Dutch DSA authority received 170 complaints, but lacks power to act

The Dutch Consumer and Market Authority (ACM) has received some 171 complaints about potential violations by online platforms of the Digital Services act (DSA), but it still lacks the legal power to act on them, the country’s Economy Minister said in a letter to parliament yesterday (23 September).

The ACM – provisionally assigned the role of Dutch Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) until the implementing law has been approved by the national parliament – said companies and individuals can already notify of possible violations because the DSA became fully applicable to all platforms in February this year. 

“On 1 September, the ACM had received 171 of these types of reports: 100 of these relate to services that are established in other EU Member States. If agreed by the complainants, the ACM will forward them to competent supervisors elsewhere,” minister Dirk Beljaarts wrote. 

“Some 71 leads related to services that are established in the Netherlands. The ACM will consider them and take effective action once it is fully authorised to supervise,” he ads.

The DSA is meant to empower online users by requiring platforms to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide content moderation tools. Among other things, businesses are obliged under the rules to produce transparency reports and to set up ad repositories.

The Netherlands is among six countries put on formal notice in July by the European Commission for failure to implement the DSA, by either failing to appoint a regulator or for not yet granting it the necessary powers.  

Member States had until 17 February to designate those authorities to betasked with supervising online platforms on their territories, which are intended to be the first point of contact for people and businesses to resolve complaints related to the DSA. 

Beljaarts said in his letter that the implementing law is at “an advanced state” of progress through parliament. Euronews understands that the ACM might not yet be given full competence before the end of this year.

Belgium faces a similar problem, since the formal appointment of telecom regulator BIPT as the country’s DSC has been put on hold due to a delay to the process of forming the new government. 

The Commission oversees the largest online platforms and search engines under the DSA. For those companies — including Meta, Amazon, Google and TikTok — the law started applying in August last year. The EU executive has said that more probes for non-compliance are expected to be wrapped up soon. Those will add to the pending probes into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, AliExpress, TikTok and X.