At its 20 January plenary meeting in Strasbourg, the European Parliament adopted its position on the Digital Services Act (DSA) after months of negotiations on the dossier. The Parliament’s position includes measures to counter illegal products, services and content online, including procedures on removing them, more options for tracking-free advertising and a ban on targeted ads towards minors.

EGBA welcomes the Parliament’s adoption of up-to-date rules for the internet and its efforts to enhance consumer protection by creating a safer online environment for European consumers, in particular, the prohibition of targeted advertising towards minors. This is a step in the right direction which has particular importance for strengthening measures to protect minors across many different age-gated sectors, including online gambling.

EGBA recognises that gambling advertising should be conducted in a socially responsible way and fully supports measures which prevent the targeting of minors. That is why EGBA introduced the first pan-European Code of Conduct on responsible advertising for online gambling, in 2020, which has a particular focus on minor protection.

In addition, EGBA welcomes the Parliament’s maintenance of the cornerstone country of origin principle in the DSA, as well as a strictly-defined trusted flagger notice mechanism: to avoid abuses, erroneous take-downs of online content which has been wrongly considered illegal and jeopardising fundamental freedoms. Finally, EGBA would also like to underline the importance of granting rights for effective redress and the right for online content providers to be heard, as fundamental checks and balances are crucial to the far reaching powers of the DSA.

The Parliament will now enter negotiations with the Council, with the Council already agreeing on its own position back in November 2021, and EGBA looks forward to inputting further to these negotiations.

“We welcome the European Parliament’s progress on the DSA and its proposals to create a safer online environment for European consumers, in particular by prohibiting targeted advertising towards minors. In the online gambling sector, there is already an absolute ban for minors to gamble and to advertise towards them in all EU member states. We do, however, welcome the proposed harmonization of prohibiting the use of minor’s data for targeted ads and the extension of these protections to other sectors.” – Maarten Haijer, Secretary General.