Imagine a small bakery that sells its sourdough online. A customer in Graz and a customer in Gdańsk open the web shop, and it loads just as quickly as the shop of a retail giant. Nobody negotiated that and nobody paid for it. It works because European law says your internet provider has to treat all traffic equally.

The Digital Networks Act (DNA) will decide whether that stays true for the next decade. Most people have never heard of it, and that is exactly the problem. Behind the technical name sits the biggest overhaul of Europe’s telecom rules in a generation. The DNA will replace the European Electronic Communications Code and absorb the Open Internet Regulation, the law that has guaranteed net neutrality in Europe since 2015. All of it is being renegotiated right now, from your freedom to use any app, website or service you choose to the question of whether your telecom company may decide which parts of the internet load fast and which ones crawl.

On 20 October 2026, Michał Kobosko (Renew Europe, Poland), the rapporteur of the lead committee ITRE in the European Parliament, published his draft report. We have analysed every relevant amendment. Some of them are good news. They make European regulators more independent and protect your freedom to choose your own devices, like your router. But on the core questions of the open internet, the draft report sides with a few very large telecom companies against everyone else. Instead of repairing the weaknesses of the Commission’s proposal, it deepens them.

Our Full analysis will follow soon.

One word turns a ban into an invitation

Today, telecom companies may not manage traffic based on commercial considerations. The draft would forbid only measures based “purely” on commercial considerations. Sounds like a detail, but it is actually not. That single word turns a clear prohibition into an invitation to discriminate. A provider could slow down a streaming service that competes with its own offer and simply claim it had other reasons too. Fully ignoring that even the Court of Justice of the EU has already made clear that this kind of traffic management is not allowed.

The draft would also expressly allow providers to sort our traffic into categories and treat each one differently. Which applications matter would be decided for us, and whether the bakery’s web shop lands in the right category would be the provider’s call.

A fast lane for whoever can pay

Some services really do need a guaranteed connection, such as telemedicine. For these specialised services, the law makes an exception today, but only where it is technically necessary. The draft deletes exactly this condition. Picture a motorway where the emergency lane is sold to the highest bidder. The lane fills up with those who paid, and the ambulance no longer gets through. The richest platforms could buy priority access, while European SMEs, public broadcasters, NGOs and independent media are stuck in the slow lane. On top of that, the rules for these services would no longer be set by independent regulators but by the European Commission.

Paying twice for the same internet

The draft also brings network fees back through the side door. Big online services that fall under the newly invented category of “significant traffic providers” would have to pay telecom companies just to reach their customers. Sounds fair? Not really. Those customers are you, and you already pay for your internet access. If the services you use have to pay again, your provider gets paid twice for the same connection. In South Korea, where such fees exist, Twitch left the market in 2024. Worldwide, over 99.99 % of interconnection agreements work without such payments. Nothing here needs fixing.

The small print lands on your bill and in your data

Today, EU law sets a maximum contract length of 24 months. But each country can go further and protect its people with shorter contracts. The draft takes that choice away from national governments and creates a legal basis for termination fees. So if you find a better offer, you could be stuck in your old contract or pay to leave. Telecom companies could also process the traffic and location data of all customers in the name of fraud prevention, bypassing the EU’s ePrivacy rules. And affordable social tariffs for people on low incomes would be replaced with vouchers.

Why a first draft carries so much weight

A rapporteur shapes the Parliament’s starting position, and his draft is the text every political group negotiates from. With this one, Michał Kobosko puts at risk a decade of legal certainty, case law and regulatory practice that Europeans rely on every day, from video calls with family to the online shop of the bakery around the corner. None of these changes is backed by evidence. BEREC has repeatedly found that the interconnection market works without regulatory intervention, and the Commission’s own evaluation found the net neutrality rules fit for purpose. We call on the rapporteur to correct course, and on his colleagues in all political groups not to follow him down this path.

The DNA is a regulation of more than 200 articles full of technical jargon. It does not make headlines like AI or social media, but it decides who controls the infrastructure of our digital lives. If telecom companies can charge for access to their customers and sell priority lanes, the internet stops being an open space where anyone can publish, build and compete. It becomes cable TV, where the gatekeeper picks the winners. Once these rules are written, they will stay for a decade or longer.

Soon the political groups have to pick a side.The Members of the ITRE Committee can table their amendments until 12 November 2026. For the first time, we will see where the other political groups stand on net neutrality, network fees and consumer rights. This is the moment for lawmakers to hear from the people they represent.

Save the internet. Again.

We have done this before. epicenter.works has worked on net neutrality since 2012. We fought for the Open Internet Regulation in 2015. In 2016 we co-led the savetheinternet.eu campaign, and 510,370 people told Europe’s regulators to protect net neutrality. The result was strong rules that protected Europeans for a decade. In 2025, together with the German civil rights group GFF, the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv) and Prof. Barbara van Schewick, we filed a complaint against Deutsche Telekom over its network fee practices.

Check out netzbremse.de

On the DNA, we have analysed the Commission’s proposal, the opinion of the Parliament’s consumer committee IMCO and now the ITRE draft report line by line. We have drafted concrete amendments that keep net neutrality intact, and we have travelled to Brussels again and again to meet lawmakers from all political groups.

And we are not alone. In June 2026, 33 organisations signed a joint statement calling to keep the Open Internet Regulation intact and to delete the dispute procedure that could bring in network fees. They include consumer groups like BEUC, digital rights groups like EDRi, private broadcasters and publishers, internet infrastructure organisations, smaller internet providers and start-up associations. Lawmakers listen when companies explain what network fees and fast lanes would mean for their business. If you run a company, a broadcaster, a hosting provider or a start-up, join us and speak up.

In 2016, half a million people made the difference. Now savetheinternet.eu is back, and we need all of you again.

Go and savetheinternet.eu