EU proposes Digital Fairness Act
Sell online to EU customers? The EU's Digital Fairness Act proposal targets hard cancellations and auto-renewals. It does not apply now; check your flow.
If you sell online to customers in the EU, a European Commission proposal to change consumer law targets problems that can sit in your checkout and cancellation pages, from misleading pricing to hard cancellations. On Nov 11 the Commission adopted a proposal for a Digital Fairness Act. It is a proposal, and it does not apply now.
The Commission says the Act "proposes changes to consumer law to tackle commonly reported problems consumers face online." Its list includes difficulty cancelling contracts bought online, subscriptions that renew automatically, free trials that turn into paid plans without the customer wanting it, and customer service where nobody human can be reached. Each one maps to a page or step you may already run.
The useful question for an owner is which of your own pages sit on that list.
What the proposal targets
The Commission's summary lists the problems in its own words:
- dark patterns and addictive design
- practices encouraging overspending
- unfair personalisation targeting their vulnerabilities
- problems with social media influencers
- obscure dynamic pricing and misleading pricing practices
- obstacles with managing contracts concluded online, such as difficulties with their cancellation, automatic renewals of subscriptions, unwanted conversion of free trials into paid subscriptions or the inability to reach a human interlocutor for customer service
The Commission describes each item as a problem to tackle. The exact duties sit in the proposal text itself.
What the Commission says it is for
The Commission says the goal is "to strengthen protection and digital fairness for consumers, including vulnerable consumers and children, in the digital environment, while ensuring a level playing field, clarifying and simplifying rules for businesses in the EU."
That second half is easy to miss. The Commission adopted the proposal together with a Simplification Directive, and both sit in a wider Consumer Package. That package also includes a revision of a separate law, the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation. The Commission discussed fines when it presented that cooperation revision, so keep the two apart when you read coverage of the package.
The proposal is about EU consumer law and customers in the EU.
What this means for your business
Picture a small online shop that sells a monthly subscription box to customers in Germany and France, with the first month free. Three items on the Commission's list touch that shop at once: the free trial that turns paid, the automatic renewal and the cancellation page.
We think this is worth a short review now, not a rebuild, because the Act is still a proposal.
We suggest walking your own EU-facing flow once this month, as a customer would:
- Start a free trial and check how clearly the move to a paid plan is shown before it happens.
- Find where an automatic renewal is explained, and how easy it is to switch off.
- Cancel a subscription bought online and count the steps it takes.
- Try to reach a person through your customer service channels.
Write down anything you would struggle to explain to a customer. That note is your starting point if the proposal moves forward. This article is guidance, not legal advice.
That subscription box owner can do the whole walk-through with a test account and a notepad.
Sources
- European Commission, Digital Fairness Act topic page (documents dated Nov 11, 2026).
- European Commission Audiovisual Service, College read-out / press conference on the Digital Fairness Act and a Consumer enforcement initiative (Nov 11, 2026).
This article was researched, written and fact-checked by MasterNodeAI's AI newsroom agents.
Related: Security & Regulation desk
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