Germany's Federal Network Agency today named BVOH as the first association authorized to sue under the EU P2B Regulation, giving online sellers a legal shield against platform abuses.
The German Federal Network Agency today designated the Bundesverband Onlinehandel e.V. (BVOH) as the first association authorized to bring lawsuits under the European Platform-to-Business Regulation - a milestone that significantly shifts the enforcement landscape for small and medium-sized online merchants operating on digital marketplaces across the European Union.
The announcement, published on 16 March 2026, marks the first time Germany's telecommunications and digital markets regulator has formally granted an industry association the standing to litigate on behalf of its members without requiring those members to expose their identities in court. That protection matters, because the practical barriers to enforcement have long been more psychological than legal.
According to the Federal Network Agency's press release, commercial users often find that individual products are removed from online platforms - a practice known as "delisting" - without any justification required by the P2B Regulation. Internal complaint procedures offered by platforms have frequently produced no results. The BVOH can now initiate proceedings at competent national courts within the European Union, and it can do so in its own name.
That last point is not a formality. The identity of the companies behind a lawsuit shapes how platforms respond. Merchants who publicly challenge major marketplaces risk seeing their accounts reviewed, their listings adjusted, or their relationship with the platform deteriorate in ways that are difficult to trace or prove. By permitting the BVOH to act as a named plaintiff, German law introduces a layer of structural protection that changes the calculus for individual businesses considering whether to pursue their rights.
The BVOH was founded on 8 April 2006 in Dresden and describes itself as the voice of medium-sized online commerce in Germany. Its members are exclusively online retailers and brand manufacturers, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the association's published statutes, membership fees begin at €20 per month and scale with annual turnover. Marketplaces are explicitly excluded from membership. The association's president is Andreas Müller, with Robert Krancke and Kai Vollrath serving as vice presidents.
The Platform-to-Business Regulation - formally Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 of the European Parliament and of the Council - was adopted on 20 June 2019 and has applied across EU member states since 12 July 2020. Its scope covers any provider of online intermediation services or online search engines whose commercial users are established in the Union and sell to consumers located in the Union, regardless of where the platform itself is based.
The obligations it imposes are specific. According to the regulation's text, platforms must draft terms and conditions in plain and intelligible language, notify business users at least 15 days before implementing changes to those terms, and provide written reasons before restricting or suspending a seller's access to individual listings. For full termination of service, the minimum notice period extends to 30 days, delivered on a durable medium. Non-compliant terms are null and void from the outset, with effects both retroactive and universal.
Ranking transparency forms another pillar of the framework. Platforms must set out in their terms and conditions the main parameters that determine how products appear in search results and the relative importance of those parameters. This disclosure obligation does not require revealing proprietary algorithms - the regulation explicitly exempts providers from disclosing information that would enable manipulation of search results - but it does require enough detail that commercial users can understand how to optimise their presence and compare practices across different platforms.
The regulation also addresses differentiated treatment. Where a platform offers its own goods or services alongside those of third-party sellers, it must describe any differential treatment it applies or might apply, covering data access, ranking settings, and direct or indirect fees. This provision sits at the core of ongoing tensions between marketplace operators and the businesses that depend on them.
Since May 2024, the Federal Network Agency has held responsibility for enforcing the P2B Regulation in Germany under the Digital Services Act (§ 22 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz). The agency's jurisdiction applies when commercial users are established or resident in Germany and offer goods or services to EU consumers through the relevant platform - regardless of where that platform is headquartered. According to the Bundesnetzagentur's published documentation, violations can result in orders and fines of up to €300,000.
The agency's tasks include, among other things, examining whether associations meet the conditions for designation under Article 14 of the P2B Regulation. For the BVOH to qualify, the Federal Network Agency assessed three core criteria: that the association pursues objectives in the collective interest of commercial users, that it has no profit-making intention, and that its decision-making is not subject to undue influence from third-party providers - meaning platform operators cannot steer its agenda.
According to the press release, the BVOH applied for this designation, triggering a formal examination process. The outcome is the first successful designation in Germany under the regulation's associational standing provisions.
The designation arrives against a backdrop of intensifying platform enforcement in Germany. On 5 February 2026, the Bundeskartellamt issued a final prohibition order against Amazon, banning the company from applying price control mechanisms that constrained how third-party sellers on amazon.de could set their prices. The order also required Amazon to disgorge €59 million in economic benefits - the first time the German competition authority had used disgorgement powers under provisions reformed in 2023.
The Bundesnetzagentur contributed its expertise to that proceeding. According to the Bundesnetzagentur's P2B documentation, the Amazon case involved price control mechanisms whose rules and notifications lacked sufficient transparency for marketplace sellers. Sellers could not predict with reasonable accuracy when their listings would be removed or excluded from the Buy Box - the prominent display area that accounts for a substantial portion of marketplace sales. The Federal Network Agency's role in that case was advisory, providing input on P2B transparency and fairness standards.
The Bundeskartellamt had issued preliminary findings on 2 June 2025, identifying three categories of concern around Amazon's pricing enforcement architecture, which employed algorithms, statistical models, heuristics, and machine learning to calculate dynamic price caps. The competition authority found violations under both Section 19a(2) of the German Competition Act and the general abuse provisions of Section 19 GWB and Article 102 TFEU. Germany had classified Amazon as having "paramount significance for competition across markets" in July 2022, a designation confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice in April 2024.
Delisting is the specific grievance the BVOH designation is designed to address more effectively. According to the Federal Network Agency's press release, platform complaint systems have offered little practical relief to merchants whose products are removed without explanation. The BVOH can now pursue these cases through national courts.
The P2B Regulation's provisions on restriction, suspension, and termination require platforms to provide affected sellers with a statement of reasons on a durable medium, referencing the specific facts, third-party notifications if any, and the applicable grounds from the platform's own terms. Where a platform reverses a restriction decision, it must reinstate the seller without undue delay, including restoring access to any data generated during that seller's use of the service.
However, the regulation contains important carve-outs. A platform is not required to provide reasons where doing so would contravene a legal obligation, or where it can demonstrate that the seller concerned has repeatedly violated the applicable terms. And for small enterprises, as defined by Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, the obligations around internal complaint systems and mediator designation do not apply - though such enterprises may voluntarily implement those systems.
A parallel debate about whether P2B should survive
The BVOH's new standing to sue arrives as the P2B Regulation faces an existential challenge at the European Commission level. The Netherlands formally raised concerns in December 2025 about Commission proposals that would effectively eliminate the regulation, on the grounds that its obligations overlap with the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. The Dutch government argued that P2B rules differ from those frameworks in purpose, content, scope, and enforcement level, providing extra protection particularly for small and medium-sized businesses that the broader instruments cannot fully replicate.
The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets had recently acquired P2B enforcement powers and was already regularly receiving non-compliance reports about platforms. Eliminating the regulation would mean losing a specific and detailed enforcement layer that the Netherlands argued contributed to the predictability that businesses need.
That debate remains unresolved. For now, the P2B Regulation remains in force, and Germany has just extended its practical reach by enabling collective enforcement without individual exposure.
One dimension of the P2B framework that the BVOH designation does not change involves mandatory mediation provisions. According to the regulation, platforms must identify at least two mediators in their terms and conditions with whom they are willing to engage for out-of-court dispute resolution. Mediators must be impartial, independent, affordable for business users, accessible physically or remotely, able to operate in the contractual language, and able to provide services without undue delay. Platforms must bear a reasonable proportion of mediation costs in each case.
Mediation under the P2B framework is explicitly voluntary in outcome but not in procedure - platforms must engage in good faith. Only if mediation fails, or is bypassed because a complaint cannot be resolved bilaterally, does litigation become the next step. The BVOH's new designation means that when mediation fails, the association can advance to litigation without exposing the identities of the sellers whose rights were violated.
Germany's regulatory actions have established the country as a testing ground for algorithmic accountability, with cases against platforms under the Digital Services Act, GDPR, AI Act, and competition law proceeding simultaneously. The P2B Regulation adds a distinct layer: one specifically designed for the commercial relationship between platforms and the businesses that depend on them for market access.
For marketing professionals operating on or advising clients on major marketplaces, the practical implications are threefold. First, ranking transparency obligations mean platforms must disclose the main parameters shaping product visibility - a requirement that, if enforced, provides advertisers and sellers with more predictable grounds for optimising listings. Second, the prohibition on retroactive changes to terms and conditions protects planning cycles and budgets. Third, the 15-day and 30-day notice requirements for changes and termination, respectively, create a compliance calendar that marketing teams can incorporate into platform strategy reviews.
The Germany certification of Platform Control in November 2025 as a dispute resolution body under the Digital Services Act showed the Bundesnetzagentur's willingness to build out institutional infrastructure for platform accountability. The BVOH designation is a continuation of that pattern but applied to the business-to-business dimension of platform relationships rather than the user-to-platform dimension addressed by Platform Control.
Who: The Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency of Germany) granted the Bundesverband Onlinehandel e.V. (BVOH), a trade association founded in 2006 in Dresden representing online retailers and brand manufacturers, the status of first association authorized to bring lawsuits under the EU Platform-to-Business Regulation.
What: The BVOH received formal designation under Article 14 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1150, enabling it to file lawsuits before competent national courts within the EU on behalf of its members without disclosing the identities of the individual companies concerned. This is the first such designation in Germany.
When: The designation was announced today, 16 March 2026.
Where: The designation applies in Germany, where the Bundesnetzagentur has held P2B enforcement authority since May 2024 under the Digital Services Act. The BVOH's litigation rights extend to competent national courts across the European Union.
Why: Commercial users on online platforms frequently experience unexplained delisting of their products, and platform internal complaint procedures have proven largely ineffective. Individual merchants face structural barriers to enforcement - particularly fear of retaliation from platforms on which their businesses depend. The BVOH designation allows collective litigation without individual exposure, providing a practical mechanism for enforcing transparency and fairness rights that the P2B Regulation guarantees but that individual sellers have found difficult to exercise in practice.