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| AI-generated illustration of a smartphone showing a shopping app protected by a shield under a European Union flag, with warning symbols over deceptive buttons and fake countdown timers. |
On Wednesday 11 November 2026, the European Commission presented a law that could change the look and feel of almost every website and app used in Europe. The Digital Fairness Act, unveiled by the Commission's justice chief Michael McGrath, takes aim at the design tricks that push people into spending more than they meant to, or into choices they did not really make. Companies that use unfair digital trade practices — deceptive interface designs known as dark patterns, personalised advertising aimed at children, subscription traps, and misleading dynamic pricing — could face fines of as much as 6% of their annual global turnover. For a company the size of a major online marketplace or social platform, that is a penalty measured in billions. The proposal still has a long road ahead: it must be negotiated with the 27 EU member states and the European Parliament before it can become law, a process that typically takes months and often reshapes the final text. But the direction is now set, and the draft shows exactly which tricks Brussels wants gone. This article explains what the Act bans, who it affects, what it means for shoppers, apps and games, and why businesses are already pushing back.
The core of the Act is a blacklist. The draft Regulation, seen by journalists before its formal presentation, lists ten manipulative design practices that would be deemed unfair in all circumstances, so regulators would no longer have to prove harm case by case. Among them are fake scarcity counters — the "only 2 left" or "14 people are looking at this" messages that create a false impression of urgency — and drip pricing, where unavoidable fees appear only at the final step of checkout. The Act would also ban design features that encourage compulsive or excessive use, and give users the right to switch such features off, individually or all at once. It replaces the EU's 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive with a regulation that applies directly in every member state, closing gaps that the old directive, written before the age of the smartphone, never covered. The draft would apply twelve months after it enters into force, giving companies a year to redesign the interfaces that break its rules. The Commission says the changes could save EU consumers up to 13.7 billion euros a year — a figure that shows how much money Brussels believes these design tricks currently extract from shoppers.
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The ten banned tricks: dark patterns, drip pricing and fake urgency
Dark patterns are the heart of the Act, and the name covers a family of design choices that all do the same thing: steer a person towards a purchase, a subscription or a setting they would not have chosen on a clear screen. The blacklist in the draft covers ten of them. Fake counters are the most familiar: a hotel site claiming only one room remains at a price, or a shop showing how many people supposedly bought a product, to create an impression of scarcity that may not exist. Drip pricing is the practice of showing one price and then adding unavoidable fees at checkout, so the price a shopper agreed to is never the price they pay. The draft also targets designs that make it hard to cancel — the subscription trap, where signing up takes one click and cancelling takes a maze of menus — and requires a clear cancellation button instead. Free trials would need the user's consent before converting into a paid plan, rather than quietly rolling over and charging the card on file. Personalised advertising aimed at children or vulnerable consumers would be banned outright. And gambling-like features that encourage overspending, such as pay-to-win and pay-to-progress mechanics in games, are targeted especially where children are involved. The list is deliberately specific: by naming the practices, the Act lets regulators act without first proving that a particular design harmed a particular person, which has been the slow and expensive part of enforcement under the old rules.
Dynamic pricing and ticket sales: what sellers must now disclose
One of the most concrete changes in the Act concerns dynamic pricing, the practice of changing prices in real time based on demand. It has drawn heavy criticism from consumers, most visibly in ticket sales, where prices for concerts and events can multiply in minutes as demand surges. The Act does not ban dynamic pricing. Instead, it forces transparency: traders using it for event tickets would have to clearly and prominently disclose how many tickets in the relevant category are available at the advertised price, as well as the maximum price a consumer may be required to pay. The idea is that a shopper who can see that only a handful of tickets remain at the low price, and what the ceiling price is, can make an informed decision rather than a panicked one. The same logic applies beyond tickets. Wherever a price moves with demand, the seller would have to show the shopper enough of the picture to judge whether the price is fair. For the ticket industry, which has faced repeated complaints about opaque pricing and resale markups, this is the most immediately practical part of the Act. For shoppers, it is the part most likely to be felt in everyday life: the next time a price jumps while you are deciding, the seller would have to show you why, and how far it can go.
Children, influencers and addictive design: the protections for minors
The Act's strongest protections are for children. Personalised advertising targeting children or vulnerable consumers would be banned, and the draft takes aim at the features that keep young users spending and scrolling: gambling-like mechanics in games, such as pay-to-win and pay-to-progress systems that encourage overspending, and engagement features designed to encourage compulsive use. Article 17 of the draft allows users to disable, individually or all at once, the features that encourage compulsive or excessive use — a right that would apply to everyone, but matters most for children and for parents trying to manage a child's screen time. The Act also addresses influencer marketing, requiring clearer disclosure when a post is a paid promotion, closing a gap that has let undisclosed advertising reach young audiences on social platforms. And a plan to revise the separate Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation would empower the Commission to investigate big cases spanning several EU countries and hand out fines of up to 6% of a company's global annual revenue. Taken together, these measures amount to a view that the design of an app or a game is not a neutral choice: when the design is built to maximise spending or screen time from children, the law should treat that as a consumer protection problem, not a business model.
The 6% fine: how enforcement would work, and who is worried
The headline number in the Act is the fine: up to 6% of a company's annual global turnover for unfair digital trade practices. That is the same order of magnitude as the penalties under the EU's flagship tech laws, and it is deliberately set high enough that even the largest platforms cannot treat it as a cost of doing business. The draft would also give the Commission stronger powers to investigate cases that span several member states, rather than leaving enforcement to national regulators one country at a time. Some businesses have already criticised the proposal, arguing that it overlaps with existing laws and with a separate plan to keep children safe online — the argument being that the same conduct is being regulated twice, and that companies will face conflicting requirements. That criticism is worth taking seriously, because overlapping rules are a real compliance burden, and the history of EU tech law includes cases where businesses struggled to satisfy two regulators at once. But the overlap argument also reveals the Act's purpose: the existing laws were written for a different era, and the Commission's view is that they have not stopped the practices the Act targets. The draft was seen by Reuters on 9 November, two days before the formal presentation, and the business response since then has followed the usual pattern for EU tech legislation: warnings about complexity and cost, followed by months of lobbying as the text moves through negotiation.
What happens next: negotiation, delay and the long road to law
It is important to be clear about what the presentation on 11 November actually was. The Digital Fairness Act is a proposal, not a law. Before it can take effect, it must be negotiated with EU member states and the European Parliament, a process that typically takes months and often reshapes the final text in significant ways. The draft Regulation applies twelve months after it enters into force, so even in the fastest plausible timeline, the bans would not bite until well into 2027 at the earliest, and more likely later. The negotiation will be where the real fights happen: over the exact list of ten banned practices, over the size of the fines, over whether the Commission or national regulators take the lead on enforcement, and over the overlap with existing law that businesses are already flagging. The Parliament has historically pushed for stronger consumer protections than the Commission proposes, while member states have pushed back on enforcement powers, so the final text could end up tougher in some places and weaker in others. For shoppers, the practical meaning is that nothing changes tomorrow — the tricks the Act targets are still legal today. For companies, the practical meaning is the opposite: the design of their websites, apps and games will be judged against this draft from now on, and the cheapest time to fix a dark pattern is before the law forces you to.
Checklist: what to check on your own apps and subscriptions
- Look for fake urgency: if a site says only a few items remain, or that many people are viewing the same product, ask whether the number is real — under the Act, fake counters would be banned outright.
- Check your subscriptions: find the cancel button now, before you need it, and note whether cancelling is as easy as signing up was — the Act would require a clear cancellation option.
- Check free trials: note the date a trial converts to a paid plan, and whether you were asked for consent — the Act would require consent before the first charge.
- Watch ticket prices: when a price jumps, check whether the seller shows how many tickets remain at the advertised price and what the maximum price is — that disclosure is what the Act would require.
- Check children's apps and games: look for pay-to-win or pay-to-progress mechanics and personalised ads aimed at children — both are targeted by the Act.
- Turn off compulsive features: the Act would give you the right to disable engagement features individually or all at once, so check what your apps already let you switch off.
- If you run a website or an app, audit your own design: fake scarcity, drip pricing and hard-to-find cancel buttons are the ten practices on the blacklist, and fixing them early is cheaper than redesigning under a deadline.
- If you buy from EU shops, remember the timeline: the Act is a proposal, not a law, and the bans would apply twelve months after it enters into force, so the changes will arrive gradually.
Bottom line
The Digital Fairness Act is the EU's most direct attempt yet to regulate not what companies sell, but how they sell it. By blacklisting ten specific design tricks — fake scarcity, drip pricing, subscription traps, personalised ads aimed at children, pay-to-win mechanics — and backing the ban with fines of up to 6% of global turnover, Brussels is saying that the design of a website or an app is a consumer protection issue, not just a matter of taste. The proposal is not yet law, and the negotiation ahead will change it, but the direction is clear and the timeline is now public: presented on 11 November 2026, with a year to comply once it enters into force. For shoppers, the Act is a promise that the tricks that cost them money and attention will eventually be illegal. For companies, it is a warning that the interface itself is now regulated. The test will be in the negotiation — whether the blacklist survives intact, whether the fines stay at 6%, and whether enforcement is strong enough to matter. Until then, the most useful thing any shopper can do is the simplest: notice the tricks. The Act exists because they work, and they work because most of us never stop to see them.
Reference sources
- Reuters, via The Indian Express, "Companies risk fines of 6% global turnover for unfair digital trade practices, EU draft law shows", 10 November 2026
- Reuters, via FroggyWeb, "EU threatens significant fines for unfair online trade practices", 11 November 2026
- Agence Europe, "With 'Digital Fairness Act', European Commission targets dark patterns and replaces Unfair Commercial Practices Directive", 9 November 2026
- NovaNews, "EU proposes new digital rules to tackle influencer ads and addictive features", 11 November 2026
- Reuters, via Biggo Finance, "EU Draft Law Would Slap 6% Global Revenue Fines on Unfair Digital Trade Tactics", 9 November 2026
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