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Shaping Europe’s Digital Future – the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act

Following up on the new, more human-centric and sustainable vision for the European Union’s digital future announced in March 2021 by the European Commission, the European Parliament is currently having important debates and votes on this subject.
At the end of November 2021, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee of the European Parliament (EP), finally approved its position on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), after lengthy discussions. The EP voted on the amendments presented by the competent Committee on this important dossier in its Plenary sitting yesterday (results of the vote cast yesterday are available here, pp. 13-15).

In the meantime, the IMCO Committee voted yesterday on the draft report on the Digital Services Act (DSA), a parallel initiative to the DMA, which aims at updating rules governing digital services, and brings innovation and legal certainty for strengthening the Digital Single Market. The adopted draft report contained more than 3.700 compromise amendments (including opinions) and it is foreseen to be submitted to the EP Plenary in January 2022.

The Council has already adopted a general approach to both the DMA and the DSA in late November, this means the next Council Presidency (France, starting January 2022) has now the mandate to further discuss this with the EP and national governments in the next year.

The Secretariat is following closely both dossiers, as well as the other related initiatives in the field of the wider EU Digital strategy and will keep members informed on interesting new developments.