Transparency and explainability requirements in the European platform law

Abstract

Transparency and explainability as principles play a central role in the nascent European platform law. Although both the idea of transparency and the obligation to provide reasons have a long history, both have been given a new meaning in platform regulation. First, the study presents the historical formation of the two principles and the impact of technical achievements on the principles. It argues that the two principles and the rules created to translate them represent ‘formal justice’, and appeared in more and more areas: at first, the executive power, later, the transparency of private powers became a requirement in the law. Points 3 and 4 of this article describe these two principles and their specific forms of appearance in different European platform rules. It tries to place the principles and detailed rules of transparency and explainability within the user protection system of platform law. Since the Digital Services Act relies most widely on the two regulatory solutions, the paper elaborates the DSA’s transparency system in detail, in the form of tables. It then describes the relevant rules of the P2B Regulation and the Work Platform Directive. The conclusion of the paper is that the European platform regulators use the two principles as a kind of miracle weapon, but at the same time, it is not yet possible to decide how effective this tool will be.