The EU’s Proposals for Regulating B2B Relationships on Online Platforms – Transparency, Fairness and Beyond

Abstract

Prompted by the EU proposal for a Regulation on promoting fairness and transparency for business users of online intermediation services, this contribution considers the different approaches for regulating business-to-business (B2B) relationships on online platforms and provides a critique of the EU’s proposal from two perspectives. The first is a detailed examination of the proposal, and its link with other parts of contract law. The second is a critique of the methodological approach underpinning this proposal, which focuses on the individual contractual relationships between a platform and a business supplier. Suggestions for a different approach from that of the proposal which might provide a stronger basis for dealing with online platforms will be presented in a final section of this contribution.

Keywords: online platforms, b2b, fairness, transparency, European Union, EU, coherentism, regulatory-instrumentalism

JEL Classification: K12