European Commission's consultation on the Digital Fairness Act
On 17 July 2025, the European Commission launched a public consultation on the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA). Rooted in the 2020–2025 New Consumer Agenda, the DFA aims to address unethical digital practices and manipulative commercial techniques used on digital platforms. The initiative seeks to address:
- Manipulative interface design (‘dark patterns’)
- Misleading marketing by social media influencers
- Addictive design of digital products
- Online profiling exploiting consumer vulnerabilities.
The DFA will complement existing digital regulation, such as the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the Artificial Intelligence Act. It will address the specific regulatory gaps identified in the Commission’s Fitness Check of EU consumer law including in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC.
Relevance for the hospitality sector
The proposal will explore topics of interest for the hospitality sector:
- Unfair influencer practices, such as failure to disclose paid content, promotion of harmful products, and unclear responsibility for companies working with influencers
- Misleading pricing practices, including “drip” pricing, ambiguous “starting from” prices if the trader applies dynamic pricing, and percentage/value discounts that mislead the consumer as to the nature of the promotion.
An impact assessment will evaluate the DFA’s economic, social, environmental, and competitiveness implications.
Next steps
The public consultation is open until 9 October 2025, with the Commission planning to adopt the proposal in Q3 2026. HOTREC will prepare a contribution to the consultation.
For additional information