why is the Digital Services Act relevant for wildlife?

The European Parliament voted during its plenary session yesterday on the amended draft report on the Digital Services Act (DSA). The text approved with 530 votes to 78, with 80 abstentions, will be used as the mandate of the Parliament to negotiate with the French presidency of the Council, representing Member States during the next steps of the process for the adoption of the DSA.

The DSA proposal defines clear responsibilities and accountability for providers of intermediary services, and in particular online platforms, such as social media and marketplaces, to ensure that “what is illegal offline is illegal online”. The new legislation is much needed, given that the last EU law to set out rules for online services (the e-commerce Directive) was adopted in 2000, and a lot has changed since then on the online trade.

Today, the world’s most endangered species are under threat from the online trade. The scale and anonymous nature of online trafficking means it is essential that tech companies and national authorities take charge in detecting and disrupting online wildlife criminals.

In March 2018, IFAW launched the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, together with WWF and TRAFFIC. The 47 online technologies companies now involved in the coalition removed or blocked to date over 11.6 million listings of endangered or threatened species and associated products were from their platforms.

The DSA proposal amended by the European Parliament is a good step in the right direction, as it introduces new transparency requirements for companies that will make the detection of illegal wildlife products and law enforcement easier. Importantly, it makes explicit reference to the illegal trade of animals in the definition of “illegal content”. In addition, it requires that service providers take quick and effective measures to remove illegal content from their services.

However, the Parliament has also included dangerous and unjustified exemptions on traceability obligations for smaller platforms and a waiver for medium-size platforms, which lowers the effectiveness of the DSA and introduce loopholes. The adopted text fails also to introduce obligations for all online intermediaries to prevent previously identified and removed or similar content from reappearing on their services.

IFAW urges the European Parliament and the Council to address these issues and strengthen the obligations for digital services during the upcoming negotiations on the final law.

Ilaria Di Silvestre
Head of EU Policy and Campaigns