The regulation applies to all intermediary services of the information society—such as online platforms, search engines, marketplaces, social networks or app stores—offered to recipients of the service located in the European Union, regardless of where the providers of these intermediary services are established.

The Digital Services Act ensures that the rules and standards of the offline world also apply to these online services. It is important to understand that this new act does not establish what is or is not allowed to be offered or published on platforms. Prohibitions are governed by the rules applicable to their respective legal areas, such as data protection law, consumer law or criminal law, among others.

Online service providers can be held responsible for how they manage content on their platforms, for example, for failing to comply with takedown orders, not providing users with content reporting systems, or not implementing measures to protect users from specific risks.

For this reason, they must have complaint and dispute resolution mechanisms, as well as procedures to report and remove illegal content, and, in general, systems to protect users from the risks they face in the digital world. In short, due diligence, transparency and information obligations are established for providers.

In the case of platforms and search engines with more than 45 million monthly users in the European Union, stricter regulation is imposed due to their impact on users and the digital ecosystem.
These platforms are known as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs).

List Very large online platforms (VLOPs) and search engines (VLOSEs)

Supervision of the Regulation is shared between the European Commission and the Digital Services Coordinators in each Member State.

In Spain, the CNMC has been designated as the Digital Services Coordinator and is responsible for ensuring that all intermediary service providers established in Spain comply with the Digital Services Act. For its part, the European Commission is responsible for supervising the specific obligations imposed on VLOPs and VLOSEs.

The CNMC must work closely with other Spanish authorities, including the Spanish Data Protection Agency, with Digital Services Coordinators from other Member States and with the European Commission. 

The assignment of all the powers that the Digital Services Act grants to Digital Services Coordinators requires the approval of a legal provision enabling the CNMC to act as such, which, to date, has not yet occurred. Therefore, the CNMC cannot exercise all the powers attributed to it by the Digital Services Act, such as, for example, the certification of trusted flaggers. 

To learn more about the Digital Services Regulation, you can consult:

Full text of the Digital Services Regulation. 

Contact for questions related to the Digital Services Regulation:dsc@cnmc.es