Regulation in the Making: The Governance Effects of Civil Liability in EU Digital Regulation

This article argues that civil liability in EU digital regulation does more than enforce regulatory duties or compensate damage arising from regulatory breaches: it also produces governance effects by specifying regulatory duties and (re)allocating regulatory risks between market actors. Drawing on regulatory theory and examples from the case law of the Court of Justice and national courts in the fields of data protection, online platform regulation and competition law, the article demonstrates how these duty-specifying and risk-allocating effects emerge through the very structure of compensation claims: damage, unlawfulness and causation.