The General Approach of the Council on the Digital Services Act

On last 25 November, the Council (Competitiveness) meeting approved its negotiating position (general approach text) on the DSA. Far from turning the Commission’s proposal upside down, the Council’s amendments clarify and expand certain (limited) aspects of the proposal, but do not fundamentally alter the content and structure of the original draft provisions. The most significant changes, as explained below, relate to competences under the supervision and enforcement chapter, where the European Commission is granted exclusive oversight powers vis à vis dominant platforms. Search engines are included in the Council’s general approach to the DSA with new specific references in the caching safe harbor provision and as potential Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSE) in the dominant platform category.

The present blogpost provides a brief overview of the most salient amendments in the Council’s DSA general approach text. As the European Parliament IMCO Committee is scheduled to adopt its final report on the DSA by mid-December, the positions of the co-legislators will soon be negotiated upon in the trilogue meetings scheduled to take place in 2022, after the plenary vote in the European Parliament planned for early 2022.