STUDY EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service Authors: Niombo Lomba and Tatjana Evas European Added Value Unit PE 654.180 – October 2020 ENDigital services act European added value assessment
EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service Digital services act European added value assessment This European added value assessment (EAVA) analyses the potential added value that could be achieved by enhancing the current EU regulatory framework on digital services. The scope of the EAVA includes an analysis of the e-Commerce Directive and more broadly of commercial and civil law rules applicable to commercial entities operating online. Based on the comparative legal analysis, the assessment identifies 22 main gaps and risks that currently affect provision of online services in the EU and proposes policy solutions to address these shortcomings. In order to assess the European added value (EAV) quantitatively and qualitatively, the gaps and policy solutions identified are clustered into four policy packages: consumer protection measures, action on content management and curation, measures to facilitate competition in online platform ecosystems, and actions to enhance enforcement and legal coherence. The results of the macroeconomic-modelling, for two of the four policy packages, suggests that taking common EU action to enhance consumer protection and common e-commerce rules, as well as to create a framework for content management and curation that guarantees business competitiveness and protection of rights and freedoms, would potentially add at least €76 billion to EU gross domestic product between 2020 and 2030. This quantitative estimate provides a lower boundary for direct economic impacts, and does not quantify or monetise the EAV of qualitative criteria, such as consumer protection, coherence of the legal system or fundamental rights. Therefore, the overall European added value of improving the functioning of the single market and adapting commercial and civil law rules for commercial entities operating online, as indicated by qualitative analysis, would be considerably higher.
AUTHORS Niombo Lomba and Dr Tatjana Evas (Chapter 3), European Added Value Unit, DG EPRS. This paper has been drawn up by the European Added Value Unit of the Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value, within the Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS) of the Secretariat of the European Parliament. The first annexed research paper on a quantitative assessment of the European added value of the digital services act has been written by Carlota Tarin, Juan Pablo Villar, Julio Blázquez Soria (Iclaves S.L.) Cornelia Suta, Unnada Chewpreecha, Bence Kiss-Dobronyi, Anthony Barker (Cambridge Econometrics BV). The second annexed research paper on the Digital services act: Adapting commercial and civil law rules for commercial entities operating...
