From 19 May to 31 August 2025, the European Commission opened a public consultation calling for feedback on the Consumer Agenda 2025–2030 and action plan on consumers in the Single Market. In line with the Commission’s objectives to empower consumers, foster a fairer, greener, and more transparent marketplace, and establish a strategic framework for EU consumer policy up to 2030, CREATe submitted its response to this public consultation on 28 August.
Through this response, we draw the European Commission’s attention to several emerging challenges in the digital environment, which risk undermining the principle of fairness and causing significant harm to consumer welfare. We recommend that the Commission prioritises these issues in future policy initiatives.
Specifically, the response identifies the following challenges:
- the use of algorithmic profiling that enables unfair design practices in online games, with companies using it to automate dynamic virtual environments and, consequently, encouraging spending and deploying manipulative design features (Challenge 1).
- the interference of technological protection measures (TPMs) with exceptions and limitations to copyright, as TPMs routinely block legitimate uses, such as preservation and text-and-data mining, diminishing long-term consumer welfare (Challenge 2);
- the implications of agentic AI for digital fairness and consumer protection, as these systems create risks of diffuse accountability during consumer decision-making (Challenge 3);
- affinity-based algorithmic pricing, which operates in a regulatory grey zone, jeopardising collective consumer welfare and exacerbating inequalities (Challenge 4); and
- legal uncertainty in applying EU algorithmic transparency requirements to hybrid services, particularly music streaming platforms, since these services use algorithms to recommend music and other content to consumers without providing adequate information to support informed consumer decision-making (Challenge 5).
To better support the development of actionable regulation, we also include some policy recommendations. For the full consultation response, please check the working paper below.
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Consumer Agenda 2025-2030: CREATe response to the European Commission consultation
Weiwei Yi, Kristofer Erickson, Zihao Li, Aline Iramina and Martin Kretschmer
CREATe Working Paper 2025/8
Abstract
This working paper develops from a CREATe response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the Consumer Agenda 2025–2030. In line with the submission on 28 August 2025, this paper identifies challenges that jeopardise fairness and consumer welfare within the European Union. It highlights five pressing issues: algorithmic profiling-based unfair designs in online games; interference of technological protection measures (TPMs) with exceptions and limitations to copyright; agentic AI and its implications for digital fairness and consumer protection; affinity-based algorithmic pricing as a regulatory grey zone; and legal uncertainty in applying EU algorithmic transparency to music streaming. To address these challenges, the paper proposes reforms including enhanced transparency and design guidance, updates to EU copyright law, explicit inclusion of agentic AI and affinity-based pricing in the consumer protection agenda, and clarification of the consumer law provisions for hybrid platforms.
Full paper can be downloaded here.
Alternatively, you can check our contribution on the European Commission’s website.