EU Digital Services Act - Transparency Reporting Part 2: The Commission's Template
What changes for providers of intermediary services from the second full cycle of the DSA’s Transparency Reporting?
The recent enforcement cases once again put the spotlight on the Digital Service Act (‘DSA’) and the requirements for providers of intermediary services.
On the one hand the Commission as the supervisor of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) has shown its teeth especially with the € 120 million fine against X (main enforcement activities on the Commission’s website).
On the other hand also national authorities have taken action, from German authorities actively approaching companies and requiring them to comply with the DSA to the Irish authority mapping and investigating intermediary services. As enforcement gets under way it is more important than ever to understand the obligations under the DSA and to comply with it (for a table of all obligations under the DSA see here).
A key obligation of the DSA is the transparency reporting. Requiring intermediary services to publish such a report should serve the goal to enhance the accountability. Whereas VLOPs and VLOSEs are required to report half-yearly since 2023 (published reports), all other intermediary services have to make reports once a year starting with the reporting for the 2024 reporting cycle.
To make the reports comparable and the content of the report useful the Commission introduced templates which intermediary services are required to use from the 2025 reporting onwards.
1. Reporting Cycle and Timeline for the Transparency Report
With the second reporting cycle the Transparency Reporting for intermediary services gets into its annual rhythm. To do so the 2025 reporting covers a period from 17 Feb 2025 to 31 Fed 2025 and the following reporting cycles will cover the calendar year.
Transparency Reports shall be published latest two months after the end of the reporting period. This means that the deadline for the Transparency Reporting is now 28 Feb.
2. Content of the Transparency Report
Similar to the other obligations under the DSA also the reporting obligation follows a staggered approach, the bigger the societal impact and therefore the criticality the stricter the reporting obligation:
Subject to the reporting is information around the content moderation. For a table of table with the reporting obligation by type of provider see the Reporting Obligation Chart.
3. Form of the Transparency Report
What is new from 2025 onwards is the form of the report. The EU Commission developed an Implementation Regulation with templates for the Transparency Report in Annex I and instructions on how to use these templates in Annex II. The template shall be filled in the CSV- and XLSX-version accessible here.
The reporting template consists of two parts:
- The Quantitative Template; and
- The Qualitative Template.
The Quantitative Template has 8 sections which need to be filled with machine-readable data covering the information to be reported according to Art 15, 24 and 42. Which sub-section need to be filled depends again on the type of provider:
In the Qualitative Template intermediary services should provide meaningful and comprehensible information about the content moderation, automated means used for such. In addition to that VLOPs should include information on human resources for the content moderation.
Conclusion
The average intermediary service has in most cases nothing or little information to provide in the Transparency Report. The Commission’s Implementation Regulation and the reporting template therefore seem overly complicated for the average provider and the use of the template may cause a burdensome internal process. The fact that VLOPs and VLOSEs have already been using the Commission’s template give at least a bit of guidance.
Should you have any questions on Transparency Reporting and the new template by the Commission, get in touch with Prighter. Our experts support businesses all around the globe to ensure compliance. Prighter also provides a tool to simplify the reporting effort and deliver a compliant Transparency Report.
Annex 1: The tiered system of information to be included in the Transparency Report
