The European Commission found that its three directive on digital fairness are helping consumers with a robust regulatory frame, but many still fear that they are not in control of their online life.
This is one of the key findings of the Digital Fairness Fitness Check that the Commission released on October 3. The Fairness Check investigated three directives on digital customers care, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, and the Unfair Contract Terms Directive. The survey is part of the Commission’s effort to evaluate the consumer situation and check whether they want to intervene with new legislation on the topic and ensure equal fairness to consumers around the bloc.
A general issue noted in the Fitness Check is the fragmented state of national legislations across member states. Inefficient enforcement, legal uncertainty and regulatory fragmentation undermines EU-wide efforts for digital fairness.
Some of the other areas that customers still feel in danger of exploitation, the survey indicated managing digital subscriptions, personalized targeted ads and addictive designs to keep users on a service.
The cumulative loss of money for consumers due to these constraints have been calculated into €7.9 billion per year, with costs for business to comply with EU regulations not surpassing €737 million per year.
The Fitness Check is not listing recommendations to move forward, but it is more of a photograph into the current situation. The Commission will have to move forward with its own proposals to act upon the issues underlined by the survey. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote to the Commissioner-designate for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law that the EU needs to work on “a Digital Fairness Act to tackle unethical techniques and commercial practices related to dark patterns, marketing by social media influencers, the addictive design of digital products and online profiling especially when consumer vulnerabilities are exploited for commercial purposes.”
