Zalando sues EU Commission over online content regulation

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) – Europe’s biggest online fashion seller Zalando filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the European Commission over the EU’s latest regulation on online content.

The Germany-based company announced in a statement that it appealed at the Court of Justice of the EU against the “designation by the European Commission” that considers the shopping site “as a ‘Very Large Online Platform’ obliged to manage systemic risks.”

The EU executive body listed April 17 online platforms and two search engines as Very Large Online Platforms.

The classification treats the same way social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and shopping websites like Amazon, Booking.com or Zalando because they have more than 45 million users per month.

The EU Commission “did not take into account the majority retail nature of its business model and that it does not present a ‘systemic risk’ of disseminating harmful or illegal content from third parties,” Zalando argued in its motion.

The company also contested “the unequal treatment resulting from the absence of a clear and consistent methodology to assess whether a company is a ‘Very Large Online Platform.’”

Setting stricter data and user protection rules, the new EU’s regulation on digital services will enter into force in August.