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EU Parliament in Strasbourg: »New Digital Basic Law«
Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth / dpa
The planned EU law for more justice and security on the Internet is a decisive step further.
On Thursday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg agreed on a common position for the forthcoming negotiations with the EU states on the law for digital services.
Consumers should be better protected online against disinformation, hate speech and counterfeit products.
In addition, it should be regulated how large companies such as Google or Facebook should deal with illegal content or hate speech.
The following should apply: the larger the platform, the stricter the rules.
"As the new basic digital law for Europe, the Digital Services Act will put Internet legislation on a completely new footing," said SPD MP Tiemo Wölken.
At the instigation of the Greens, Social Democrats and Left, the EU Parliament is now in favor of completely banning personalized advertising based on sensitive personal data such as sexual orientation, ethnic origin or political opinion within the framework of the law.
The Conservatives wanted to allow this to continue.
"This is a groundbreaking success," said Green MP Alexandra Geese. This is probably the first time there will be a clear ban on platforms creating user profiles based on the most sensitive data and placing advertising based on them. From a consumer point of view, it is also pleasing that, according to Parliament's position, it should not take longer in future to reject cookies than to agree to them.
In addition, the EU Parliament wants to oblige large platforms to be more transparent in the fight against disinformation.
They should give authorities and researchers access to their data and algorithms, which they use to determine what users see next in their news feed.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) praised the progress made in the legislative project.
"The platforms will not be allowed to arbitrarily delete posts in the future," he said.
At the same time, the law makes the platforms responsible.
"They must not accept it if their services are misused to distribute illegal content."
France wants to finish negotiating the digital package in the first half of the year
Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party in the European Parliament, said: "In the forthcoming trilogue negotiations we will have to vehemently defend our successes in protecting our privacy and freedom of expression online against surveillance and industry interests, such as the exclusion of upload filter obligations, the protection of encryption and the prohibition of national identification obligations and data retention requirements.«
The other part of the digital package proposed by the EU Commission in December 2020, the law on digital markets, is primarily intended to limit the market power of corporations such as Alphabet (Google) or Meta (Facebook).
Stricter regulation is the declared goal of France, which currently holds the EU Council Presidency.
According to Paris, the two laws should be finalized in the first half of 2022.