Article 18 – Review

  1. By 13 January 2022, and subsequently every three years, the Commission shall evaluate this Regulation and report to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee.
  2. The first evaluation of this Regulation shall be carried out, in particular, with a view to the following:
    1. assessing the compliance with, and impact on the online platform economy of, the obligations laid down in Articles 3 to 10;
    2. assessing the impact and effectiveness of any established codes of conduct to improve fairness and transparency;
    3. investigating further the problems caused by the dependence of business users on online intermediation services, and problems caused by unfair commercial practices by providers of online intermediation services, and to determine further to which extent those practices continue to be widespread;
    4. investigating whether the competition between goods or services offered by a business user and goods or services offered or controlled by a provider of online intermediation services constitutes fair competition and whether providers of online intermediation services misuse privileged data in this regard;
    5. assessing the effect of this Regulation on any possible imbalances in the relationships between providers of operating systems and their business users;
    6. assessing whether the scope of the Regulation, especially as regards the definition of ‘business user’, is suitable in that it does not encourage bogus self-employment.
      The first and subsequent evaluations shall establish whether additional rules, including regarding enforcement, may be required to ensure a fair, predictable, sustainable and trusted online business environment within the internal market. Following the evaluations, the Commission shall take appropriate measures, which may include legislative proposals.
  3. Member States shall provide any relevant information they have that the Commission may require for the purposes of drawing up the report referred to in paragraph 1.
  4. In carrying out the evaluation of this Regulation, the Commission shall take into account inter alia, the opinions and reports presented to it by the group of experts for the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy. It shall also take into account the content and functioning of any codes of conduct referred to in Article 17, where appropriate.