Online Platforms: How to Adapt Regulatory Framework to the Digital Age?

Platforms, understood as a method of organising digital markets that allows two groups of users (suppliers and customers) to meet, are one of the pillars of the digital market. They facilitate its development, providing adequate solutions to the needs of the sharing, collaborative, data, and P2P economies.

Platforms that often operate as marketplaces have a triangle structure where users must first conclude a contract with the platform to be subsequently able to conclude contracts between themselves. The status of platform user is very often difficult to define, as platforms allow a rapid development of the pursued activities, which pushes the users outside the realm of consumer.

These two characteristics make platforms difficult to fit with the EU market and consumer regulations.

The question as to whether to pursue legislative measures for the platform economy at the EU level is a political one. Some member states have already introduced national legislation, while others oppose the idea of introducing EU regulation.

If the legislative agenda is pursued, it can be done either as a platform-specific act, or as a 'light touch' legislation, i.e. by amending the existing EU legal schemes (the most appropriate place: the market regulation directiv

The areas that offer the best impact while being the least interventionist are: clarifying the platform’s status, clarifying the users’ status and, regulating reputational systems.