The Digital Services Act and beyond: an eFood perspective
- PDF / 296,328 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 92 Downloads / 215 Views
Journal of Consumer Protection and Food Safety Journal fu¨r Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit
EDITORIAL
The Digital Services Act and beyond: an eFood perspective Dennis Raschke1 Received: 7 October 2020 / Accepted: 28 October 2020 / Published online: 17 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
With the upcoming Digital Services Act1 the European Commission is striving for modernisation of the eCommerce directive—the foundation of EU legislation on digital services—and launched a respective public consultation.2 Currently, the eCommerce directive provides the basis for the regulation of digital services in the EU, which has not been changed in the last 20 years. The directive is based on ideas and concepts that reflect the online reality of the late twentieth century. No doubt that eCommerce has changed dramatically since then—developing from a niche market to a widely accepted trade channel, with new stakeholders and developments emerging constantly. In the late 1990s, only few online shops existed, and consumers access to the internet was very limited and not very flexible. Today, large worldwide operating platforms dominate the market, and consumers are able to purchase online twenty-four seven via mobile devices using electronic payment services, something that was unimaginable 20 years ago.
1 Chances and challenges However, the new opportunities that the modern eCommerce market provides to consumers and businesses come along with certain risks and challenges. Offers can be placed worldwide and products can be shipped from outside the EU directly to consumers in the Member States, often circumventing official controls, e.g., at border control posts or customs. Large market places and other service providers play a key role in facilitating these online sales and therefore can provide crucial pieces to the eCommerce trace-back puzzle. Therefore, the question of responsibility of these service providers—whose influence and contribution to online sales is beyond question—has to * Dennis Raschke [email protected] 1
G@ZIELT ‑ Control of Food, Feed, Cosmetics, Consumer Goods and Tobacco Products Traded on the Internet, Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), Mauerstr. 39‑42, 10117 Berlin, Germany
be rethought entirely. Moreover, according to the eCommerce directive, other important eCommerce players like payment service providers (PSPs) currently do not fall under the definition of “service providers”. PSPs play a key role not only when it comes to official information requests, e.g. when following the money flow, but also as far as aiding competent authorities to perform anonymous sampling and respective payment methods are concerned. Therefore, it is about time that—with the Digital Services Act—EU legislation in this field catches up with these developments, since authorities need to be equipped with appropriate tools for being able to perform risk-based controls and protect consumers.
2 The question of liability and responsibility According to Art. 14 of Directive 2000/3
Data Loading...
