The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) makes terms and conditions a formal transparency issue, not merely a legal or user-experience concern. Under the regulation, providers of very large online platforms and very large online search engines must publish concise, easily accessible and machine-readable summaries of their terms. Those summaries must use clear and unambiguous language and be available in the official languages of the EU Member States where the service is offered.
The requirement is set out in Article 14 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the DSA's legal text. The official EUR-Lex version of the Digital Services Act also establishes broader requirements for intermediary services to make their terms clear, plain, intelligible, user-friendly and unambiguous. For the largest services, the summary obligation adds a more specific layer of accessibility and transparency.
The DSA began applying to designated platforms and search engines across 2023 and 2024, before its wider application expanded in early 2024. Its EU-wide supervisory framework means terms governance is now part of an ongoing compliance responsibility for covered services.
What the DSA changes for platform terms
