Analysis: Many EU states slip up when applying the platform rules
Digital Services Coordinators are to enforce the DSA at national level. Civil rights activists point to "considerable challenges" in several countries.
The German Digital Services Coordinator is based at the Federal Network Agency.
(Image: Tobias Arhelger/Shutterstock.com)
According to an investigation by the civil rights organization Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties), the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) is not running smoothly in some EU countries. There are "significant challenges for the independence and effectiveness of these important regulatory authorities", particularly with regard to the Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs).
According to the DSA, big tech platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TiktTok, YouTube and X must limit the "systemic risks" of their services and open up the black box of their algorithms. This is monitored by the EU Commission together with the DSC, which is responsible for enforcing the requirements of the Platform Act at national level. In Germany, the DSC was set up at the Federal Network Agency.
DSCs and independence
In a recently published study, Liberties examined DSA compliance in the EU member states of Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, Romania and the Czech Republic. The authors focused on the role of DSCs and their independence. As the deadline for appointing coordinators expired on February 17, 2024, the time is right for an initial summary after one year.
This is not entirely positive. DSCs are officially recognized as independent within the legal framework of most of the countries surveyed, the researchers write. However, their financial independence is not necessarily guaranteed. In addition, most of the countries had introduced insufficient protective measures to limit political influence.
There is also a high potential influence of the private sector on the coordinators, according to the analysis. For example, the seamless transfer of civil servants between positions in the public and private sector is hardly prevented ("revolving door effect"). Furthermore, the mechanisms for public accountability and transparency of DSCs are hardly uniform.
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Concerns about the German solution too
In Germany, the Federal Network Agency has acted as the central platform regulator for Germany since the Digital Services Act (DDG) came into force in mid-May –, i.e. after a delay –. The authors state that this explicitly recognizes the independence of the DSC.
The legislator has also stipulated that the coordinator must be able to act autonomously and free from direct or indirect influence. However, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Federal Network Agency was not sufficiently independent of the Federal Ministry of Economics in 2021. Although changes have been made to remedy these shortcomings, the DSC remains embedded in an authority "that is administratively supervised by the government".
According to the study, Romania and Croatia have the strongest legal frameworks. The Czech Republic comes off worst: There, the DSC is indeed an independent administrative authority. However, its independence is not explicitly recognized as a guiding value at the highest legal level.
(vbr)
