Over one million companies in Europe trade on online platforms. With the Platform-to-Business Regulation, the European Union not only wants to make these more transparent and fair, but also promote competition and legal certainty.

The Platform Regulation, which came into force at the end of July, creates new transparency rules that are equally relevant for platform developers and operators. The EU's overarching goal is to achieve a better balance between platforms and their business customers. In future, it is to be ensured that internal complaints mechanisms are in place to resolve disagreements about rankings within the platform or the blocking of offers, for example.

Platform operators must also provide information on whether they prefer their own services or products over others on the platform. It must also be broken down which data collected on the platform may also be used by the participating companies and which data is reserved for the operator.

The new transparency rules are intended to ensure greater trust and standardized business practices between platforms and business customers throughout Europe and thus create the basis for internationally competitive platform markets.

Source: Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy