Joint call for an ambitious Digital Fairness Act to better protect people online

Joint call for an ambitious Digital Fairness Act to better protect people online

In view of World Consumer Rights Day this Sunday, 15 March, we are writing to express our strong support for the European Commission’s intention to develop a Digital Fairness Act (DFA) and call for it to deliver meaningful protection in the digital environment for people of all ages, including vulnerable groups such as minors, seniors and persons with disabilities.

The DFA must update horizontal EU consumer law, in particular by clarifying its requirements, to make sure it delivers online. Clearer rules will strengthen Europe’s competitiveness by increasing legal certainty for all market participants, contributing to fair competition and reducing harm done online.

Digital technologies have become essential to everyday life. But the digital environment has also enabled the proliferation of commercial practices that not only violate fundamental rights, but also undermine consumer autonomy, cause tangible financial, mental, and physical harm, fuel overconsumption, distort competition and threaten the democratic discourse. These practices are not isolated incidents but have become part of business models built on asymmetric information and behavioural manipulation.

During the last mandate, the EU adopted important legislation to better protect people online, for instance the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act. However, these laws are limited in scope and content and are therefore not enough to address all the unfair and harmful practices that companies use online across many sectors.

Horizontal EU consumer law is a safety net for consumers that complements sector-specific EU legislation, but its enforcement needs to be improved. Therefore, we also strongly support the European Commission’s intention to strengthen the instruments for EU consumer law enforcement through a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation. However, this will not be enough as enforcement can only be as good as the quality of the law enforced. The Digital Fairness Fitness Check4 has confirmed that EU consumer law has legal gaps and that there is a high degree of legal uncertainty about how it applies in the digital environment.

This is unsurprising, given that the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD), as one of the key instruments of horizontal EU consumer law, was adopted more than 20 years ago and hence does not sufficiently address unfair practices online that are widely used today.

Against this background, we call upon the European Commission to use the upcoming DFA for an ambitious update of horizontal EU consumer law to better protect people online against any type of unfair practices.

With around 70% of respondents calling for new binding rules on dark patterns, addictive design, unfair personalisation, influencer marketing and unfair practices in video games, the results of the DFA public consultation6 clearly show that there is a lot of support for the upcoming DFA, way beyond the list of signatories.

The Council of the EU has recently acknowledged8 that consumer protection and competitiveness are mutually reinforcing and that consumer trust underpins the proper functioning of the Single Market. Furthermore, the Council of the EU has recognised the need to address regulatory gaps to further strengthen the protection of consumers, including minors, in the digital environment and has welcomed the European Commission’s intension to propose a DFA.

The DFA offers an opportunity to show that ‘simplification’ should not become a synonym for deregulation. Updating EU consumer law can both increase legal certainty and ensure that digital markets respect people’s rights while supporting more sustainable economic models.

We stand ready to further support the European Commission in preparing this important initiative.

Cosigned by:

• 86 organisations
• 106 individual health care professionals

READ THE FULL STATEMENT AND LIST OF SIGNATORIES BELOW