EU proposes Digital Fairness Act on dark patterns and subscriptions

EU proposes Digital Fairness Act on dark patterns and subscriptions

11 November 2026: The European Commission has proposed a Digital Fairness Act that would ban dark patterns, make online subscriptions easier to cancel and give consumers a right to a human in customer service, and would let the Commission itself fine businesses up to 6% of worldwide annual turnover in large cross-border cases. For any company selling software, apps or subscriptions to EU consumers, sign-up, renewal and cancellation flows are the code that would have to change.

Not yet independently verified. This is a proposal and has to pass the European Parliament and the Council; the documents we read give no date from which the rules would apply, and we have not yet read the full legal text. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What the act would ban or require

The Commission adopted the proposal together with a Simplification Directive. Its page lists the problems it targets: dark patterns and addictive design, practices that encourage overspending, unfair personalisation that targets consumers' vulnerabilities, problems with social media influencers, obscure dynamic pricing and misleading pricing, and obstacles in managing contracts concluded online, including difficult cancellation, automatic renewals, unwanted conversion of free trials into paid subscriptions and the inability to reach a human for customer service.

The Commission's factsheet turns those into rules:

• No dark patterns, such as fake scarcity claims.
• Easy cancellation of digital contracts: clear information on free trials and automatic renewals, simpler cancellation and a right to human customer service.
• Fairness by design: an option to switch off addictive features that push excessive or compulsive spending, such as persistent prompts, and a ban on gambling-like features for minors such as pay-to-win and pay-to-progress.
• No unfair personalisation: no personalised ads or pricing that target minors or use sensitive data.
• Clear influencer marketing, with ads clearly shown and none for harmful products.
• Transparent prices: for dynamic pricing, clear information on the number of event tickets available and the maximum possible price, and real-time price updates in virtual queues.

New enforcement powers in Brussels

Enforcement today sits with national authorities. The package adds a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation that gives the Commission direct powers in major EU-wide cases, with fines of up to 6% of a business's worldwide annual turnover, plus clear timelines for coordinated national action. Businesses outside the EU that target EU consumers would have to appoint a representative in the EU. The Commission calls the package the most significant upgrade of EU consumer protection law in over 20 years and estimates consumer savings of 13.7 billion euros a year.

A long road before it applies

The act builds on the Digital Fairness Fitness Check, whose conclusions the Commission published on 3 October 2024 and which found gaps in the Unfair Commercial Practices, Consumer Rights and Unfair Contract Terms Directives. As a proposal it now goes to the European Parliament and the Council, where the text can change and which usually takes well over a year.

Product and billing teams can start from what is already plain in the factsheet: a cancellation path as short as the sign-up path, renewal and trial-conversion notices, a route to a human agent, and a record of any price personalisation. Our catalogue lists 20 subscription management software products, the systems that run trials, renewals and cancellations.

Related on TrustList:

• New York City click-to-cancel rule in force from 1 October 2026: subscriptions must be cancellable the way they were bought, penalties from $525

Sources

• European Commission: Digital Fairness Act (proposal page), 11 November 2026
• European Commission: Consumer Protection for the digital age (factsheet, November 2026), 11 November 2026