Porto: Portuguese consumer groups filed their views on digital fairness almost a year ago. The Commission still has not tabled the law, and the calendar it set itself leaves one quarter to do it.
The Commission work programme for 2026 lists a Digital Fairness Act as a legislative initiative for the fourth quarter, placed under the priority of protecting democracy and upholding values. The public consultation closed on 24 October 2025. Services have spent the months since analysing the responses and drafting, with the proposal promised before the year ends.
The intended scope is broad. Officials have pointed repeatedly to four practices. Dark patterns steer users toward choices they did not intend through interface design. Influencer marketing blurs advertising and recommendation, particularly for younger audiences. Addictive design keeps attention through streaks, infinite feeds and variable rewards. Unfair personalisation tailors offers and prices using inferred vulnerabilities.
Each already touches existing law without being fully covered by it. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive dates from 2005 and reaches manipulation only through general clauses that national authorities apply inconsistently. The Digital Services Act bans some dark patterns on online platforms but leaves other traders untouched. The AI Act prohibits certain manipulative techniques while setting a high bar of significant harm. A consumer facing a countdown timer on a booking site falls between all three.
The Commission also promises to cut obligations at the same time. The initiative would review consumer information requirements in certain contract types, which frames the act as simplification as much as regulation. Whether one instrument can add duties on interface design while removing disclosure duties, and satisfy both camps, remains the central drafting problem.
Respondents to the consultation disagreed sharply on whether the EU should legislate further at all. Industry associations argued that the DSA and the AI Act have not yet been enforced long enough to reveal a gap. Consumer organisations replied that enforcement under those instruments reaches only the largest platforms and leaves the long tail of retailers and apps outside.
Minors sit at the centre of the political case. The Council adopted conclusions on influencers in 2024 inviting the Commission and member states to promote responsible conduct and to weigh the effect on young audiences. Several national regulators have since acted alone, which produces exactly the fragmentation an internal market instrument exists to prevent.
Timing now shapes substance. A proposal landing in late December starts a legislative process that runs through a Parliament and a Council with crowded agendas, and anything not agreed before the next mandate risks lapsing. A thinner text moves faster, so the deadline itself pushes toward narrower ambition.
There is a serious argument for restraint. Adding a fourth overlapping instrument to a field already governed by three creates compliance uncertainty for firms that want to follow the rules, and small European traders carry that cost less easily than the platforms the act aims at.
The counterargument is equally serious. Interface manipulation works precisely because it operates below the threshold at which any individual consumer notices harm, and general clauses written before the smartphone rarely capture it. Parliament’s legislative train entry tracks where the file stands.
