The Federal Antimonopoly Service’s (FAS) Expert Council, which includes representatives of the regulator and participants in the IT market, has developed five basic principles for the operation of digital platforms.

The proposed principals include:

• reasonably open digital platforms (in particular, free access to information on how the ranking of search results occurs);
• neutral attitude towards all parties to the market (without illegal provision of advantages to one’s own solutions);
• ensuring the independence of platform users when interacting with them and the absence of abuse of a dominant position to impose unfavorable terms of contracts on hotels;
• avoidance of expansive and ambiguous wording in the rules of operation (user agreements) of digital platforms;
• ensuring the rights of platform users, including by considering their requests and providing them with full answers.

In the future, the regulator plans to work out a mechanism for resolving disputes that may arise if the basic rules are not followed. Yandex, Avito and AliExpress stated that they participated in the discussion of the basic principles of the FAS and support them.

In September 2020, FAS proposed new amendments to the law against digital monopolies, introducing reinforcement of ordering fines for repeated breaches of antimonopoly laws.

Original (in Russian)