Is There Anything New Under the Sun? A Glance at the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act from the Perspective of Digitalisation in the EU

The adoption of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been a great step towards regulating digital space and industry. The two regulations set out a comprehensive and long-awaited set of requirements for companies providing intermediary and gatekeeping services. According to some commentators, the new laws will largely redefine the operating conditions for businesses in the digital sector.This article highlights key provisions of the DSA and DMA that may influence the evolution of the digital sector in Europe and shows that the DSA relies heavily on its predecessor, the e-Commerce Directive, and both regulations draw inspiration from other new-age EU secondary legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and industry best practices.The main conclusions of the article are the following: the changes can be considered a significant step forward from a regulatory perspective, but 'there is nothing new under the sun'. In other words, the regulations do not fundamentally change the liability regime of intermediary service providers, but rather take a necessary step forward to further regulate these businesses. Albeit the DSA and the DMA should be praised for their layered approach on allocating different responsi- bilities on different size undertakings - unlike the GDPR - as the main 'targets' of the regulations are primarily US-based big tech companies. It is still worrying that the DSA could also increase operational costs for European startups, potentially turning them away from the continent, which in turn could produce an innovation-cooling effect in the Union.