The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) (see EUROPE 12623/1) are still under discussion in the European Parliament. After being questioned on the subject by the Committees on the Internal Market and Economic Affairs at the end of February (see EUROPE 12664/11), the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager was heard, on Monday 12 April, by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).
The latter emphasised in particular the respect of platform users, and in particular their freedom of expression. The coordinators of S&D, ID, Greens/EFA, ECR and The Left particularly insisted on the issue of online content moderation, detailing their expectations and concerns in this regard.
Socialist Coordinator Marina Kaljurand (Estonia) regretted that the DSA, as presented by the Commission, “allows the removal of content using automated tools without the author being informed”.
“You know that every automated tool has its limits”, added Cornelia Ernst (The Left, Germany). “There is some content we don't like, but it is not illegal”, she insisted.
Before her, the ID and ECR groups had also spoken out against the arbitrary deletion of content by platforms and Ms Kaljurand had asked for details of the measures envisaged to prevent legal content from being deleted.
How does the Commission intend to “fight against illegal content while defending freedom of expression?”, Cornelia Ernst summarised, arguing that the institution should consider “manual intervention by a competent body”.
Risk assessment
The Vice-President tried to reassure on this point. “Not only must [platforms] put in place a mechanism to guarantee that if content has been removed, you will be alerted and can challenge it, but they must also ensure a risk assessment of their operation”, Ms Vestager said.
However, she did not specify that this obligation to carry out an assessment of “any systemic risk” at least once a year applied only to “very large platforms”.
Concerns about the treatment of users were also not limited to the DSA. Greens/EFA coordinator Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, who spoke mainly on the DMA issue, said her group regretted that the text focused more on platforms and companies than on end users.
“We would like to see a better balance”, she stressed, lamenting, for example, that the proposal limits the potential use of “legal complaint mechanisms” to “professional users” and does not extend to end users.
Role of ‘gatekeepers’
EPP coordinator Tom Vandenkendelaere (Belgium) and Renew Europe coordinator Ondřej Kovařík (Czech Republic) also focused on the DMA, in particular on the central issue of “gatekeepers”, the online platforms that dominate the sector, which the Commission intends to bring into line.
Mr Vandenkendelaere echoed the Dutch government's considerations - published in a note in mid-February - calling to “bear in mind” that platforms can acquire gatekeeper status by combining different services. The MEP asked the Vice-President whether the Commission would indeed take this into account when identifying gatekeepers.
Ms Vestager said that this could be examined and that the Commission would in any case continue to “apply with vigilance the competition law”.
Mr Kovařík focused on Article 33 of the Act, which provides that the Commission may open an investigation into the identification of a platform as a gatekeeper if three or more Member States consider this justified.
Would it be possible to extend the text so that a company can request the launch of an investigation?, questioned the MEP. “We didn't think about it”, the Commission Vice-President admitted, “but if we were aware that some companies were being bullied by other companies, we would probably open an investigation of our own”, she said. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)