European Commission Publishes Digital Fairness Fitness Check Findings

The European Commission has published the findings of its Digital Fairness Fitness Check, which probed into the current EU consumer protection laws to see if they are fit to protect consumers from harm. The commission learned that online companies have been unfairly influencing customers by various suspicious tactics.

Improvements Are Needed

The Fitness Check covered three core directives. These included the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, and the Unfair Contract Terms Directive. According to the results, the current rules remain both “relevant and necessary to ensure a high level of consumer protection and effective functioning of the Digital Single Market.”

A key discovery confirmed that customers behave differently online than they do offline. The commission also noted that technological developments and increased tracking of customers’ behavior have made businesses better at persuading people to make purchases.

The commission noted that these findings highlighted the need for rules that are better adapted to deal with the specific harmful practices and challenges that consumers face online.

Customers Sometimes Lose Control

The three Directives provided some regulatory certainty. Yet, some consumers still feel that they sometimes lose control of their online experience due to a variety of practices. These include dark patterns in online interfaces, addictive design in digital services such as gambling-like features in video games, personalized targeted advertising, subscription managing difficulties and commercial practices leveraging influencers.

In addition, the commission learned that some customers are losing at least €7.9 billion a year to various harmful practices. The cost for businesses to comply with EU consumer law, meanwhile, stands at €737 million per year.

Another problem undermining the effectiveness of the EU consumer protection measures is the disparity between member states’ national laws.

The Fitness Check concluded that additional action is needed in order to tackle harmful practices and shield players from harm. While the check did not establish recommendations on the commission’s future actions, it underscored certain aspects that need to be improved.

In a mission letter addressed to the commissioner-designate for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law, EU Commission President von der Leyen referred to a Digital Fairness Act that would tackle unethical commercial techniques and practices and the addictive design of digital products.

Gambling-like content in video games has been a major point of contention in recent years. While their mechanisms would sometimes bear similarities to gambling, some have argued that they cannot be classified as such because they are not played for money.