New regulation of the platform economy may worsen the position of sellers, disrupt the economics of ride-hailing services and place an excessive burden on the platforms, the FAS has warned.
Certain provisions of the draft law of the Ministry of Economic Development “On the platform economy in the Russian Federation” may lead to the imposition by digital platforms of unfavorable conditions for contractors, the inability of passengers to “properly use cab services”, as well as to the restriction of competition in the retail market. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) warned about such risks in its review sent to the Ministry of Economic Development on September 26.
Following the review of the draft law, FAS did not agree with the proposed changes to the legislation and pointed to the need to finalize the current version of the document.
The draft law of the Ministry of Economic Development is designed to define the legal basis of the platform economy in Russia and regulate relations arising between digital platforms (marketplaces, food delivery and travel booking services, cab aggregators) and their partners — sellers of goods or service providers, as well as consumers.
The Ministry of Economic Development stated that the FAS review “will be considered in accordance with the established procedure” and, on the instructions of the government, sent the draft law to the state authorities for consideration.
In total, the FAS has formulated more than 40 comments to the draft law. Some of them concern the scope of the regulation: for example, the service claims that the provisions of the document may not apply to platforms such as Avito (Russian classified advertisements website), as they does not always imply the transfer of money to the platform operator to pay for services (according to the draft law, this is one of the four criteria for recognizing a platform as subject to regulation - along with placing an offer for goods and services, receiving commission income, and providing an opportunity to conclude transactions).
Some provisions of the draft law create conflicts of norms, according to the FAS. For example, the document introduces the concept of a “large intermediary platform” - additional requirements will apply to such platforms compared to ordinary ones. It is assumed that the criterion for classification as "large" will be the daily number of users of the platform, the exact size of which will be established separately by the government. Such a criterion may lead to “daily changes in the status” of the platform, as well as to legal conflicts in court, as it overlaps in meaning with the criterion of dominance set forth in the law “On Protection of Competition”, the FAS believes. Regulation should be common for both large and smaller platforms, according to the FAS.
In addition, certain novelties of the draft law carry risks of discrimination of platform users. For example, it legalizes the priority ranking as a result of a search query of those goods whose sellers have paid extra for it, and does not specify exactly how such ads should be marked, which creates risks for manipulation. According to FAS, the search results should be based on “objective criteria”.
“The possibility of arbitrary change of the search results by the owner of the digital platform creates risks of violation of antimonopoly legislation, in particular the creation of discriminatory conditions in relation to the partners of the digital platform, who do not purchase additional paid promotion services,”
FAS stated in the review.
There is an opinion among participants in the discussion of the draft law that only a common conceptual apparatus should be agreed upon as part of the overall comprehensive approach, says an RBC source familiar with the preparation of the regulation. Next, it would be necessary to spread the discussion of different agendas across sectoral bills.
“This would make it possible to create a set of separate more focused bills, which would be adopted sequentially as they are ready and create a common block of regulation,”
he said.
In particular, a bill that regulates platform employment is being drafted separately.
The concept of regulation of digital platforms, which was proposed by the Ministry of Economic Development, suggests the creation of a single legal field for all existing forms of aggregators for the sale of goods and services, commented "Avito". At the same time, the concept uses the norms of regulation of marketplaces, which are impossible for all other market participants, "Avito" believes.
“For example, classifieds cannot meet the requirements to verify the labeling of goods, as they do not have storage infrastructure. In this regard, it is necessary to limit the subject of regulation only to transactional platforms and exclude social networks, classifades and audiovisual services,”
pointed out “Avito”.
Source: RBC
