The European Commission uses Open Terms Archive to track the terms and conditions of very large online platforms (11 June 2025)

Incubated within the Digital Directorate (DNUM) of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and supported by the EU’s Next-Generation Internet program, this tool had already proven its worth during a large-scale impact assessment of Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 promoting fairness and transparency for professional users of online intermediation services.

The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs applauds the European Commission’s choice to use Open Terms Archive to track changes in the terms of use of online platforms and improve platform governance.

This digital commons (a digital resource shared, managed and maintained collectively by a community of users), already deployed across ministries in France and internationally, has a growing base of contributors. The European Commission team now actively contributes to the software, including by reporting technical improvements and fixes, reflecting the power of digital commons. It enables the European Commission to improve its monitoring of very large online platforms and very large search engines (VLOPs and VLOSEs, or “VLOPSEs”).

Due to their audience in the European Union and their role in mediating information, these platforms are subject to requirements under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Open Terms Archive enables the European Commission’s DSA Enforcement team to provide a public archive of platforms’ contractual documents based on collaborative collection by the contributor community. The Commission synchronously replicates community contributions on its own infrastructure, offering a trusted source for tracking services’ contractual documents.

Open Terms Archive enables the European Commission’s “DSA Enforcement” Department to provide a public archive of platforms’ contract documents based on a collaborative collection carried out by the community of contributors. The Commission synchronously replicates the contributions of the community on its own infrastructure, thus providing a recognized source of monitoring, and bringing the total number of services tracked by the Commission to 380 by 2025 (up from 335 in 2023).