Commissioner for Internet Market draws out EU’s plan to enforce the Digital Services Act package

The Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) have been adopted by the European Parliament with remarkable speed, but concerns about their enforcement after the adoption of the European Council remain. The DMA is expected to demand an increase in the EU executive’s resources due to the centralised nature of regulations. The DSA requires less from the EU executives as only the largest platforms will be centrally regulated by the Commission. The European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton elucidated the Commission’s plan for enforcement.

  • On the organisational front, dedicated teams under the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) would tackle three respective aspects:
    • The societal issue team would focus on risk assessments and audits.
    • The technical team would handle the interoperability issues or the development of technical standards to support the new rules.
    • The economic team would cover the DMA-regulated unfair trading practices, such as data access or the so-called “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND)” terms.
  • On the personnel front, Breton expects to upskill the staff in data science and algorithmic understanding while equipping the dedicated teams above with over 100 full-time staff by 2024.
  • On the financial front, Breton specifies that the DSA requires Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and very large search engines to pay supervisory fees to cover the costs of supervision and enforcement tasks of the rules.

Source: Euractiv