[New blogpost] Digital rights enforcement: private international law and representative actions
Published 17 November 2025
In a new Op-Ed for EU Law Live’s Competition Corner, Eduardo Silva de Freitas examines how private international law affects representative actions brought to enforce obligations contained in the European Union’s recent digital legislation. He explains that instruments such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) can now be the subject of representative actions, which brings particular attention to situations where infringements affect consumers in more than one Member State.
How representative actions are classified
Silva de Freitas notes that actions seeking to enforce obligations under the DSA and DMA are, in most circumstances, unlikely to be regarded as contractual disputes under either the Brussels I-bis Regulation or the Rome I Regulation. Instead, they are generally treated as non-contractual in nature, meaning that Brussels I-bis rules on non-contractual matters and the Rome II Regulation are typically the relevant instruments. This reflects the fact that the obligations at issue arise from statutory rules rather than from the interpretation of a contract.
Jurisdiction and the challenge of online harm
The Op-Ed highlights the difficulty of determining where digital harm occurs when consumers across several Member States are affected at the same time. Silva de Freitas notes that, in the context of representative actions involving online mass harm, courts have in some instances looked to the place where the consumers concerned are domiciled when considering jurisdiction. He also points to practical challenges where very large online platforms (VLOPs), very large online search engines (VLOSEs), or gatekeepers are headquartered outside the European Union.
Applicable law
Turning to applicable law, Silva de Freitas explains that the Rome II Regulation generally designates the law of the place where the damage occurs. In cases where harm is spread across different Member States, this can result in different groups of consumers within the same representative action being subject to different national laws. He notes that the European Commission has acknowledged the burden this places on courts and discusses proposals to help manage it, including dividing claimants into sub-groups according to the applicable law.
Read the full piece.
