Online harms - the EU Parliament adopts landmark legislation

On 5 July 2022 the European Parliament adopted the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act. While it must still be formally adopted by the Council (expected in September 2022) and then published in the Official Journal, its contents are now largely finalised.

The DSA marks the biggest shake up to the rules for online intermediary liability in 20 years and reflects the EU’s ambitious approach to the regulation of the digital economy. The new and wide-ranging obligations, particularly the obligations on very large platforms to assess and mitigate risks on their platform, are likely to shape the global approach to content regulation in this emerging area of law.

The DSA has moved at speed, with political agreement reached only 18 months after it was proposed in December 2020. It is likely to start applying to large social media platforms and search engines as early as next year, with the remaining provisions applying in 2024.

The DSA imposes tiered obligations so that the more complex and larger the service, the greater the obligations. These obligations are described in the table here.

We explore the key elements of the DSA and how this fits with in the broader context of regulation of the digital economy in this blog post: The DSA: A new era for online harms and intermediary liability (linklaters.com)