Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of the economic and legal regulation of digital platforms and marketplaces as complex infrastructure entities of the digital economy, combining the features of an electronic intermediary, organizer of the digital trading environment, administrator of sellers' access to the market, technical data operator, moderator of product offers and actual coordinator of contractual interaction between sellers and buyers. The relevance of the topic is that Ukrainian legislation in the fields of e-commerce, consumer protection, digital content, personal data, advertising, payment services, and competition already forms a regulatory framework for digital turnover but does not create a holistic, dedicated model of the marketplace operator's platform liability. Of particular importance is also the loss of validity of the Economic Code of Ukraine this year, which actualizes the need to rethink the economic and legal regulation of digital platforms through a system of special laws, civil law structures, competition law and European integration digital standards. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the author's approach to assessing the legal transparency of marketplaces based on a combination of Ukrainian legislation, European standards, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, Platform-to-Business Regulation and content analysis of open rules of ten digital trading platforms that operate or are relevant for the Ukrainian market. The methodological basis of the study is formal-legal, comparative-legal, system-structural methods, legal modeling method and content analysis. The scientific novelty lies in the development of a matrix of economic and legal transparency of the marketplace, which covers seller identification, legality of the product offer, transparency of the electronic contract, mechanisms for returns and complaints, transparency of ratings and reviews, security of payments and data. The practical significance of the results lies in the possibility of using the proposed matrix for internal compliance audits of marketplaces, the preparation of amendments to e-commerce legislation, and the development of minimum standards for platform liability.
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