Author: Dr. Maja Kambovska, PhD

Brief overview 

On 15 December 2020 the European Commission published a package of legislative proposals entitled “Digital Services Package”. This package is one of the key initiatives of this European Commission. It consists of two legislative proposals – a proposal for a Regulation on a single market for digital services (Digital Services Act), and a proposal for a Regulation for contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act). The choice of Reglation as a legal instrument indicates that the Commission wants to regulate this area in a unified way, without the possibility of differing rules at national level.

The new rules will affect the way different parties provide and use digital services in the EU. They will apply to big online platforms and to other providers of digital services. They will also apply to platforms‘ business users, as well as to consumers. 

The Digital Services Act will introduce legally binding rules for digital services that connect consumers to markets for goods, services or content. This regulation builds on several existing EU measures, in particular the E-Commerce Directive, the Platforms – to – business Regulation (P2B Regulation), and the measures arising from the New Deal on Consumers. The proposal aims to address a number of issues, including dealing with illegal or potentially harmful content online especially by providing greater transparency, liability regime for digital services for third party content with stronger obligations than those from the E-Commerce Directive (especially in relation to the notice and takedown), obligations to vet suppliers as a means to strengthen transparency and legality in e-commerce, protection of consumers‘ rights. Additional obligations are provided for “very large platforms”, defined as platforms with over 45 million monthly active users in the EU. This proposal will apply not only to information society service providers – digital services such as social networks, online marketplaces, or online platforms, but also to business users of such services.

The Digital Markets Act contains measures to address certain types of behavior of platforms that have the characteristics of “gatekeepers” in the single market. This regulation builds on EU competition rules. What characterises a platform as a “gatekeeper” is if it is of a certain size defined by the proposal, it acts as a gateway between business users and consumers, and it has entrenched and durable market position. The criteria that must be met in order for a platform to fall under this Act are stricter than the threshold set out in the Digital Services Act. In principle, only large “core platform services” such as search engines, social networks, certain messaging services, operating systems and online intermediation services would be covered by this Act. The proposal introduces prohibitions on certain unfair practices and obligations for the platforms to which it applies, such as the prohibition of discrimination in favor of their own services, obligation to provide interoperability with the platform, obligation to give to the business users access to data generated by the business users‘ activities on the platform. The European Commission has authority to conduct market investigations in order to identify new services or new unfair practices.

Next steps 

The next step in the legislative process is the consideration of both proposals by the European Parliament and the Member States in the Council. Once these two institutions adopt their positions on each of the two proposals, all three institutions will have to reach a final compromise in a “trialogue” process. Given the importance and complexity of the matter, this process can be expected to take around two years until agreement is reached on the final text.

Relevance of this package for the EU integration process of the Republic of North Macedonia

Given that the digital agenda is one of the top political priorities of the EU, these policies have been highlighted as a priority in all strategic documents related to the European integration of the Western Balkan countries. The digital agenda was identified as one of the six flagship initiatives in the Strategy for the Western Balkans from 6 February 2018. Next, a separate Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans was adopted on 25 June 2018, by which the six countries committed to take certain measures in this area. As the last document in this series, on 6 October 2020 the Economic and Investment Plan for the Western Balkans was adopted, in which the European Commission clearly states several digital policies as a priority, and points out that every country in the region should use the EU digital strategy as a guiding principle in the digital transformation of their economies and societies.

What will be the impact of these measures on North Macedonia? 

Once the Regulations are formally adopted, they will be included in the National Program for Adoption of the EU acquis, and the relevant Macedonian laws and other regulations will have be aligned with these rules. Although this process will start in a few years, the entities that will be affected by the application of these rules should be aware of them already. These are primarily the business sectors active in the digital sphere – companies from the ICT sector that has a leading role in the Macedonian economy, including ISPs, e-commerce traders, domestic online marketplaces, social networks. Consumers‘ associations and civil society organizations should also take interest in terms of monitoring the compliance with transparency and other legal obligations that will arise from this package.

Additional information, including the texts of the proposals, is available on the website of the European Commission: The Digital Services Act package | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

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