Europaudvalget 2024-25
EUU Alm.del Bilag 582
Offentligt
Denmark’s response to the Consumer Agenda 2025-2030
and action plan on consumers in the
Single Market
The Danish Government welcomes the European Commission’s decision to update the
current
Consumer Agenda, which expires in 2025. We agree that a revision is both timely and necessary in
view of recent geopolitical developments and the broader objective of strengthening European
competitiveness. Empowered consumers are essential drivers of economic growth and play a key
role in achieving a fully integrated Single Market. The Danish Government also places strong
emphasis on the effective enforcement of consumer rights, the promotion of sustainable
consumption, and robust consumer protection in the digital environment
–
with particular attention
to minors and other vulnerable groups.
Consumer protection in the online environment
In recent years, we have taken major regulatory steps to protect our citizens against the negative
consequences of the digital transformation and to shape the digital environment in line with our
values and principles. However, many challenges remain, especially when it comes to protecting
minors and ensuring that the safety net for consumer protection is up to date and without gaps. In
this light, we are very supportive of the Commission’s priority to develop a Digital Fairness Act to
tackle unethical techniques and commercial practices online.
In particular, we are strongly concerned with the protection of minors. Minors spend an increasing
amount of their time on social media and gaming. They are held captured by retention mechanisms,
designed to catch and keep their attention. Minors are particularly vulnerable and more easily
manipulated which calls for better and more targeted protection. The exploitation of their limited
cognitive skills gives rise to the need for additional protection when minors engage with digital
services. Tackling these problems will be of utmost importance to the Danish Government when
drafting the upcoming Digital Fairness Act.
While we generally need stronger efforts to simplify the existing legislation and reduce the
regulatory burden to ensure that Europe is both competitive and innovation-friendly, there is an
exceptional need to protect our minors online.
To this end, we find it important that we
- Address addictive designs, dark patterns and data-driven business models,
as these may
exploit vulnerabilities and manipulate behaviours. Therefore, we need to specify and
potentially expand the prohibitions in the UCPD and establish a fairness-by-design
obligation in order to address these practices as well as to update our framework to take into
account that many online business models are based on the consumer and other users’
engagement
–
not their purchases.
- Address extensive data harvesting and ban targeted advertising based on profiling.
While targeted advertising based on profiling of personal data can offer certain benefits for
businesses and consumers, its severe consequences have become increasingly evident over
time. Most evidently, the economic benefits incentivize digital services to amass extensive
user information and to utilise various and often problematic and privacy intruding practices
to this end.
- Ensure effective and privacy-preserving age verification
in order to mitigate the adverse
impact of illegal and harmful content, harmful commercial practices, addictive designs and
excessive data harvesting on digital services targeting minors.
 EUU, Alm.del - 2024-25 - Bilag 582: Notat og høringssvar vedr. høring om forbrugeragenda 2025-2030 og handlingsplan for forbrugerpolitikken
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-
Protect minors in terms of influencer marketing
in order to mitigate the increasingly
blurred lines between commercial content and entertainment as well as to address aggressive
and problematic marketing.
Strengthen the protection in digital subscription markets
in order to help consumers
actively decide to continue or to cancel their subscriptions.
The Danish Government will elaborate on our positions in more detail in the coming public
consultation on the Digital Fairness Act.
Protecting vulnerable consumers
The digitalization of markets has fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between
traders and consumers. Today, traders have access to extensive and detailed consumer data, enabling
them to test and refine their choice architecture at high pace and low costs. Moreover, they are able
to reach consumers across platforms at any time of the day. This calls for a fundamental
reassessment of
concepts such as “vulnerable” and “average” consumers.
The current definition of the average consumer, who is reasonably well-informed, observant and
circumspect, is no longer sufficient in a digital context. Even well-informed consumers may be
subject to permanent profiling, complex manipulation and automated transactions. Traders’ access
to the consumer’s detailed
personal profile including decision-making biases and pressure points
can be used in a commercial context.
In light of this, the Danish Government recommends that the European Commission re-examine the
current definition of the average consumer to better reflect the actual decision-making processes,
including the biases and heuristics that frequently lead to non-rational behaviour.
Likewise, the concept of consumer vulnerability should evolve beyond static socio-economic
categories, and instead recognize that vulnerability can be cognitive, emotional, or situational -
affecting any consumer regardless of age, income, or education. It is of particular importance that
the definition of the average consumer is applied consistently across all EU consumer legislation.
Finally, businesses should be expected to design digital interfaces and purchasing environments in
a way that does not mislead or unduly influence consumers, especially in light of the above
considerations.
Completing the Single Market for consumers
Removing barriers that prevent consumers from buying goods and services across borders in the EU
is central to achieving a fully integrated Single Market. In this regard, the Danish Government
welcomes the Single Market Strategy and urges the Commission to move swiftly in implementing
it. In line with the visions set out in the Single Market Strategy regarding harmonized rules and
consistent implementation and enforcement of existing horizontal legal framework, the Danish
Government welcomes looking specifically at the consumer protection rules.
EU-wide uniform consumer protection rules have made significant contributions to the functioning
of the Single Market by reducing fragmentation, creating a level playing field, thereby reducing
expansion barriers across Member States. However, challenges continue to hinder the full potential
of the Digital Single Market. Regulatory fragmentation still occurs due to diverging national
implementations and enforcement gaps. In particular, some Member States have introduced national
 EUU, Alm.del - 2024-25 - Bilag 582: Notat og høringssvar vedr. høring om forbrugeragenda 2025-2030 og handlingsplan for forbrugerpolitikken
rules
–
such as targeted legislation on loot boxes or influencer marketing
–
to respond to the
emergence of new digital business models. While often well-intentioned, these national initiatives
risk undermining harmonisation, creating legal uncertainty for cross-border traders, and increasing
compliance burdens. SMEs are especially impacted, as they often lack the resources to navigate
varying national requirements.
Against this background, the Danish Government urges the European Commission to enhance legal
clarity and consistency by updating the EU consumer acquis to reflect the realities of the digital
environment. In particular, reflections set out in the Commission’s Guidelines to the Unfair
Commercial Practices Directive should be codified within the Directive itself. This would provide
greater legal certainty for businesses and consumers alike, while also making the rules more
effective and operational for enforcement authorities across the EU.
Administrative burden and simplification
The Danish Government
supports the European Commission’s ongoing efforts to simplify existing
EU regulation - including consumer protection -
in order to reduce burdens and strengthen EU’s
competitiveness. Simplification and further harmonisation of consumer protection rules can both
reduce administrative burdens on companies as well as strengthening consumer protection.
Despite progress toward harmonized consumer protection, significant challenges persist that hinder
the effective functioning of the Digital Single Market. A key issue is regulatory fragmentation as
varying national interpretations and supplementary rules create inconsistencies across Member
States. This fragmentation contributes to legal uncertainty. Traders struggle to interpret and apply
existing consumer law provisions - originally designed for offline contexts - to novel digital
practices such as personalization, dark patterns, and influencer marketing. The lack of clear legal
provisions combined with uneven enforcement and evolving jurisprudence, leaves businesses -
especially SMEs - uncertain about their obligations and vulnerable to compliance risks.
As a result, many traders face elevated administrative costs. Key cost drivers include frequent
internal compliance reviews, reliance on external legal services, and the need to adapt business
practices to multiple legal regimes. These burdens are particularly pronounced for cross-border
traders, who must navigate a patchwork of national requirements.
These challenges underscore the need for targeted simplification, clear legal provisions in a digital
context, and stronger legal coherence at the EU level.
Enforcement of consumer-protection rules and e-commerce
To ensure a level playing field and maintain a high standard of consumer protection across Europe,
it is essential to maintain an effective and robust enforcement framework. Effective enforcement
will reduce uncertainty and administrative burdens on businesses and at the same time strengthen
consumers’ confidence
in that their rights will be upheld.
The success of EU consumer law fundamentally depends on compliance by traders, who are
typically responsible for designing and operating the digital environments in which consumer rights
are exercised. However, findings from the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network’s (CPC)
annual sweeps demonstrates that this compliance cannot be taken for granted. The 2022 sweep, for
example, revealed that certain online retailers used dark patterns and concealed important
information from consumers
–
such as the availability of lower-priced alternatives or delivery costs.
 EUU, Alm.del - 2024-25 - Bilag 582: Notat og høringssvar vedr. høring om forbrugeragenda 2025-2030 og handlingsplan for forbrugerpolitikken
These findings underscore the ongoing need to safeguard consumer trust and safety. Moreover, the
recent Fitness Check highlights that the effectiveness of European consumer legislation is
significantly undermined by fragmented and insufficient enforcement.
In this context, the Danish Government supports a targeted reform of the Consumer Protection
Cooperation Regulation aimed at strengthening cooperation among national enforcement authorities
and streamlining procedures to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. In order to ensure clarity,
it should be specified in the regulation that non-EU traders that direct their commercial activities
towards consumers within the EU/EEA are covered by the regulation. Furthermore, we welcome a
discussion on the potential reinforcement of the European Commission’s enforcement powers –
particularly in instances where breaches of consumer protection rules occur at the EU level.
E-commerce has revolutionized the way that consumers can purchase goods from all over the world
and has brought numerous benefits. However, enforcement of EU legislation is massively
challenged by 1) the large and growing number of packages and products shipped to consumers in
the EU from non-EU countries and 2) by the fact that there is often no economic operator within the
EU that can effectively be held responsible for the compliance of products within the current legal
framework for products.
Ensuring strong cooperation and effective enforcement of product safety legislation and consumer
protection legislation is essential to protect consumers and ensure a level playing field for
businesses. Although steps to address the challenges have already been taken through the Digital
Services Act, the General Product Safety Regulation and the Ecodesign Regulation, enforcement in
practice remains highly complex and resource-intensive and yielding only limited impact for certain
products. This means that strengthened enforcement and cooperation alone will not solve the
growing challenges. Online marketplaces must be given obligations that reflects the role they play
in the market.
Sustainable consumption
The Danish Government supports sustainable consumption as a focus point in the Consumer
Agenda. Consumers continue to play an integral role in the turn towards more sustainable
consumption, and we must make sure that affordable sustainable choices are always readily
available for consumers.
Businesses’
incentive to innovate and develop more sustainable goods and
services requires that information about products' environmental characteristics is reliable and
transparent in order for consumers to make informed choices.
The recent revision of the UCPD in order to empower consumers in the green transition as a part of
the European Green Deal is an important step in the right direction as it ensures a level playing field
for traders using green claims. Further, it contributes to consumers being able to trust information
by traders in order to make sustainable choices and contribute to the green transition.
However, the increase in e-commerce products from non-EU countries remains a persistent
challenge to sustainable consumption. Many of the products shipped to consumers in the EU from
non-EU countries do not comply with EU regulations, and the companies behind these products
avoid the associated compliance costs. This contributes to very low prices that distort competition
with compliant EU companies and contributes to unsustainable consumption. Ensuring effective
enforcement of EU regulation will not only protect consumers and ensure a level playing field for
businesses but also address unsustainable consumption.