Regulating dark patterns in the EU: did Europe shed light on dark patterns? Conceptual foundations, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Digital Services Act, and their (obscure) interplay

This dissertation investigates the European Union’s regulatory approach to the phenomenon of the so-called 'dark patterns', namely, digital design techniques that steer, deceive, or coerce users into making choices they might not otherwise make. The expression has rapidly become a policy buzzword, but its conceptual boundaries and legal implications remain uncertain. The research seeks to clarify what dark patterns are, how they can be situated within existing EU law, with particular focus on EU Consumer law, and whether recent legislative developments in the digital domain have effectively enhanced the Union’s capacity to address them. The dissertation is structured around three interconnected essays. The first essay conducts a systematic literature review to map how dark patterns have been defined and conceptualised across the literature over time, thereby establishing the conceptual foundations for the remainder of the research. The second essay examines how dark patterns fit within the framework of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, one of the cornerstones of EU Consumer law. The third essay turns to the Digital Services Act, and specifically to Article 25, which introduces an explicit prohibition on manipulating users through the design or organisation of digital user interfaces; the analysis focuses specifically on its interplay with the UCPD. Taken together, the three essays lead to three main conclusions. First, dark patterns are best understood unfair commercial practices occurring in digital contexts; second, the UCPD proves relatively future-proof in addressing dark patterns thanks to ts flexible architecture and the principle of technological neutrality that characterises it; third, the DSA has a limited impact in protecting consumers from dark patterns due to its interplay with the UCPD, which confines Article 25 to a residual role, making it applicable only to a limited set of cases. Finally, the dissertation puts forward a set of proposals to inform the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act.