The impact of the Digital Services Act (DSA) on the potential liability of online marketplaces on the basis of EU consumer law

Abstract

The goal is to present the new challenges of E-Commerce and how the European Union Legislation adapted to this new form of commerce, using mainly the Digital Acts: Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. The first however, won’t be studied in this paper. This subject will allow to show that the law is in every aspect of life and that even if it takes time, legislation is necessary when dealing with such life changing innovations. It is true that for users it does not seem new, it is not. However, the law needs more time to adjust and learn every day on how to adapt to those new challenges – which is especially the case in E-commerce because technology just develops so quickly. The studies done will also focus on the protection of consumers – how is the current legislation on the subject applicable to E-Commerce, how did the legislation improve to face the new challenges of E-commerce, when consumers are dealing between them when there is no professional involved? All of these questions will of course be answered in this dissertation. The consumer is considered to be one of the weakest type of legal subject to be able to contract, the need for protection has always been really present in European Union Legislation on this topic and continues to be. The Digital Acts keep going in this direction alongside the Directives from 2019 about implementing all this consumer protection rules into E-commerce and online platforms. Finally, this paper will end by focusing on the grounds for platforms’ liability – for their own behavior and the businesses’ behaviors. The idea being to understand how the platform can be liable, how it can avoid liability and how, why the consumers need so much protection in the online world.