Contracts for supply of digital content

Briefing 09-10-2017

The digital content directive was proposed by the European Commission as part of a legislative package, alongside the online sales directive, to facilitate the development of the internal market for such content. The Council agreed on a general approach on the proposal on 8 June 2017. This seeks to clarify the relationship between the proposed contract law rules and the personal data protection regime – an issue which has been hotly debated. Furthermore, it strengthens the position of consumers with regard to conformity and remedies. As for the Parliament, a draft report was published in November 2016 by the two co-rapporteurs, who proposed to expand the directive's scope to include digital content supplied against data that consumers provide passively, while also strengthening the position of consumers as regards criteria of conformity. Objective criteria would become the default rule, with a possibility to depart from them only if the consumer's attention were explicitly drawn to the shortcomings of the digital content. Third edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure. To view previous editions of this briefing, please see: PE 599.310 (March 2017). "A more recent edition of this document is available. Find it by searching by the document title at this address: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/home.html"