Position Paper Archives - Page 5 of 7

EuroISPA shares its views on the Digital Services Act

01/04/2021/in 2021, News, Position Paper

Brussels, 31 March 2021 – EuroISPA publishes its views on the Digital Services Act, reflecting the views of the European Internet industry.

EuroISPA is the voice of the European Internet industry, representing over 2,000 Internet Service Providers across Europe, all along the Internet value chain. As we have been engaging in discussions on intermediary liability and content moderation for over 20 years, EuroISPA is proud to share with the EU institutions and interested stakeholders its position on the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Overall, EuroISPA supports the DSA and its objectives to protect consumers and their fundamental rights online, to foster transparency and accountability of online platforms, and to favour innovation, growth, and competitiveness within the Single Market. In particular, we welcome the European Commission’s decision to adopt an evolutionary approach maintaining the key principles of the E-Commerce Directive, such as the limited exemption from secondary liability, while creating a due diligence framework for intermediary services.

At the same time, EuroISPA believes that several changes would be needed in order to achieve a regulation that truly fosters innovation and growth in the Digital Single Market. Therefore, EuroISPA put forward recommendations on every chapter of the DSA, spanning from the definition of online platforms, to intermediary liability provisions, from the due diligence rules, to the overall governance structure.

You can download our position below:

2103-EuroISPA-DSA-position Download

NEWS: ePrivacy Regulation – EuroISPA welcomes progress but full alignment with GDPR remains crucial

12/02/2021/in 2021, News, Position Paper

Brussels, 10 February 2021 – EuroISPA welcomes the conclusion of the discussions in Council on the ePrivacy Regulation. After over four years of complex deliberations, we are now looking forward to the start of the negotiations with the European Parliament and the European Commission. The current text is the first step towards greater legal clarity and interoperability between the ePrivacy Regulation and the GDPR regimes. This clarity is needed for businesses in Europe to plan, operate, and innovate as well as to allow for the commercial support of the free and open internet. We welcome the introduction of further compatible processing and the performance of a contract as legal grounds for metadata processing. We believe that these must be preserved during the future negotiations if we want to have a coherent and harmonised EU data framework which ensures legal certainty for European businesses. However, we consider that further work on the text is still necessary.

We regret that the Council agreed text reinstated a previous version of the “compliance with a legal obligation”, so restricting even further that legal ground and diverging from the GDPR.

In view of the negotiations, we would like to reiterate the key areas which are worth clarifying:

Material scope: We believe that to ensure consistency in the EU acquis, it would be necessary to further define the interplay with the GDPR and clarify when the GDPR stops applying and the ePrivacy starts.
B2B processing: In the business-to-business (B2B) context, providers of electronic communications services generally will not have a relationship with the end-users of their services. Clarification is therefore needed that, in such circumstances, consent can be provided by the enterprise customer.
Enforcement: There is a need to ensure that supervisory authorities, and enforcement and cooperation mechanisms are consistent with the GDPR standards. We need to avoid a situation where providers could be subject to oversight by multiple supervisory authorities for the same activities across the EU.
M2M processing: The application to machine-to-machine (M2M) communications must be limited in scope to high risk instances, instead of applying to any kind of such communications, so as to limit the risk of making a wide range of critical enterprise processes highly burdensome.
Privacy-preserving technologies: The industry strives to keep developing privacy-protective data processing alternatives (i.e. on-device machine learning, new aggregation techniques, and other privacy-enhancing advances). The ePrivacy Regulation should not restrict innovative and privacy-protective new approaches that are designed to benefit individuals and strengthen their privacy online.

We look forward to the beginning of the negotiations and we remain willing technical partners to the institutions in defending the much-needed flexibility on the legal basis and the interoperability with the GDPR.

NEWS: EuroISPA co-signs letter on Terrorist Content Online Regulation

23/09/2020/in 2020, News, Position Paper, Press

This week, EuroISPA co-signed a letter to representatives of the Council of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission on the fourth trilogue on the Proposal for a Regulation on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content online. We look forward to seeing the outcome of this trilogue, which we hope will take into account the items noted in this letter, including: clarifying the definition of terrorist content, empowering competent authorities to deal with this content effectively, ensuring that over-blocking does not take place, prohibiting general monitoring obligations for hosting service providers and protecting user data.

Read the letter here.

EuroISPA reponds to DSA public consultation

09/09/2020/in 2020, News, Position Paper

After over two years of hard work and collaboration, EuroISPA is happy to announce that we have submitted our response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the Digital Services Act. As an association we strive to find a balance between diverse needs, establishing a framework that stimulates EU businesses whilst protecting citizens online.

The Digital Services Act is comprehensive in scope and its impact on the ISP sector will be wide-ranging, as it will review the 20 year old E-Commerce Directive, which has proven essential for finding a balanced liability regime. As such, it has been a priority at EuroISPA to enable ongoing discussions on the DSA over the last two years, gathering insights from our members and coming to decisions that take into account the needs of players across the ISP sector and across the continent.

Submitting our response is an important milestone for our work on this issue. Indeed, these are the exciting moments of EU-level policy activities, where we see the long discussions and hard work come to fruition, and where we see the needs and recommendations of industry experts being submitted straight to the hands of policy makers.

NEWS: EuroISPA signs letter to strengthen the fundamental principles of the E-Commerce Directive in new Digital Services Act, along with other industry players

01/07/2020/in 2020, News, Position Paper

June 2020

Spearheaded by Danish Entrepreneurs, Allied for Startups, and DSA4Startups, and signed by industry players including EuroISPA, the letter highlights that it is the opportune moment to re-examine the role of online platforms in the European economy and society, and to update the 20-year-old E-Commerce Directive through the upcoming review of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The letter notes that the principles present in the E-Commerce Directive are crucial for the sector, as the directive “enshrines an important balance between the intermediary’s responsibilities and the user’s right to expression and information”. These principles include the limited liability regime, the prohibition of general monitoring obligation, and the country of origin principle. EuroISPA and the other signatories of this letter view that these principles should not be discounted in future discussions on the DSA, as they represent the key tenets of the European platform economy.

The letter also underlines the need to take into account the growth of the industry in any regulatory changes made to the E-Commerce Directive, and emphasises the need for a multi-stakeholder approach to discussions. As the time for reviewing the DSA approaches, the letter’s signatories request that the new regulation take into account learnings gleaned from the COVID-19 crisis, be nimble and future-focused in its approach, and that it be clear and proportional, in order not to have unintended consequences for smaller actors in the space.

EuroISPA represents over 2,300 ISPs of all sizes across Europe and is an advocate for the needs of the wider internet industry; it is therefore particularly keen to support this, and similar activities. The association is now focusing on the open public consultation on the DSA, which will be crucial to bringing the already strong E-Commerce Directive up to speed with the current economic climate. The association aims to ensure that the industry priorities are highlighted to policymakers, in order to formulate a new balanced legal framework.

Read the letter in full here.

EuroISPA publishes points of critique on the German Draft Act amending the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG)

04/06/2020/in 2020, News, Position Paper

EuroISPA recently published its points of critique on the German Draft Act amending the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) on the European Commission’s portal for notifications of national laws: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/tris/en/search/?trisaction=search.detail&year=2020&num=174.

Having closely followed the ongoing discussions on the NetzDG on combatting hate speech online, EuroISPA voiced its concerns on certain details of the proposal which pose multiple risks, particularly in the context of the association’s work on EU initiatives on intermediary liability. EuroISPA fears an increased risk of fragmentation of the European internal market, with online platforms operating in different European Member States having to put in place specific compliance mechanisms for each individual market, thus making it virtually impossible for new entrants.

EuroISPA supports legislative consistency across the Digital Single Market, and therefore encouraged the German government to wait before further amending the NetzDG. This is particularly important in the context of the open public consultation on the Digital Services Act and how online platforms should be regulated in the future, which is open until 8^th September 2020.

Brexit: EuroISPA calls on decision-makers to swiftly agree on trade deal covering digital services

29/01/2020/in 2020, Position Paper

Brussels, 29 January 2020 – EuroISPA calls on decision-makers to swiftly agree on a comprehensive deal covering digital services and ensuring data adequacy, as the United Kingdom withdraws from the European Union.

Dr Maximilian Schubert, President of EuroISPA, declared: “As the Brexit talks continue to shape the future of the relationship between the EU and the UK, EuroISPA urges both sides to ensure that the Internet will remain a key connecting factor for Europe. The Internet has been a major force for economic growth and business innovation, enhancing productivity and efficiency, and bringing consumers new and more affordable goods and services. In the EU this has been underpinned by the common regulatory environment of the Digital Single Market, which reduces regulatory barriers between countries just as the Internet reduces technical barriers. When designing the future relationship, we urge both sides to avoid erecting new barriers that would inhibit this growth, and instead look for each side to learn from the other as we create our digital future.”

Going forward, EuroISPA calls on the UK and the EU to swiftly negotiate and agree upon a trade deal which will redefine their relationship. Such an agreement should ensure the highest degree of harmonisation possible in terms of digital policy, in order to ensure that European ISPs can offer services to European citizens, regardless of whether they live in the EU or in the UK. In particular, data adequacy should be preserved, in order to secure the free flow of data between the two entities.

Stakeholders from the UK have made extremely important contributions to the development of innovation and pro-competitive EU ICT policy for many years. EuroISPA and its member associations are committed to ensuring that the borderless character of the Internet remains intact, and will work to develop innovation-friendly policy that benefits both the UK and the EU Member States.

Internet associations call for a balanced e-Evidence legislation

06/01/2020/in 2020, Position Paper

Brussels, 06 January 2019: EuroISPA has co-signed a statement calling the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission to strike the right balance between expanding law enforcement’s ability to gather electronic evidence and protecting fundamental rights in the new e-Evidence legislation.

In the joint statement, 11 associations representing the European Internet Industry and users, welcome the European Parliament’s efforts to lead the way in preparations for constructive negotiations with the Council and Commission and ask for further efforts to improve the Parliament’s final report.

The amendments to MEP Birgit Sippel’s proposal will be discussed in the the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee of the European Parliament in January.

You can read the full statement here.

EuroISPA presents its Principles for the Future of the EU Intermediary Liability Framework

13/11/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 13 November 2019: EuroISPA has published its guiding principles for policy development in the context of the possible revision of the current EU intermediary liability framework.

As the discussions around the reopening of the E-Commerce Directive intensify in Brussels and the new Commission’s President, Ursula von der Leyen, sets the Digital Services Act as priority in the Commission’s political agenda, EuroISPA puts forward a set of guiding principles for a sensible policy development in the field of intermediary liability.

Maximilian Schubert, President of EuroISPA, said: “The upcoming revision of the e-commerce directive is an unprecedented opportunity for the EU to develop a forward-looking legislation that embraces innovation and allows the EU Internet industry to remain competitive in the global digital markets. EuroISPA’s members look forward to working with EU policymakers to ensure that legal certainty, trust and confidence in the Digital Single Market are preserved and that the EU legislative framework allows the very diverse European Internet ecosystem to continue unfolding its full potential for growth and jobs in Europe.”

Malcolm Hutty, Chair of the Intermediary Liability Committee of EuroISPA commented: “The existing EU intermediary liability ethos has allowed Europe’s digital economy to thrive and thus, EuroISPA’s Intermediary Liability Committee has worked to put together a consensus position that reflects on the fundamental aspects to consider when revising the rulebook for digital services. This consensus is been translated into a set of 17 principles that put liability protections as the key structural element of all digital services.”

With these principles, EuroISPA’s members propose a business oriented and innovation-friendly approach that safeguards the rights of users and service providers.

You can download the paper here.

About EuroISPA: EuroISPA is the world’s largest association of Internet Services Providers (ISPs), representing over 2,500 ISPs across the EU and EFTA countries. EuroISPA is recognised as the voice of the EU ISP industry, reflecting the views of ISPs of all sizes from across its member base.

61 industry associations call for reassessment of ePrivacy proposal

08/10/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 8 October 2019: 61 European trade associations, including EuroISPA, urged Member States to ask the European Commission to reconsider its proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation in an open letter.

The draft ePrivacy Regulation was proposed in January 2017. However, several questions about the essential aspects of the proposal remain unanswered. The current ePrivacy proposal has generated great uncertainty across a wide range of industries, whose efforts to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) risk being jeopardised by an incoherent ePrivacy text.

Therefore, while the signatories fully support the objectives of the proposal, they ask for a fresh new attempt to reassess the proposal. The arrival of a new European Commission in November and European Parliament represents an opportunity for a fresh start in the debate, which can only happen if the proposal is fundamentally reassessed in light of the many outstanding concerns, the new legislative landscape and technology development.

You can read the full letter here.

Contact details

EuroISPA