June 17, 2026, 15:45 GMT | Insight
Booking.com, Zalando and
Idealo have warned that the EU's expanding digital rulebook risks becoming too complex and disproportionate for companies to navigate, with more legislation expected, including a Digital Fairness Act, to add to an existing Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act and more. Senior lawyers for the companies told a conference that consistency and a pro-innovation approach were needed.
Europe's expanding digital rulebook risks becoming too complex and disproportionate for companies to navigate, executives from online travel agency Booking.com, retailer Zalando and price-comparison site Idealo have warned.
Speaking at a panel* on digital regulation on Wednesday, senior legal executives from the three platforms urged EU policymakers to focus on clearer rules, more consistent enforcement and better coordination among regulators before adding new rules.
Beyond the keystone content-moderation and gatekeeper laws, the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, there are the newer AI Act and Data Act, and the
European Commission is preparing further legislation, including a planned Digital Fairness Act.
“The architecture at some point becomes unmanageable for companies,” Idealo’s general counsel, Sabrina Frank, said of the Digital Services Act, while adding that the ideas behind the law are sound. As an example, she cited analysis by the commission that found it interacts with 54 other legal acts.
"Companies need to understand what they are supposed to do or not to do without having to assemble a task force of five law firms and a philosopher to understand what the law is getting at," Frank said.
Booking.com’s Maria Rocha Barros said the focus should be on “consistency and enforcement” of existing laws, and she drew attention to the Digital Markets Act's "gatekeeper" concept spreading to other legislation (see
here).
The EU's executive arm is currently drawing up a proposal for the Digital Fairness Act, or DFA, an overhaul of current consumer legislation expected to be unveiled later this year (see
here). Businesses have previously raised concerns about how it might interact with the existing digital frameworks (see
here).
Lena Wallenhorst, senior vice president for corporate governance and general counsel at Zalando, said the DFA would be "a good regulation if it doesn't come," adding that many of the issues it seeks to address could be tackled by enforcing existing laws and improving alignment among authorities.
Wallenhorst said the online fashion retailer's early success was built on its ability to scale quickly across the single market. Zalando was founded around 17 years ago, when EU regulation was easier to navigate and Berlin had a strong climate of innovation, she said.
Asked about what companies need in order to thrive, Wallenhorst said: “To put it simply, put innovation back at the center of policymaking."
She added that, if she had a “magic wand,” she would use it to clarify the DSA’s scope so that systemic risk is assessed differently for highly curated retail platforms such as Zalando, currently fighting its designation under the law’s strictest category at the EU courts (see
here).
— Different business models —
Another issue the three company representatives brought up was the application of digital laws across different business models.
Idealo's Frank warned against designing rules around the worst actors in the market and then applying them broadly to all companies.
Booking's Rocha Barros said that prescriptive rules can create unintended consequences when they are applied across very different digital business models.
She cited the debate around "endless scrolling" in the upcoming DFA as one example. While concerns about that issue may be understandable in some contexts, Booking.com doesn’t have the same incentive to keep users on its service for long periods, she said.
“So when you write the rule, think about the different examples of companies that will be impacted, and have the dialog,” Rocha Barros said.
*European Competition Forum Midsummer Meeting, Brussels, June 16-18, 2026.
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