under 10 employees to be excluded from the regulation’s scope.
In response, Commission Vice-President Andrus Ansip underlined that the regulation excluded small businesses from the obligation of setting up an internal system for dealing with complaints.
The future rotating presidency of the EU Council, Austria, closed the debate by indicating that it hoped to reach a political agreement of principle (“general approach”) on this text at the Competitiveness Council in November 2018. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)