Intermediary Liability in the EU Digital Common Market – from the E-Commerce Directive to the Digital Services Act

Abstract

The European Union is committed to its transition towards climate neutrality and digital leadership, and synergies to be created in the EU Digital Common Market provide ample opportunities to achieve these goals: While from an economic perspective, the maximisation of market opportunities and the creation of a globally competitive digital economy are desirable, the transition must be technologically and ecologically sustainable and additionally compatible with established EU consumer protection standards. The latter is especially relevant in terms of the liability of online intermediaries for digital services, taking into account the rapid transformation of the digital architecture and the emergence of new major digital platforms for sales and services. This chapter, which is based on the Bachelor thesis handed in by Sander Sagar and supervised by Thomas Hoffmann for graduation at TalTech Law School, Tallinn University of Technology, intends to elucidate how the transition towards a common digital market is legally established in practice using as an example the adoption of the intermediaries’ liability regime to a digitalized environment from the E-Commerce Directive to the Digital Services Act.