A common approach is needed on EU online platform regulation - however challenging - because the Digital Services Act (DSA) leaves room for interpretation, Maria Donde, Director of International Affairs at Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán said in Brussels on Thursday.
“There is a different approach by the various platform regulators: it comes down to different conceptual ideas on how the DSA should be implemented,” Donde told an event organised by think tank CERRE.
“Not everything is said in the DSA – and learning that and understanding that to find common approaches is a challenge,” she added.
The DSA – which started applying to all platforms in February last year – obliges companies to comply with transparency and election integrity requirements.
It is up to each EU member state to appoint an authority – a Digital Services Coordinator – which is the first point of contact for platforms.
The Irish Coimisiún na Meán is at the forefront of DSA enforcement, as Dublin is home to 15 of the 25 Very Large Online Platforms – those with more than 45 million monthly users in the EU – as well as a large number of below threshold providers.
Criticism
Donde said it is particularly important to speak with one voice “compared to what is happening in the rest of the world”.
The Republican US government that took office in January has criticised what it describes as the harmful impact of the EU’s online platforms rules, and technology legislation in general.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Committee told an audience at Mobile World Congress earlier this month, that the EU’s Digital Services Act is "an attack on free speech".
Meta’s new global policy chief, Joel Kaplan, last month said Europe’s regulatory action against US tech companies, is “pushing the continent to the sidelines”.
The European Commission has started several probes under the DSA, including into X, TikTok and Temu, all of them are still pending. Fines for possible breaches can be up to 6% of the company’s worldwide annual turnover.
