Sanctions in the Digital Services Act

 

Sanctions in the Digital Services Act

by Fulvio Sarzana of S.Ippolito, Lawyer, Sarzana Law Firm and Associates

A brief mention of the sanctions apparatus of the Digital Services Act (DSA) seems appropriate.

Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19
October 2022, on a single market for digital services and amending the
Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Regulation), also known as DSA, is
entered into force on 16 November 2022, and sets common rules on the provision of
intermediary services in the internal market, together with transparency obligations,
information, management of complaints and reports 15
.

Chapter IV of the DSA establishes the rules on implementation, cooperation,
sanctions and enforcement, which also deal, from art. 52 onwards, with the profiles
“pathological” behavior of intermediaries.
Generally speaking, it must be said that the DSA presents, also from a sanctioning point of view

and enforcement, application problems similar to those encountered
I'm in the DMA.

The reference is to the coexistence of regulations already in place in the Union which could in some way concern the scope of application of the DSA, despite the "classic" style clause which establishes that the application of the DSA must not take place to the detriment of existing regulations, such as those protecting
consumer and product safety, GDPR and ePrivacy, intellectual property protection, audiovisual media services and child pornography.

Sanctions in the Digital Services Act

The penalties in the DSA are closely linked to the providers' due diligence obligations, which in turn are differentiated by level, type, and above all, quantitative characteristics: the more these increase, the more stringent the obligations required by the Digital Services Act become (in addition to the increased severity of the penalties).

The sanctioning system is therefore, as regards the illicit activities of the platforms,
small and medium size, reversed compared to the DMA, with an approach
“state-centric”, rather than “euro-centric”, which has already been followed several times by the legislator
European, which however, according to some authors, could lead to an unjustified

extension of the timeframes for harmonising Community legislation, which should, by necessity, be united in addressing the irregularities feared by the DSA