There has been a change in schedule at the European Commission with regard to online platforms. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) have been postponed until 9 December. The Democracy Action Plan is still going forward on 2 December. This was confirmed by Commissioner and Vice-President Věra Jourová at the European Business Summit on Tuesday, 17 November.
The commissioner for values and transparency indicated that this new timetable was purely pragmatic and aimed to ease the Commission departments’ workload. “And it will give more visibility to my Democracy Action Plan, which delights me, as you can imagine”, she declared with a smile during a panel dedicated to platform regulation.
Three initiatives in detail
In her view, the purpose of these three initiatives is to form “Europe’s digital soul”, which would inspire the rest of the world, as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) did in the past.
The Digital Services Act aims to improve businesses’ ability to operate across Europe in a responsible manner. “We’ll want to [propose] a clear set of due diligence obligations for online platforms, including notice and action procedures for illegal content [and] redress mechanisms”, declared the Czech, stressing the word “illegal”. She also spoke of “accountability measures” and obligations to cooperate with public authorities as well as greater transparency with regard to content moderation, advertising, and algorithms.
The Digital Markets Act will regulate and prohibit certain behaviours of systemic platforms (ex ante rules by means of a blacklist). Ms Jourová explained that, in view of ongoing developments, it will also introduce an investigation procedure.
The Democracy Action Plan will contain three sections, respectively devoted to protecting the integrity of elections, enhancing joint work on disinformation, and promoting independent journalism. The vice-president acknowledged that this would only be a non-legislative initiative, but she promised that it would nevertheless precede regulatory proposals in 2021.
Latest lobbying attempts
Also participating in this discussion were representatives from the tech industry (CCIA and The App Association), France’s electronic communications regulator (Arcep), and the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament (Frenchwoman Stéphanie Yon-Courtin).
On behalf of CCIA, Christian Borggreen warned of unintended consequences of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), such as prohibiting a practice that serves competition.
Arcep Chairman Sébastien Soriano also said that he was very “concerned” about the DMA. “The problem is the concentration of power. Yet, in the blacklist, I see no hope of redistributing this power. We need decentralisation; we need a proactive agenda like the one we had 20 years ago in telecommunications”, he stated. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)