Consumer Agenda 2025-2030: CREATe Response to the European Commission Consultation

This working paper develops from a CREATe response to the European Commission’s public consultation on the Consumer Agenda 2025–2030. In line with the submission on 28 August 2025, this paper identifies challenges that jeopardise fairness and consumer welfare within the European Union. It highlights five pressing issues: algorithmic profiling-based unfair designs in online games; interference of technological protection measures (TPMs) with exceptions and limitations to copyright; agentic AI and its implications for digital fairness and consumer protection; affinity-based algorithmic pricing as a regulatory grey zone; and legal uncertainty in applying EU algorithmic transparency to music streaming. To address these challenges, the paper proposes reforms including enhanced transparency and design guidance, updates to EU copyright law, explicit inclusion of agentic AI and affinity-based pricing in the consumer protection agenda, and clarification of the consumer law provisions for hybrid platforms.