Digital Fairness Act: Right Diagnosis, wrong perscription
Brussels, 13 November – eu travel tech, representing Europe’s leading travel technology companies, called today on the European Parliament and Council to make the Digital Fairness Act (DFA) about better consumer protection enforcement, not another layer of overlapping rules. The Commission presented its DFA proposal on 11 November as part of its Consumer Package, alongside a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation.
The Commission is right to focus on the uneven application of consumer rules across the EU. But it risks responding to an enforcement problem with unnecessary new legislation. Europe does not suffer from a shortage of consumer rules. Rather, too often, the existing rules are applied inconsistently, too slowly or not effectively enough.
“Europe doesn’t have a rulebook problem, it has an enforcement problem,” said Emmanuel Mounier, Secretary General of eu travel tech. “The Commission is right to target inconsistent enforcement across Europe, but another layer of legislation will not fix that on its own. The Digital Fairness Act must be targeted, proportionate and coherent with the rules already on the books.”
Not a regulatory vacuum
Dark patterns, price transparency and subscription practices are not regulatory blind spots. They are already covered, to varying degrees, by at least five EU laws: the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD), the Consumer Rights Directive (CRD), the Digital Services Act (DSA), the GDPR and the AI Act. The priority should be to interpret and enforce this framework consistently across all 27 Member States.
The DFA would turn the UCPD into a directly applicable Regulation, keeping much of its substance while adding new obligations and prohibited practices. A single Regulation could help end diverging national interpretations. But the additional rules risk creating overlap with existing EU law, uncertainty over how different requirements interact and unnecessary compliance costs for businesses operating across borders. New obligations should be introduced only where a clear regulatory gap and demonstrable consumer harm have been identified.
Target real harm, protect what works for consumers
eu travel tech supports protecting consumers from genuinely harmful online practices. As the proposal moves to the European Parliament and Council, lawmakers should keep the DFA targeted, proportionate and legally clear. It should preserve legitimate commercial practices that serve consumers, including demand-driven pricing, accurate availability information and beneficial personalisation, rather than catching them in broad or insufficiently precise prohibitions.
“We urge the European Parliament and Council to deliver a framework that strengthens consumer protection without creating unnecessary barriers to competition and innovation,” Mounier concluded.
