The European Tech Alliance (EUTA) and its members care deeply about their consumers and understand that they are at the heart of their success. In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, companies are constantly innovating and adapting to meet the changing needs of their customers.
Where EU rules are needed, policymakers should focus on concrete problems that consumers are facing. Rules should address problems with specific business models instead of a one-size-fits-all approach or dictating specific product designs. It is essential to extend the same commercial rights that must be granted to online businesses as to brick-and-mortar ones. Furthermore, any proposed solutions should be proportional to the identified problems.
The European Tech Alliance (EUTA) answered the European Commission public consultation on digital fairness. Enforcement of existing rules remain the key to ensure fairness online. Europe’s tech future depends on coherence, not duplication, of rules that are enforced effectively, rather than endlessly rewritten.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored some of the most debated issues in EU digital policy: dark patterns, addictive design, digital advertising, and subscription cancellations. These discussions often lead to calls for new legislation. But one message has been clear throughout this series: Europe doesn’t need more rules; it needs to make the existing ones work.
The European Commission is considering new rules in the name of “digital fairness” to ensure cancelling a digital subscription is as easy as signing up.
The principle is sound, and one that European tech companies fully support. But the idea that this requires new legislation is misplaced. The issue is not a lack of regulation, but a lack of legal clarity and enforcement.
Advertising powers the digital economy. It allows businesses of all sizes to reach the right audiences and helps keep online content and services accessible to users. Yet, ongoing regulatory debates risk undermining this model, particularly by restricting targeted advertising. This push comes despite an already dense EU and national regulatory framework. Europe doesn’t need more laws, it needs better enforcement of those already in place.
As digital services become central to everyday life, ensuring consumer well-being online is at the front and centre of European tech companies’ interest. Protecting users goes hand in hand with preserving user choice, encouraging innovation, and supporting the diversity of digital services that make the internet thrive. The key for Europe lies not in more rules, but in better enforcement: making sure existing protections deliver in practice, support responsible innovation, and uphold an internet that remains open, fair, and user-friendly.
The European Union (EU) has taken significant steps to tackle dark patterns – frequently understood as manipulative design tricks that nudge users into choices they didn’t intend, often for the benefit of service providers. At least 13 pieces of legislation already cover these practices.
The European Union (EU) is considering new rules in the name of “digital fairness”. But what’s needed isn’t more legislation, it’s better enforcement of the rules we already have.
While creating a fair and transparent digital environment is a goal we all share, piling on new rules is not the solution. The real challenge lies in enforcing and clarifying the protections that already exist.
The European Tech Alliance (EUTA) welcomes the European Commission’s Communication, “A Comprehensive EU Toolbox for Safe and Sustainable E-Commerce,” as a positive step towards a fairer and more transparent digital economy. This initiative aims to ensure fair competition between EU-based companies and their non-EU counterparts.
All EU and local rules – consumer protection, product safety, internal market, environmental, and market surveillance laws – should be applied consistently to all companies operating in Europe offering products or services to EU citizens, regardless of their origin.
BRUSSELS, 7 November, 2023 – The European Tech Alliance (EUTA) co-hosted with MEP Alex Agius Saliba (S&D, MT) a workshop on “Building Ethical Digital Interfaces: How to protect consumers without hindering innovation”, in the European Parliament. The event brought together policymakers, digital rights experts, academics, and representatives from both consumer
As the European Commission is assessing European Union (EU) consumer law on digital fairness, the European Tech Alliance (EUTA) very respectfully shares some recommendations through the European Commission’s consultation on EU consumer law on digital fairness. We invite the European Commission to: Apply targeted rules to companies interacting with EU
With six other trade associations, the EUTA invites the Member States to properly assess the impact of a withdrawal button for all distance contracts concluded by means of an online interface. The right framework to look at such a proposal would be the European Commission’s fitness check of the current