After a first round of negotiations the day before, negotiators from the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission met on the evening of Wednesday 13 February in the hope of reaching a provisional agreement on the draft regulation on unfair practices between online sales platforms and their business users; a meeting that is supposed to be conclusive.
This draft regulation imposes transparency obligations on online purchasing platforms that act as intermediaries between a company and its customer. It also attacks, to a lesser extent, general purpose search engines.
Shortly before entering the negotiating room, the shadow rapporteur, Philippe Juvin (EPP, France), suggested that some elements of the black list of unfair practices requested by the European Parliament could be included in the final compromise. According to our sources, the co-legislators would consider reviving, in articles and other wording, unfair practices relating to: - retroactive contractual clauses that are detrimental; - the use of confidential information of the user company after the expiry of the contract; - the continuation of clauses or practices that hinder or discourage a business user's contractual right to terminate his relationship with a supplier.
As a compromise, the European Parliament could abandon its request to include operating services within the scope of the regulation. For its part, the Council of the European Union would be prepared to consider a general non-discrimination clause on vertical integration, but not a total ban as requested by Parliament in Article 6.2.a. This non-discrimination clause would apply to all types of platforms that offer their own service.
The trilogue was supposed to end at 10:00pm. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)