Clothing online store Zalando is going to the European Court of Justice due to a classification under the Digital Services Act. Zalando is classified under the DSA as a ‘very large online platform’ with associated obligations, but according to Zalando, a store is not.
The originally German Zalando objects against the classification of a ‘very large online platform’ under the DSA. The Digital Services Act is a law that regulates the obligations that large tech companies and platforms have for European users. The requirements are stricter for larger platforms that are also mentioned as such in the law. For a long time it was not known which companies exactly fell under the heading of ‘very large online platform’, until a few weeks ago. In April, the European Commission announced the first companies to be classified in this way. This includes a number of tech companies and their platforms, including Facebook and Instagram from Meta and LinkedIn and Bing from Microsoft. In addition, a number of online stores were designated. These included AliExpress, Amazon and also Zalando.
Zalando now says it disagrees with that decision. Zalando states that the European Commission “has not taken into account the fact that Zalando is primarily a trading platform” and that it therefore “does not pose a systemic risk” for spreading harmful or illegal content. That is one of the most important parts of the DSA; platforms must do more to combat such content. According to Zalando, customers are even better protected in the online environment because products and sellers are better screened.
The company also criticizes the fact that the European Commission does not have a clear methodology to determine when a company is a very large online platform. That is only partly true; under the DSA this concerns platforms with a minimum number of active users. A ruling by the European Court of Justice could have major consequences for the way in which the DSA is implemented, because the Court can more narrowly determine under which definitions an organization should be classified.