The potential of Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act to provide a meaningful legal framework for collaborative economy platforms in the EU

Collaborative economy platforms (such as Uber or Airbnb) have been in the past under scrutiny by the Court of Justice of the EU under the framework of the Services Directive. With the conclusion of the rulings in Uber and Airbnb cases that their activities remain outside of the scope of this legislation. Simultaneously, the former E-Commerce Directive might not provide solutions adapted to the innovative models of peer-to-peer platforms and services. Hence, a legal vacuum might materialize in which the activity of the operators of the collaborative economy platforms on the Internal Market would remain outside the scope of the EU law. Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act entered into force in November 2022. The new EU legislation was intended to introduce responsibility requirements for platform operators, regulate the activity of ‘gatekeepers’ and will provide the legal framework for the operation of the biggest digital platforms in the Internal Market. The question emerges – to what extent this regulation would provide a meaningful legal framework for the activity of collaborative economy platforms in the Internal Market? The ambition of the submitted contribution would be to respond to this question based on the analysis of the adopted provisions of the DSA and DMA. For this purpose, the systemic review of the existing literature on the regulating of collaborative economy platforms will be conducted. The analysis will also refer to the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice on the scope of application of the Services Directive and E-Commerce Directive in the context of the activity of Uber and Airbnb. Thirdly, the author will also assess the approach of the EU institutions to the collaborative economy platforms (exemplified by the abovementioned rulings and legislation, as well as the European Commission’s policy documents) in the context of regulating the activity of transnational entities. The main argument of the paper will be based on the assumption that the lack of a meaningful legal framework for the economic activity of the collaborative economy platforms might lead to the deterioration of the protection of the economic interests of the users of these platforms. The second argument of the paper, building on the main one, suggests that such an outcome would be evidence of a non-interventionist policy of the EU and a lenient approach of the EU towards collaborative economy platforms. These arguments will be critically assessed and verified with the results of the analysis of the potential of the DSA and DMA to regulate their activities