Digital Fairness Act: EU moves to outlaw dark patterns and subscription traps

The European Commission proposed today the Digital Fairness Act, a consumer rulebook that would ban loot boxes for minors, blacklist manipulative interface design, and put a termination button on every online subscription.

The proposal would repeal the EU’s 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and replace it with a directly applicable regulation, swapping 27 national rulebooks for one. Any trader targeting EU consumers falls in scope, wherever it is based.

Dark patterns get a general prohibition plus an annex of practices banned in all circumstances, a list the Commission can extend without reopening the law. Euronews, which reviewed the text ahead of publication, counts ten blacklisted traps, from false low-stock claims to pre-ticked add-ons and nagging pop-ups.

Gaming takes the hardest hit. In-game currencies must display their real-money value and stay off by default for minors unless a parent approves.

Paid loot boxes must disclose their odds, are banned for under-18s outright, and every player, adult or not, gets the option to disable them. Pay-to-win and pay-to-progress mechanics are also off limits for minors.

Adults get something rarer: an off switch. Services must let users disable features designed, or reasonably foreseen, to encourage compulsive use, the same design question Brussels is already probing in its Snapchat proceedings.

Advertising based on profiling is banned when it targets minors or exploits sensitive personal data in harmful ways, and personalised pricing is barred where it could hurt minors or vulnerable consumers. Influencers must disclose commercial content, and the brands and agencies behind them share responsibility when they do not.

Subscriptions round out the list. Free trials cannot quietly roll into paid plans without active acceptance, renewals come with reminders, cancelling must work online in a few clicks, and consumers keep a right to reach a human.

The EU has fought this fight before, one Prime cancellation at a time; now the fix would be structural.

Enforcement moves closer to Brussels too. A parallel revision of the consumer protection cooperation rules would let the Commission investigate major cross-border infringements itself, with fines of up to 6% of global turnover, per Euronews.

The Commission’s impact assessment weighs an estimated €88.4B in reduced consumer detriment over a decade against adjusted business costs of €678M a year.

The proposal now heads to the European Parliament and member states, where the fights over protecting minors online are already well rehearsed. Years of negotiation lie ahead, but the direction is set: the design tricks that built the attention economy are becoming illegal terrain in Europe.