Advocate General Szpunar has issued an opinion in Joined Cases C-188/24 | WebGroup Czech Republic and NKL Associates and C-190/24 | Coyote System on two related legal cases involving French laws that restrict certain online services.
Advocate General (AG) Szpunar says that France’s obligations on online porn publishers to prevent minors’ access and its prohibition on geolocation/driver-assistance apps reporting certain roadside inspections both fall within the “coordinated field” of the E‑Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC).
The two cases were:
- C‑188/24 (WebGroup Czech Republic; NKL Associates): this was a challenge to French decrees requiring pornographic sites to implement technical measures to prevent minors accessing pornographic content.
- C‑190/24 (Coyote System): this was a challenge to a French prohibition on electronic driving assistance/geolocation services disseminating user-generated alerts that could help drivers evade certain roadside inspections.
The French courts asked whether these obligations fall within the Directive’s coordinated field and, for Coyote, whether the Directive’s Article 15 prohibition on general monitoring could be engaged.
The opinion
The AG considers that both sets of obligations sit within the coordinated field. That field covers requirements applicable to information society services or their providers, including general rules that are not tailored exclusively to online services.
- Measures are not excluded from the coordinated field merely because they are corollaries of criminal law or aimed at ensuring effective roadside checks. Classification under national criminal or security rules does not push them outside the Directive’s scope.
- Article 3(4) derogation is the correct route: For the minors’ protection regime, EU law already provides a circumscribed mechanism via Article 3(4) of the Directive. Member states cannot “circumvent” Article 3(4) by imposing general, abstract obligations directly on foreign‑established service providers. Any destination‑state restriction must meet the derogation’s substantive and procedural conditions (public policy/public security objectives; necessity; proportionality; prior notice/requests to the state of establishment, other than urgency; and notification to the Commission).
- The AG indicated that Coyote’s service is not a “host” because it does more than store and disseminate user inputs; it processes and transforms them into a new information layer. As such, Article 15’s prohibition on imposing general and permanent monitoring obligations on hosts does not apply.
- The Court usually, but does not always, follow the AG’s opinion so it will be interesting to see if they do in this case.
