ABSTRACT
The rise of collaborative digital platforms has encouraged discussions among practitioners and scientists. From the legal point of view, the topic that should be discussed concerns the application of the existing legal rules or the necessity for a new regulatory framework that should apply to the new legal relationship. At the European Union level, the regulatory framework regarding the collaborative economy is based on the European Commission Agenda for the Collaborative Economy and the secondary sources of EU law that regulate businesses in digital surroundings. The Court of Justice of the European Union in its judgments in the Uber and Airbnb Ireland cases indicated the direction for the legal analysis of the future cases. As a starting point, the Court of Justice (ECJ) used the distinction between the ‘information society services’ and other services. In line with that starting point, the conclusion is that the Airbnb platform is an ‘information society service’, as opposed to the Uber service, and its activities should be analyzed by the application of the EU law. But when analyzing contractual relationships between actors, the national rules of the law of obligations will apply.
