Working with Influencers? The EU's Digital Fairness Act Could Change Your Job

The Digital Fairness Act (DFA) is a new EU law proposed to protected consumers in the digital space.

If you're a communicator working with influencers (or hoping to), then you’ve probably already run into questions about transparency. When should an influencer say a post is an ad? How clear is “clear”? What happens when they don’t?

The moment she realised the ''honest review'' was a brand collab.

The EU’s upcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA) is shaping up to be a major answer to those questions. It’s still in the works, but the direction is clear: brands, platforms, and creators will need to step up their fairness game.

In this post, I’ll break down what the DFA is, why it matters for comms professionals (especially in influencer marketing), and how we can start preparing for what’s coming.

🧐 So, What Is the EU Digital Fairness Act?

The Digital Fairness Act (DFA) is a proposed EU law designed to tackle unfair online practices like hidden advertising, manipulative design (a.k.a. dark patterns), addictive features, unfair contract settings, and influencer posts that don’t clearly say “this is an ad”.

Transparency: Gordon gets it.

The DFA is the next step after a 2024 “Fitness Check” by the European Commission, which examined whether current consumer laws were fit for the digital age. It found major gaps, showing that 97% of top EU websites use at least one dark pattern, while 40% of online shops make it hard to unsubscribe or hide extra charges. Most importantly for us, they noted that influencer marketing is often unclear or misleading.

The public consultation launched on 17 July 2025 and runs until 9 October 2025, and we can already see how the DFA might patch those gaps by clarifying how we label ads, structure influencer contracts, and design user flows. A formal draft law is expected by Q3 2026 .

📖 Why It Matters for Communicators Working With Influencers

Here's the thing: If you work with creators (or your client does), this is your business. The DFA isn’t just another policy acronym floating around Brussels. It’s a wake-up call for how we do influencer marketing in Europe.

The Commission’s own study of 576 influencers in the EU found that 80% of them have shared content that looked like an ad… but wasn’t labelled as one. That’s huge. And if you’re helping a brand design a campaign, or drafting guidelines for creator partnerships, it means the way we brief, contract, and disclose needs to be sharper.

Right now, we kind of rely on vibes when we come across influencer content (you know, looking around, checking if it says #ad somewhere).

The DFA will likely force platforms and creators to follow stricter, clearer rules, especially around transparency and fairness. No more blurred lines between personal recommendation and paid promo.

If you’re early in your career, this is a chance to build your influencer knowledge with a policy lens. When the new rules land, brands will need people who can speak both languages: legal transparency and creator culture. That could be you.

📍🇮🇪 What It Means In an Irish Context

While this is an EU-wide initiative, Ireland isn’t just passively watching from the sidelines. In fact, as the de facto European hub for tech giants, platforms, and data-driven companies, Ireland is in a pretty unique, and high-stakes position.

For Irish communicators and public affairs professionals, this means two things:

1. Dublin is closer to Brussels than you think (not just geographically)

While the Digital Fairness Act might be a Brussels file, its implementation? That’s going to play out right here, where the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) and regulators will be under pressure to apply and enforce those new rules. The scrutiny will be real, especially when it comes to hidden advertising, vague endorsements, and anything that even smells like dark patterns.

Ireland is where most Big Tech firms (you know, the same platforms that influencer marketing lives on?) are headquartered for their EU operations.

As a matter of fact, 👀 enforcement is already here... remember in 2024, when prominent influencers (including rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll) received compliance notices for failing to clearly disclose paid content? The case included famous brands like Dunnes Stores and Aldi. This wasn’t just a warning: it was a demonstration of teeth, and it shows what’s to come under the DFA.

2. There's opportunity (and responsibility) for Irish-based agencies.

If you're working in or with an Irish agency, you’re probably already drafting disclaimers, auditing creator campaigns, or rewriting contracts to keep up with all these changes. Or… you should be. Brands will lean heavily on Irish-based comms teams to make sense of this regulation, not just because it’s law, but because the reputational risks of getting it wrong are growing.

“But we’re just a small Irish team, not Meta” yeah, well, Brussels doesn’t care. And your audience probably doesn’t either.

So whether you're writing influencer briefs, managing public affairs for a tech client, or working in internal comms at a startup, now’s the time to level up your understanding of EU digital policy. This is about more than legal compliance: it’s about trust, transparency, and doing communications in a way that actually respects the people on the other end of the screen.

💡Want to Learn More?

If this sparked your curiosity (or if you’re about to brief a client on the rules), here’s a bundle of useful links that go deeper into what the Digital Fairness Act is, how it connects with influencer marketing, and what Ireland’s doing already:

📘 EU-level sources:

• EU Commission’s Digital Fairness Consultation Page

• Summary of the 2024 Fitness Check Findings

• Overview of the Digital Fairness Act (Wikipedia, helpful for quick context)

  
  

🇮🇪 Irish context & guidelines:

• CCPC Guidelines on Influencer Advertising

• Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) – 2023 Joint Guidance with CCPC

• Mason Hayes Curran: Legal Brief on Influencer Compliance