Around the world, legislators, regulators, courts and international organisations are once again reassessing the legal framework governing the platform economy. The rapid development of artificial intelligence, evolving platform-based models, increasing cross-border digital services and changing geopolitical and economic realities have brought renewed focus to how digital markets and, in particular, the constellation of platform models should be governed. At the same time, policymakers face the challenge of strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and innovation while ensuring legal certainty, safeguarding fundamental rights and protecting specific groups (minors, vulnerable users, consumers) and maintaining public trust. Recent developments surrounding the implementation of the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act, the adoption of the revised Product Liability Directive, and the European Commission’s simplification agenda through the Digital Omnibus demonstrate that digital governance has entered a new phase. At the same time, discussions continue on how liability frameworks should evolve to respond to increasingly autonomous AI systems and digital services which are interwoven in the increasingly sophisticated and extensively offered platform functionalities.
These questions have long been central to the work of the European Law Institute (ELI). Through its independent, consensus-driven and multidisciplinary approach, ELI brings together judges, academics, legal practitioners, policymakers, regulators and industry representatives from across Europe to develop practical legal solutions capable of supporting innovation while strengthening legal certainty. Our work ranges from the ELI Model Rules on Online Platforms and the ALI-ELI Principles for a Data Economy to the ELI Guiding Principles and Model Rules on Digital Assistants for Consumer Contracts (in collaboration with UNCITRAL), as well as recent contributions on digital assets, automated decision-making, product liability and the Digital Omnibus.
This year also marks ELI’s fifteenth anniversary. Since its establishment, ELI has grown into a community of around 1,800 individual members and more than 200 institutional members, united by a shared commitment to improving the law for the benefit of society in Europe and in the global scene through independent legal research, dialogue and consensus-building. In an increasingly interconnected digital world, but an emerging multipolar international landscape, that collaborative approach has never been more important.
I look forward to contributing to this discussion at RAID 2026 and to exchanging ideas with policymakers, regulators, industry and fellow legal experts. I also warmly invite those interested in shaping the future of European law to discover ELI’s work, consider joining our community and, if possible, participate in our 15th Anniversary Annual Conference in Paris from 1–4 September 2026 (more here), where many of these questions will continue to be explored from a broader European and international perspective.
By Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, President of the European Law Institute
