Two French Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) said on Wednesday (28 June) that they want to kickstart a European regulation of online commercial influencers on the blueprint of legislation recently passed in France.
Centrist Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Renew) and left-wing Aurore Lalucq (S&D) are seeking a legislative proposal to gain better regulatory control over the internet’s “far west” and more effectively protect consumers from commercial malpractices.
Both MEPs are particularly interested in exploring ways to harmonise regulatory practices around the commercial promotion of services as wide as crypto-assets and cosmetic surgery.
At the same time, the lawmakers clarified that the intent is to build on the Digital Services Act (DSA), an EU law regulating responsibilities for online players, which mandates platforms to put in place mechanisms to signal and act upon influencer malpractices.
Earlier this month, the French Parliament adopted a national law to clarify what influencers cannot promote, to formalise the intrinsic relationship between companies, influencers and their agents, and ensure platforms have an obligation to flag and report illegal accounts.
The bill’s two authors, French MPs Arthur Delaporte and Stéphane Vojetta, spoke at an event at the European Parliament on Wednesday to present the detail of their work.
The French bill, they said, implements stark limitations over the promotion of crypto assets, deemed ‘high-risk’ investments. Influencers are also banned from promoting any information about plastic surgery.
French legislators, in a transpartisan deal carried by Delaporte and Vojetta, also set out a general definition of commercial influencing, which entails people who, in return for payment, “use their reputation among their audience to communicate [online] content designed to promote, directly or indirectly, goods, services or any cause whatsoever”.
The absence of legislation made “the audience prisoner of a one-sided, often misleading narrative, so we ought to protect consumers, especially the younger ones”, Vojetta said.
Sector-by-sector provisions, no horizontal legislation
The European Commission, which, unlike the Parliament, has agenda-setting powers, is already considering a revision of existing EU legislation on consumer protection in the form of a Digital Fairness Act.
The Commission confirmed at the conference that this would include dedicated provisions for online influencers. But no legislative proposal is expected before the next legislative mandate begins in June next year.
However, both Yon-Courtin and Lalucq want to start work now and ensure that files currently under negotiations at the EU Parliament have adequate provisions.
“We ought to bring coherence among existing texts,” Yon-Courtin said.
This would particularly apply in the context of the retail investment strategy and the regulation of Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA). In both, MEPs anticipate that dedicated provisions could be added to guardrail influencers’ commercial practices in the fields of investment advice.
Rather than aiming for a horizontal regulation on online influencing – which would realistically not be adopted in time before EU elections – the two MEPs, therefore, look to make existing and under-negotiation files fit to cater for the reality of online commercial influence and its possible abuse.
All eyes on DSA
The French law, which effectively sets out a blueprint for European action, pre-empted the transposition of the DSA, a maiden EU legislation regulating illegal content, advertising and disinformation on online platforms.
The rules as they stand in the French text make it compulsory for platforms to have adequate resources to flag any potentially harmful commercial content and to act swiftly.
It remains unclear whether platforms will indeed have the required resources on time to meet their new legal obligations. However, “I dare to hope that platforms will be ready”, MP Delaporte said.
“Will they be ready to moderate content effectively, ensure high-quality controls and meet their obligations? This remains to be seen,” he added.
Yon-Courtin also insisted the Commission should have more resources to make sure platforms across the EU meet their legal obligations under the DSA, which will start to bite the largest online platforms by August.
[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/Nathalie Weatherald]
