The draft report by Tiemo Wölken (S&D, Germany) on the Digital Services Act was given a relatively positive reception in the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) on Thursday 7 May. Even the European Commission, represented by Prabhat Agarwal, welcomed the document produced by the rapporteur. The deadline for tabling amendments is 25 May.
During this exchange, Mr Wölken confirmed he would like to see this new act take the form of a European regulation rather than a directive.
Dispute settlement bodies are debated
The future regulation on digital services, promised by the Commission by the end of the year, is of great interest to the European Parliament, which had quickly stepped into the battle (see EUROPE 12477/12).
Tiemo Wölken's draft report, drawn up on behalf of the JURI Committee, focuses in particular on “the adaptation of commercial and civil law rules for commercial entities operating online”. This explains, the rapporteur justified, why the report does not deal more with market places.
The other European Parliament political groups reacted mainly to the rapporteur's proposal to set up independent dispute settlement bodies financed by a fund that would be sustained by content providers with significant market power.
In this regard, Karen Melchior (Renew Europe, Denmark) and Marion Waslmann (EPP, Germany) questioned the risk of conflict of interest. The rapporteur replied that this was a different structure from Facebook's ethics committee. “They will be independent structures, because the people who will judge will not be chosen by the platform. The payments will not go directly to the body, but to the Member States, who will then set up the body in question”, Tiemo Wölken explained. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)