Towards an EU Consumer Law Fit for the Digital Age

Designing a Smarter Digital Fairness Act

The European Commission is preparing a proposal for a Digital Fairness Act (DFA), expected later in the year under the 2030 Consumer Agenda. The challenge: to modernise European Union consumer law for the digital age while balancing effective consumer protection with competitiveness and regulatory simplification.

Building on the Digital Fairness Fitness Check, the debate now focuses on how to tackle potential harmful practices – from dark patterns and addictive design to unfair personalisation and the protection of minors – without adding unnecessary complexity or regulatory overlap.

In the CERRE report ‘Towards an EU Consumer Law Fit for the Digital Age’, Christoph Busch, Amelia Fletcher, and Michèle Ledger develop a structured and proportionate framework to guide the design of the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act.

Framework for action

1. Design the DFA on sound regulatory principles

The DFA should focus on genuine regulatory gaps and ensure smooth interaction with existing instruments, particularly the Digital Services Act. It should be grounded in three core principles: risk-based regulation (differentiating by business model and risk profile); design-based regulation (making consumer rights easy to exercise through interface design); and ecosystem regulation (clarifying responsibilities across digital value chains). ‘Fairness by design’ should guide interpretation rather than create unnecessary new layers of obligations.

2. Protect consumers – especially minors – through targeted intervention

Where clear harms arise, the DFA should intervene in a proportionate and risk-based manner. This includes improving fairness in digital subscriptions (for example, easy cancellation), introducing targeted rules on harmful addictive design features, and ensuring stronger, coherent protection of minors – particularly in relation to profiling-based advertising and age assurance. Measures should remain workable for small and medium-sized enterprises and avoid regulatory fragmentation.

3. Address harmful personalisation while preserving benefits

Personalisation might generate value but might also exploit vulnerabilities. The DFA should introduce proportionate safeguards, including a simple opt-out mechanism for personalised advertising, consistency with existing prohibitions on sensitive-data-based and minors’ advertising, and a ban on practices that exploit specific or situational vulnerabilities.

The research was presented on 25 February 2026 at the Digital Platforms Summit 2026.