AUREK will prepare a review of the draft law on the work of markets and aggregators

Among the association’s proposals:

• Maintenance by FAS of the state register of large sites that meet the requirements of Article 10.1 of the Law “On Protection of Competition”.

• Guarantee state monitoring of working conditions with the markets that will be included in the registry. Monitoring, according to AUREK, must take into account quantitative and qualitative assessments of the financial conditions of suppliers, order collection points (POI) and other market counterparties.

• The aggravation changes to the contract that affect downward the comprehensive monitoring indicators of the companies registered in the registry must be limited to once every three months.

• Limit site fines and other deductions to a percentage of the seller or pickup point owner’s income during the same period. Termination of the agreement with the platform should cancel the accumulated fines (except in cases of actual property damage).

• Markets must ensure automated transmission of tax information to the Federal Tax Service and independent storage of data on all transactions that were concluded using the platform.

The proposals will be sent to the Ministry of Economic Development and the government apparatus after approval by the AUREK council, the association highlighted.

The Ministry of Economic Development prepared the draft law “On the platform economy” in September. The document aims to create a legal framework to regulate the platform economy. It determines the order of interaction between marketplaces, food delivery services, ride booking services and taxi aggregators with their partners: sellers of goods, service providers and consumers.

In October, the document was criticized by the FAS. The service has prepared more than 40 comments on the bill, including the risk of platforms evading regulation, conflicts in the concept of “large intermediary platform” and potential negative consequences for retail. The regulator proposed finalizing the document, eliminating the risks of discrimination and conflict.

According to Vedomosti, one of the latest versions of the bill describes the conditions under which markets will be exempt from liability for violating intellectual property rights. Under the proposed changes, companies will not be liable if they did not know about the violation or, when they found out, took all necessary measures to eliminate it.