EU to Issue Monthly DSA Actions Against Major Digital Platforms

The EU's announced cadence of monthly DSA enforcement actions introduces a new level of regulatory pressure on major streaming and social platforms operating in Europe. This systematic approach means platforms must embed compliance into ongoing operations rather than reacting to isolated events, impacting resource allocation for legal, content moderation, and engineering teams. Competitively, it sets a strict baseline for operational behavior in the EU, potentially affecting market entry and growth strategies for all players. What to watch: The nature and severity of penalties in upcoming monthly actions, particularly as they extend to advertising practices and algorithmic transparency.

The European Commission has intensified its enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) throughout 2025 and into 2026. This includes significant fines, such as the €200 million penalty issued to Chinese e-commerce giant Temu in May 2026 for failing to assess and mitigate risks of illegal products on its platform (Politico, May 2026; The Next Web, May 2026). This marked the second major DSA enforcement action, following a €120 million fine against X (formerly Twitter) in December 2025 for transparency lapses (Compact, May 2026). Both instances underscore the EU's readiness to impose substantial penalties for non-compliance, with maximum fines reaching up to 6% of a company’s global annual turnover (EDAA, May 2026).

Beyond fines, the DSA framework has expanded to include formal integration of Codes of Conduct on topics like hate speech and disinformation, transforming voluntary standards into structured compliance expectations (Compact, May 2026). Guidelines on the protection of minors, published in July 2025, also provide clearer benchmarks for platforms, impacting external independent audits (Compact, May 2026). A delegated act adopted in July 2025 further outlines rules for qualified researchers to access platform data, enhancing scrutiny over "Very Large Online Platforms" (VLOPs) and "Very Large Online Search Engines" (VLOSEs) (Compact, May 2026).

These developments indicate a proactive, multi-pronged regulatory strategy by the EU, ensuring that compliance is not merely about avoiding fines but about fundamentally reshaping platform design and operational transparency. The Commission reaffirmed in November 2025 that the 45 million monthly active user threshold for VLOP designation remains unchanged, signaling that more platforms could be subject to these stringent rules as their user bases grow (Compact, May 2026).