Digital Services Act

Key points

The EESC:

• supports efforts to prevent the internal market being fragmented and calls for a clear statement regarding the exhaustive nature of the Digital Services Act;
• calls on the Commission and the Member States to define a reasonable schedule for setting up the discussion and inclusive public consultation and implementing the regulation;
• welcomes the greater transparency for recommender systems and advertising, ensuring that consumers get only the advertising they want;
• notes that there are many shortcomings with regard to the country of origin principle and calls for the careful consideration of alternative methods, such as the country of destination principle, especially in tax, labour and consumer issues;
• calls for an adequate framework to be developed to allow companies to assert the fairness, reliability and security of their artificial intelligence systems;
• draws attention to the huge task of achieving proper coordination between all relevant instruments and initiatives in the context of a wider regulatory approach to the platform economy;
• will keep paying particular attention to taxation, data governance, employment status, working conditions and consumer protection, as they are significant factors for the, sometimes unfair, competition in the digital economies.

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat.