Digital Fairness Act: European Commission publishes responses to consultation

On 19 December 2025, the European Commission published a summary report of the responses to its consultation on the Digital Fairness Act (DFA), which ended on 24 October 2025. The Commission aimed to gather opinions from stakeholders on how to ensure fairness for consumers and businesses in business-to-consumer transactions in the digital single market, improve legal certainty, ensure effective enforcement and prevent market fragmentation. There were 3,341 responses to the consultation - the large majority of which were from consumers (followed by business associations and large companies). Further details of the Commission consultation are available on our Lens Blog Post of 27 July 2025.

Key themes 

The key themes of the consultation responses are set out below:

1. Dark patterns (online designs that mislead or pressure consumers into making decisions they would not otherwise take, such as false urgency claims): Respondents largely were in favour of new rules to address dark patterns. Most consumers supported action on all practices listed as constituting dark patterns, such as “false impression of choice” or “click fatigue”, while larger companies were less supportive.
2. Addictive design (features of online platforms that may encourage excessive use or spending, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay and content that disappears quickly): 70 per cent of respondents were in favour of new binding rules to address addictive design features in digital products, of which a majority supported most of the measures proposed in the consultation. The majority found that addictive design features should be switched off by default for everyone, leaving consumers the choice to opt-in if they wish. 31 per cent agreed that certain addictive design features should be prohibited for minors.
3. New rules for certain digital products, such as video games: Respondents were largely in favour of introducing new rules for specific features in digital products such as video games, with a large majority supporting measures such as restrictions on in-game currencies and increased transparency on the success rate of pay-to-win mechanisms. However, only 36 per cent of respondents who believe action is required were supportive of prohibiting certain digital product features for minors.
4. Unfair personalisation practices: Respondents also strongly supported new rules to restrict unfair personalisation. The following four measures received support from at least 77 per cent of the respondents who supported the need for action: (i) consumers should have more control over personalised advertising; (ii) personalised advertising using information about vulnerabilities should be restricted; (iii) personalised advertising that targets minors should be prohibited; and (iv) personalised pricing based on the personal data/profiling of particular consumers should be restricted in general.
5. Influencer marketing practices: Around two thirds of respondents supported new rules to tackle harmful practices by social media influencers, such as failure to disclose advertising. The responses indicate that there is strong support for influencers to disclose advertising clearly; and for brands and agencies to take measures to ensure that influencers comply with legal obligations. Consumers also raised concerns about harmful or false content, the promotion of harmful products, and scams.
6. Unfair pricing-related marketing: A quarter of respondents said new binding rules are needed concerning unfair marketing related to pricing. Of the respondents who supported the need for action, the majority supported a prohibition of drip pricing (79 per cent), restricting the use of “starting from” prices (70 per cent), and restrictions on the use of price comparisons (61 per cent). 25 per cent of respondents who believe action is needed also saw a need for increased pricing transparency, and a ban of dynamic pricing.
7. Digital contracts: Only 27 per cent of respondents supported the need for new binding rules, whereas 7 per cent thought that no action was needed. Actions which received most support included easy cancellations of subscriptions, increased transparency on auto-renewals or free trials being converted into paid subscriptions, increased control over termination of contracts, and the right to request to communicate with a person and not only with a chatbot.

Next steps

The responses will be used to generate the Commission’s impact assessment and inform the legislative proposal on the DFA, which the Commission aims to adopt in late 2026.