Characteristics of European platform regulation

Platform law and user protection

Abstract

The paper presents the European regulation of platforms. In the first part, it reconstructs the process in which the concept of platform, from an information technology and marketing concept became a legal one. The legal concept emerged from the mid-2010s, first in supplementations of sectoral rules for platforms and later by creating sui generis platform rules. The second part of the paper argues that these rules can be interpreted as an emerging separate area of law, the ‘European platform law’. One of the most important ultimate justifying principles and purposes of this legal corpus is the protection of users. This is achieved through a number of tools, some of which are legal transplants from other legal areas (such as consumer protection), while others are sui generis legal rules created specifically for platforms, such as the protection of user accounts or the explainability and transparency of algorithms.