From e-commerce, holiday pictures to political content, online platforms play an enormous role in the 21stcentury’s society. In the EU, the Digital Services Act (DSA), regulates them since 2021. On 29 October 2025, The Federal Council launched consultations for a draft Federal Act on Communication Platforms and Search Engines (ComPA) similar to the DSA. In some respects, however, the draft act fails to ensure an equivalent level of protection for Swiss consumers and citizens online than that in the EU. The Federal Council should fix this problem.
To a large extent, the draft ComPA is a simplified version of the DSA. As a reason to legislate, the Federal Council mentions that platforms are unlikely to voluntarily and spontaneously extend the obligations imposed upon them in the EU to Switzerland. And yet, the draft act fails to ensure an equal level of protection for Swiss Citizens as the DSA does for EU ones for at least two reasons. First, the scope does not include online marketplaces and app stores. Second, it does not require platforms to mitigate the so-called ‘systemic risks’ they cause.
Problem 1: Regulated ‘platforms’ are different in Switzerland and the EU
The DSA defines an ‘online platform’ as ‘a hosting service that, at the request of a recipient of the services, stores and disseminates information to the public’ […] (Art. 3(i) DSA). There is no specific requirement as to the aims for which dissemination of that information should happen. In Switzerland, communication platforms ‘whose main purpose is to store user content and make it publicly accessible’ will be regulated. However, only when this content dissemination happens ‘for the purposes of opinion-forming, entertainment or education’ (Art. 2(1)(a)(1) ComPA). While in the EU, App Stores (such as Apple’s and Google’s) or online marketplaces (such as AliExpress) fall under the DSA’s scope, they would not fall under that of the Swiss act. This means that Swiss consumers are protected in a smaller number of fields than consumers in the EU. And even where the Swiss act would apply, the level of protection would be lower than that of the DSA.
Problem 2: The lack of risk mitigation
As they are so influential, online platforms can also cause risks for society. When these risks are big enough, we call them ‘systemic’. In the EU, a key obligation of the biggest online platforms is to mitigate the systemic risks they cause (Art. 35 DSA). In the case of Meta, for example, systemic risks concern risks to civic discourse and electoral processes. In that of AliExpress, systemic risks include the risk of dissemination of illegal content, as well as negative effects for consumer protection, notably with respect of health and minors. In turn, risk mitigation measures include enhanced verification processes for food supplement sellers, a system limiting visibility of products intended for adults and other measures aimed at reducing the sales of illegal, usually counterfeited goods. With the DSA, the European Commission can give binding effect to the commitments of an online platform to comply with its risk mitigation obligations (Art. 71 DSA). This was done in the case of AliExpress. Furthermore, the Commission can also tell an online platform which risk mitigation measures it can take to comply with its obligations (Art. 73(2) DSA) and, if case may be, render a non-compliance decision (Art. 73(1) DSA).
While the draft Swiss Act includes the obligation for online platforms to assess systemic risks (Art. 16), it does not feature any obligation to mitigate these risks. If we take the above-mentioned case of AliExpress, even if the platform were to fall within the scope of the draft ComPA, it would not be legally required to implement in respect of Switzerland the kind of measures protective to consumers it bindingly committed to implementing in the EU.
When it comes to platform regulation, Switzerland should offer at least an equal level of protection online to its citizens and consumers as the EU. First, this requires broadening the scope of the ComPA. Second, it requires adding the obligation to mitigate systemic risks into it.
