19.03.2025

The Digital Services Act aims to prevent illegal and harmful activities online, ensuring consumers ‘safety, protecting their fundamental rights and creating a fair and open environment for service providers. This Regulation establishes, inter alia, the conditions under which intermediary service providers in the European Union can receive complaints regarding the existence of illegal content, goods or services online.

According to the DSA, "illegal content" refers to any information, which, in itself or by its reference to an activity, including the sale of products or provision of services, does not observe the Union law or the national law of any Member State which is in compliance with Union Law, irrespective of the precise subject matter or nature of that law. Therefore, content is illegal when it violates one of the laws in force in Romania or any other EU member states. This includes racist and xenophobic incitement to violence and hatred, child abuse content, terrorist content, copyright infringement, dangerous and illegal content.

Law no.50/2024 establishes the national measures for the application of the DSA, outlining the responsibilities of ANCOM, as a Digital Services Coordinator, and the legal framework for the relevant authorities to issue orders requiring the provider of intermediary services to remove illegal content.

Reporting illegal content

The DSA provides for three courses of action to counter illegal content:

• Service recipients’ notification to the hosting service providers

The recipient of the service can report to the hosting service providers the existence of certain information that he/she considers illegal, within the services offered by them. The providers have the obligation to establish notification submitting mechanisms. Those mechanisms must be accessible and user friendly and allow notifications to be submitted exclusively by electronic means.

In order to be processed, a notification sent to the hosting service provider must include: a sufficiently justified explanation of the reasons why the recipient claims that the information in question constitutes illegal content, an indication of the exact electronic location of that information (e.g. U.R.L. or, if necessary, additional information which allows the illegal content to be identified, adapted according to the type of content and the specific type of hosting service), name and address of the recipient making the notification, with certain exceptions, and a statement confirming that the notifier has sent, in good faith, a complete and accurate notification. 

• Trusted flaggers’ reporting to online platforms

A trusted flagger is an entity demonstrating that it has specific expertise and competence for detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content, that it is independent of any online platform provider and it conducts its activities in a way that enables it to submit notifications with diligence, accuracy and objectivity. ANCOM has established a procedure for granting, upon request, the status of trusted flagger to any entity that meets all the conditions mentioned above.

According to the DSA, providers of online platforms that are not micro and small enterprises must take the necessary measures to ensure that notifications submitted by trusted flaggers on illegal content are prioritized.

• Relevant authorities’ issuing removal order on illegal content

According to Law no 50/2024, the relevant authorities are public institutions or authorities with competences in the supervision of a certain sector or activity field. In accordance with the national provisions, the relevant authorities shall rule on the illegal content online. 

According to the DSA and to Law no 50/2024, the relevant authorities may order that the providers of intermediary services act against one or more specific items of illegal content, provide certain information about one or more specific individual recipients of the service or restore the content, if content was removed, being erroneously labelled as illegal by a provider.

Orders may also be issued by judicial authority in the context of actions, activities or procedures carried out by them according to the legal powers conferred. 

As the Digital Services Coordinator in Romania, ANCOM does not moderate content, it does not act as an appeal body against decisions of intermediary service providers related to illegal content and does not act as an out-of-court dispute settlement body between different parties or different users regarding illegal content.

ANCOM only evaluates illegal content specifically in situations where the Authority is legally designated as the relevant authority (e.g. ANCOM has the role of supervisory and control authority in terms of placing radio equipment on the market or in terms of electromagnetic compatibility).

All about digital services on ANCOM InfoCenter

For the interested parties, the Authority has detailed, in a plain language, all the relevant information regarding the application of the Digital Services Regulation in Romania, in a dedicated section on the ANCOM InfoCenter. This section explains the provisions of the European legislation and the obligations of intermediary service providers. Moreover, ANCOM described the steps that users must take to report illegal content, restrictions on content, as well as the users' rights.