# Digital Services Coordinators under DSA — legal context bundle

> Curated from overview.legal on 2026-08-22. Canonical page: https://overview.legal/topics/digital-services-coordinators-dsa
> Sources are cited per item. Verify against the official texts before relying on them.

This new topic is needed because Digital Services Coordinators are a distinct institutional role under DSA with specific designation procedures, responsibilities, and powers that warrant dedicated coverage separate from general competent authorities.

## Overview

## Legal Framework

Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) are established as the primary national supervisory authorities under Articles 38–43 of the DSA. Each Member State must designate a single DSC responsible for coordinating the enforcement of the Regulation within its territory (Article 38(1)). The DSC must possess the necessary resources and expertise to carry out its functions independently, without external interference (Article 39). Where a Member State designates multiple competent authorities, it must allocate responsibilities clearly and designate the DSC as the central point of contact (Article 38(3)).

DSCs hold broad supervisory and investigative powers under Article 40, including the authority to request information, conduct inspections, and issue compliance orders. Article 41 empowers DSCs to initiate proceedings against providers of intermediary services that violate their obligations, including the failure to act on orders issued under Article 9 (orders to act against illegal content) or Article 10 (orders to provide information). Recital 34 clarifies that national authorities may issue such orders to providers established in other Member States, provided the orders comply with Union law and the Charter.

The DSC's enforcement toolkit includes the ability to impose interim measures and, ultimately, fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover (Article 42). Article 43 mandates structured cooperation between DSCs across Member States, including mutual assistance and information exchange, ensuring that enforcement is not confined to national silos.

## Key Developments

No significant case law has yet crystallized around DSC enforcement actions, as Member States completed their transposition deadlines by February 2024 and are still operationalizing their DSCs. The European Commission has, however, taken direct enforcement action against designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) under Article 39(2), bypassing DSCs for the most systemic cases. This signals a practical division of labor: DSCs handle non-VLOP intermediary services, while the Commission retains direct supervisory authority over the largest platforms.

Member States have designated diverse institutional bodies as DSCs, ranging from media regulators to telecommunications authorities, reflecting differing national traditions. The European Board for Digital Services, established under Article 56, serves as the coordinating body among DSCs and the Commission, guiding consistent interpretation and joint investigations under Article 44.

## Practical Guidance

- **Identify your lead DSC early.** Providers established in the EU must determine which Member State's DSC has primary supervisory jurisdiction, as this authority will serve as the main interlocutor for compliance matters under Article 38.
- **Maintain ready-to-deploy information response protocols.** Article 10 orders can arrive with strict deadlines; providers must have internal workflows to collect, review, and transmit the requested data within the prescribed timeframe.
- **Implement a robust notice-and-action mechanism.** Article 16 requires providers to act on notices of illegal content; DSCs will assess whether these mechanisms function effectively during inspections.
- **Prepare for cross-border cooperation requests.** Under Article 43, DSCs routinely exchange information and provide mutual assistance; providers operating across borders should anticipate multi-jurisdictional inquiries and maintain consistent compliance records.
- **Monitor DSC guidance publications.** As DSCs issue interpretive guidance and best-practice recommendations in their respective jurisdictions, providers should track these documents to anticipate enforcement priorities and adapt compliance programs accordingly.

## Legislation (full text of key provisions)

### Right to lodge a complaint

*Source: DSA, dsa-art-53-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/94952*

Recipients of the service and any body, organisation or association mandated to exercise the rights conferred by this Regulation on their behalf shall have the right to lodge a complaint against providers of intermediary services alleging an infringement of this Regulation with the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State where the recipient of the service is located or established. The Digital Services Coordinator shall assess the complaint and, where appropriate, transmit it to the Digital Services Coordinator of establishment, accompanied, where considered appropriate, by an opinion. Where the complaint falls under the responsibility of another competent authority in its Member State, the Digital Services Coordinator receiving the complaint shall transmit it to that authority. During these proceedings, both parties shall have the right to be heard and receive appropriate information about the status of the complaint, in accordance with national law.

### Recital 113 — Digital Services Coordinator designation

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-113-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95623*

Member States can designate an existing national authority with the function of the Digital Services Coordinator, or with specific tasks to supervise the application and enforce this Regulation, provided that any such appointed authority complies with the requirements laid down in this Regulation, such as in relation to its independence. Moreover, Member States are in principle not precluded from merging functions within an existing authority, in accordance with Union law. The measures to that effect may include, inter alia, the preclusion to dismiss the president or a board member of a collegiate body of an existing authority before the expiry of their terms of office, on the sole ground that an institutional reform has taken place involving the merger of different functions within one authority, in the absence of any rules guaranteeing that such dismissals do not jeopardise the independence and impartiality of such members.

### Recital 110 — national Digital Services Coordinator designation

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-110-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95617*

Given the cross-border nature of the services at stake and the horizontal range of obligations introduced by this Regulation, one authority appointed with the task of supervising the application and, where necessary, enforcing this Regulation should be identified as a Digital Services Coordinator in each Member State. Where more than one competent authority is appointed to supervise the application of, and enforce, this Regulation, only one authority in that Member State should be designated as a Digital Services Coordinator. The Digital Services Coordinator should act as the single contact point with regard to all matters related to the application of this Regulation for the Commission, the Board, the Digital Services Coordinators of other Member States, as well as for other competent authorities of the Member State in question. In particular, where several competent authorities are entrusted with tasks under this Regulation in a given Member State, the Digital Services Coordinator should coordinate and cooperate with those authorities in accordance with the national law setting their respective tasks and without prejudice to the independent assessment of the other competent authorities. While not entailing any hierarchical supraordination over other competent authorities in the exercise of their tasks, the Digital Services Coordinator should ensure effective involvement of all relevant competent authorities and should timely report their assessment in the context of cooperation on supervision and enforcement at Union level. Moreover, in addition to the specific mechanisms provided for in this Regulation as regards cooperation at Union level, Member State should also ensure cooperation among the Digital Services Coordinator and other competent authorities designated at national level, where applicable, through appropriate tools, such as by pooling of resources, joint task forces, joint investigations and mutual assistance mechanisms.

### Recital 122 — Digital Services Coordinator activity reporting

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-122-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95641*

The Digital Services Coordinator should regularly publish, for example on its website, a report on the activities carried out under this Regulation. In particular, the report should be published in a machine-readable format and include an overview of complaints received and of their follow-up, such as the overall number of complaints received and the number of complaints that led to the opening of a formal investigation or to the transmission to other Digital Services Coordinators, without referring to any personal data. Given that the Digital Services Coordinator is also made aware of orders to take action against illegal content or to provide information regulated by this Regulation through the information sharing system, the Digital Services Coordinator should include in its annual report the number and categories of such orders addressed to providers of intermediary services issued by judicial and administrative authorities in its Member State.

### Recital 119 — Digital Services Coordinator enforcement safeguards

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-119-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95635*

Member States should ensure that Digital Services Coordinators can take measures that are effective in addressing and proportionate to certain particularly serious and persistent infringements of this Regulation. Especially where those measures can affect the rights and interests of third parties, as may be the case in particular where the access to online interfaces is restricted, it is appropriate to require that the measures are subject to additional safeguards. In particular, third parties potentially affected should be afforded the opportunity to be heard and such orders should only be issued when powers to take such measures as provided by other acts of Union law or by national law, for instance to protect collective interests of consumers, to ensure the prompt removal of web pages containing or disseminating child pornography, or to disable access to services that are being used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right, are not reasonably available.

### Recital 115 — national law conditions for DSC powers

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-115-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95627*

Member States should set out in their national law, in accordance with Union law and in particular this Regulation and the Charter, the detailed conditions and limits for the exercise of the investigatory and enforcement powers of their Digital Services Coordinators, and other competent authorities where relevant, under this Regulation.

### Recital 118 — complaints to digital services coordinator

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-118-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95633*

In order to ensure effective enforcement of the obligations laid down in this Regulation, individuals or representative organisations should be able to lodge any complaint related to compliance with those obligations with the Digital Services Coordinator in the territory where they received the service, without prejudice to this Regulation’s rules on allocation of competences and to the applicable rules on handling of complaints in accordance with national principles of good administration. Complaints could provide a faithful overview of concerns related to a particular intermediary service provider’s compliance and could also inform the Digital Services Coordinator of any more cross-cutting issues. The Digital Services Coordinator should involve other national competent authorities as well as the Digital Services Coordinator of another Member State, and in particular the one of the Member State where the provider of intermediary services concerned is established, if the issue requires cross-border cooperation.

### Recital 62 — trusted flaggers reporting on notices

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-62-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95521*

Trusted flaggers should publish easily comprehensible and detailed reports on notices submitted in accordance with this Regulation. Those reports should indicate information such as the number of notices categorised by the provider of hosting services, the type of content, and the action taken by the provider. Given that trusted flaggers have demonstrated expertise and competence, the processing of notices submitted by trusted flaggers can be expected to be less burdensome and therefore faster compared to notices submitted by other recipients of the service. However, the average time taken to process may still vary depending on factors including the type of illegal content, the quality of notices, and the actual technical procedures put in place for the submission of such notices. For example, while the Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online of 2016 sets a benchmark for the participating companies with respect to the time needed to process valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech, other types of illegal content may take considerably different timelines for processing, depending on the specific facts and circumstances and types of illegal content at stake. In order to avoid abuses of the trusted flagger status, it should be possible to suspend such status when a Digital Services Coordinator of establishment opened an investigation based on legitimate reasons. The rules of this Regulation on trusted flaggers should not be understood to prevent providers of online platforms from giving similar treatment to notices submitted by entities or individuals that have not been awarded trusted flagger status under this Regulation, from otherwise cooperating with other entities, in accordance with the applicable law, including this Regulation and Regulation (EU) 2016/794 of the European Parliament and of the Council (29). The rules of this Regulation should not prevent the providers of online platforms from making use of such trusted flagger or similar mechanisms to take quick and reliable action against content that is incompatible with their terms and conditions, in particular against content that is harmful for vulnerable recipients of the service, such as minors.

### Recital 64 — suspension of abusive platform users

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-64-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95525*

Under certain conditions, providers of online platforms should temporarily suspend their relevant activities in respect of the person engaged in abusive behaviour. This is without prejudice to the freedom by providers of online platforms to determine their terms and conditions and establish stricter measures in the case of manifestly illegal content related to serious crimes, such as child sexual abuse material. For reasons of transparency, this possibility should be set out, clearly and in sufficient detail, in the terms and conditions of the online platforms. Redress should always be open to the decisions taken in this regard by providers of online platforms and they should be subject to oversight by the competent Digital Services Coordinator. Providers of online platforms should send a prior warning before deciding on the suspension, which should include the reasons for the possible suspension and the means of redress against the decision of the providers of the online platform. When deciding on the suspension, providers of online platforms should send the statement of reasons in accordance with the rules set out in this Regulation. The rules of this Regulation on misuse should not prevent providers of online platforms from taking other measures to address the provision of illegal content by recipients of their service or other misuse of their services, including through the violation of their terms and conditions, in accordance with the applicable Union and national law. Those rules are without prejudice to any possibility to hold the persons engaged in misuse liable, including for damages, provided for in Union or national law.

### Recital 93 — audit report content and transmission

*Source: DSA, dsa-rec-93-en, 2022-10-19 — https://overview.legal/posts/95583*

The audit report should be substantiated, in order to give a meaningful account of the activities undertaken and the conclusions reached. It should help inform, and where appropriate suggest improvements to the measures taken by the providers of the very large online platform and of the very large online search engine to comply with their obligations under this Regulation. The audit report should be transmitted to the Digital Services Coordinator of establishment, the Commission and the Board following the receipt of the audit report. Providers should also transmit upon completion without undue delay each of the reports on the risk assessment and the mitigation measures, as well as the audit implementation report of the provider of the very large online platform or of the very large online search engine showing how they have addressed the audit’s recommendations. The audit report should include an audit opinion based on the conclusions drawn from the audit evidence obtained. A ‘positive opinion’ should be given where all evidence shows that the provider of the very large online platform or of the very large online search engine complies with the obligations laid down by this Regulation or, where applicable, any commitments it has undertaken pursuant to a code of conduct or crisis protocol, in particular by identifying, evaluating and mitigating the systemic risks posed by its system and services. A ‘positive opinion’ should be accompanied by comments where the auditor wishes to include remarks that do not have a substantial effect on the outcome of the audit. A ‘negative opinion’ should be given where the auditor considers that the provider of the very large online platform or of the very large online search engine does not comply with this Regulation or the commitments undertaken. Where the audit opinion could not reach a conclusion for specific elements that fall within the scope of the audit, an explanation of reasons for the failure to reach such a conclusion should be included in the audit opinion. Where applicable, the report should include a description of specific elements that could not be audited, and an explanation of why these could not be audited.

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Generated by overview.legal · https://overview.legal/topics/digital-services-coordinators-dsa · 2026-08-22