EU Commission presents Digital Fairness Act proposal and revised Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation (dark patterns, addictive design, AI agents)

On 11 November 2026 the European Commission presented the Digital Fairness Act (DFA) proposal, together with a proposed revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation (COM(2026) 1120 final, 2026/0358(COD)) and a Simplification Directive amending the Consumer Rights Directive and the 2002 ePrivacy Directive. The DFA is a directly applicable Regulation that would restate and largely repeal the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, alongside a blacklist of automatically unfair 'dark patterns' (drip pricing, pre-ticked defaults, false availability/popularity claims, fake notifications), fairness-by-design requirements, obligations on influencer marketing, agentic commerce, virtual/in-app currencies, loot boxes and dynamic pricing, and rules on personalised advertising. It explicitly interacts with the AI Act, GDPR, DMA, DSA and the proposed KIDS Act. Fines can reach up to 6% of global turnover, and the revised CPC Regulation would grant the European Commission direct investigation and fining powers in large-scale cross-border cases.

This is the EU's next broad regulatory step after the AI Act and directly constrains how AI chatbots, AI agents and recommender/personalised-advertising systems may be designed and operated for EU consumers, wherever the trader is established. AI-specific conduct (agentic commerce, automated personalised marketing, addictive design) is now pulled into a binding consumer-protection instrument with substantial fines and a Commission-level enforcement power, on top of AI Act and data-protection exposure. It will raise compliance cost for any platform, retailer or AI-agent operator targeting EU consumers.

Traders deploying AI chatbots/agents, personalised advertising and interface design for EU consumers should track the DFA legislative process and begin auditing dark-pattern design choices, influencer/agent marketing disclosures, dynamic-pricing and in-app-currency transparency, and consent/flows for minors; the European Parliament and Council now enter the negotiation phase.