European UnionDigital Services Act (DSA) Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2835 (Templates, reporting periods and retention for transparency reports)
Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2835
In force since .
A transparency and process rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Reporting, Disclosure, Retention
As of .
What it requires
- Publish each transparency report you owe under Article 15, 24 or 42 of the Digital Services Act by filling in the quantitative and qualitative templates in Annex I, in their CSV or XLSX version, and publish one report for each service you offer (Article 1(1); Annex II, Part I). A report that omits one of the two templates, or parts of them, without a specific and objective reason is considered incomplete.
- Publish the filled-in templates as a CSV file that complies with Request for Comments (RFC) 4180 and uses UTF-8 encoding, reporting counting indicators as integers, percentage indicators as floating numbers in the interval from 0 to 1 and median times in hours (Annex II, Part I, point 4).
- Use the harmonized reporting periods in Article 2: if you are a provider of intermediary services, hosting services or online platforms, 1 January until 31 December; if you are a provider of a very large online platform or a very large online search engine, 1 January until 30 June and 1 July until 31 December. The transition period for aligning reporting timelines ends on , and as of all providers follow these periods (Article 2(1) and (2); Annex II, Part I, point 3).
- Make each report publicly available at the latest two months after the end of its reporting period (Article 2(3)).
- Base your reports on the Annex I templates for content moderation from (Article 2(4)). If you are a provider of intermediary services, hosting services or online platforms, your first full annual cycle on the templates covers 1 January until . If you are a provider of a very large online platform or a very large online search engine, your first cycle on the templates covers 1 July until (Annex II, Part I, point 3).
- Retain each transparency report for at least five years after its publication, and keep every published version publicly available throughout that period (Article 3). If you publish an updated version, mark it as an updated version of the earlier report, highlight the changes, describe the reasons and the methodology used to rectify the inaccuracies or errors, and state the date of the changes (Annex II, Part I, point 5).
- If you are a provider of a very large online platform, assess the linguistic expertise of your content moderators against the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: sufficient linguistic expertise for content moderation is at least level B2 in the category Understanding (Annex II, Part I, point 6).
- You are not required to publish the Article 15(1) report if you are a micro or small enterprise and not a very large online platform (recital 2 records Article 15(2) of the Digital Services Act).
What this law does
Article 1(1) requires providers of intermediary services, of hosting services, of online platforms, of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines to use the CSV or XLSX version of the templates in Annex I for the transparency reports they owe under Articles 15, 24 and 42 of the Digital Services Act.
Article 15(3) of the Digital Services Act lets the Commission adopt implementing acts laying down templates for the form, content and other details of those reports, including harmonized reporting periods. Article 2(1) sets the yearly reporting period for providers of intermediary services, of hosting services and of online platforms from 1 January until 31 December.
Article 2(2) has providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines publish their transparency reports at least every six months, covering 1 January until 30 June and 1 July until 31 December. Article 2(3) requires providers of intermediary services, of hosting services, of online platforms, of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines to make their reports publicly available at the latest two months after the end of each reporting period.
Article 2(4) bases the transparency reports on the templates in Annex I as of . Article 3(1) requires a provider to retain its transparency reports for at least five years after their publication. Article 3(2) keeps every published version of a report publicly available for the entire duration of the retention period. Annex II requires a provider to publish the filled-in templates in an Open Document Format CSV file that complies with Request for Comments (RFC) 4180 and uses UTF-8 encoding.
Annex II requires a provider to publish one transparency report per service that it offers. Annex II treats a report that omits one of the two templates, or parts of them, without a specific and objective reason as incomplete. Annex II requires counting indicators as integers, percentage indicators as floating numbers in the interval from 0 to 1, and median times in hours.
Annex II provides that the first full annual reporting cycle of providers of intermediary services, of hosting services and of online platforms that follows the templates covers 1 January until . Annex II provides that the first reporting cycle of providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines that follows the templates covers 1 July until .
Annex II sets the minimum threshold for sufficient linguistic expertise for content moderation at level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in the category Understanding. Recital 2 records that Article 15(2) of the Digital Services Act exempts providers of intermediary services that are micro or small enterprises and not very large online platforms from the Article 15(1) reporting obligation.
Article 4 provides that the Regulation enters into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
When LexLint raises it
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