Europe has one of the world’s strongest consumer protection rulebooks. The problem is not what is written down. It is that the rules are not enforced consistently across the Single Market. European tech companies, meanwhile, face overlapping obligations that hold back innovation and growth. The Digital Fairness Act should fix enforcement and clarify how existing rules fit together, not pile a new layer on top.
As the European Commission prepares its Digital Fairness Act (DFA) for end 2026, the European Tech Alliance (EUTA) shares Commissioner McGrath’s ambition for a DFA that is “both a pro-consumer and pro-business initiative” and must “not duplicate or fragment the existing rulebook”.
The European Tech Alliance, representing 39 tech companies founded and headquartered in Europe, presents its vision for the future of consumer protection in Europe, centred around three key pillars: Enforce, Clarify, Simplify.
Uneven application across the Single Market defines the reality on the ground, not a lack of rules. Identical practices can trigger enforcement action in one country and none in another, leaving consumers with inconsistent protection and businesses with legal uncertainty.
A website design considered illegal by one national authority can be perfectly lawful in the country next door. For consumers, that means your protection depends on your postcode. For European tech companies, it means a design change in Lisbon can land you in court in Prague.
✔ Revise the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation, with clearer procedures and faster timelines for coordinated cross-border action.
✔ Connect national enforcement authorities, Data Protection Authorities, Digital Services Coordinators and Competition authorities, so that the same interpretation of EU law applies from one Member State to the next.
Consistent enforcement is what turns the Single Market from a legal promise into a daily reality for consumers and businesses.
European tech companies face overlapping obligations stemming from siloed approaches to consumer protection, data protection, platforms and AI.
A single interface change can trigger parallel assessments under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the AI Act, each with its own definitions, authorities and remedies. The result: legal uncertainty for businesses and confusion for consumers about which authority to turn to.
✔ Map and clarify how existing rules interact, starting with the UCPD, the GDPR, the DSA, the DMA and the AI Act.
✔ Complete the Digital Fitness Check, the Commission’s ongoing evaluation of overlaps across the digital rulebook, before introducing new obligations under the DFA.
✖ Avoid layering a new instrument on top of unresolved overlaps, which would deepen the very fragmentation the DFA is meant to address.
Clarifying the existing framework is a precondition for any meaningful addition to it. Anything else risks turning the DFA into another layer of the patchwork.
Simplification means cutting overlapping obligations and clarifying how rules fit together, without lowering the protection consumers enjoy. It does not mean banning legitimate, consumer-valued practices or imposing rigid design templates that freeze innovation.
Take dynamic pricing. Too Good To Go, a Danish EUTA member, uses a concept similar to dynamic pricing to stimulate sale of surplus food helping shops and consumers prevent food waste. A broadly drafted ban on dynamic pricing would catch the mechanism that enables increased food waste reduction by lowering the price on surplus food as it approaches its expiration date.
Or take auto-play: treating every auto-play function as harmful would catch a short product video on an e-commerce site showing a model wearing a jacket, the kind of feature that helps shoppers judge fit before they buy. Principle-based rules built on demonstrable harm avoid that kind of collateral damage. Rigid design templates do not.
✔ Keep a principle-based approach, anchored in demonstrable consumer harm rather than presumed risk. This is the approach that has underpinned EU consumer law for decades, and it remains the most reliable guide for proportionate intervention.
✔ Cut overlapping transparency obligations, so businesses report once and consumers get clearer, not louder, information.
✖ Resist prescriptive one-size-fits-all design mandates that deter innovation and freeze user experiences into a single regulatory template.
A simpler rulebook is one where protection is targeted at real harms, and businesses can focus on building products that consumers value.
The Digital Fairness Act can be the moment Europe moves from accumulating overlapping rules to making them work together. To get there, the European Commission should:
✅ Enforce existing consumer rules consistently across all Member States, through a revised CPC Regulation and reinforced cooperation between national authorities.
✅ Clarify how the UCPD, GDPR, DSA, DMA and AI Act interact, and complete the Digital Fitness Check before legislating again.
✅ Simplify by removing redundant obligations and keeping consumer protection anchored in demonstrable harm.
❌ Avoid new layers of regulation that duplicate or fragment the existing rulebook, or that replace principles with rigid design requirements.
Strong consumer protection, simplification and European competitiveness are complementary, not competing, goals. EUTA stands ready to work with the Commission, Parliament and Council to make the DFA the moment Europe’s rulebook starts to deliver for consumers and businesses.