The Ministry of Economic Development has submitted the draft law "On Platform Economy" to the government

The Ministry of Economic Development has submitted a bill "On platform economy" to the Russian government. The bill is aimed at creating a legal framework for the platform economy, regulating relations between platform operators, their partners and users told the press service of the ministry on February 20.

"Our task is to ensure the safety of citizens without creating excessive requirements for businesses. We strive to ensure a balance of interests that will protect the rights of consumers and at the same time preserve the dynamic and sustainable development of the platform economy," the press service of the Ministry of Economic Affairs quoted Dmitry Grigorenko, head of the government staff, as saying.

The main regulation of the new draft law is focused on addressing the activities of intermediary digital platforms. They provide an opportunity to simultaneously place an offer to sell goods or services, conclude a transaction and make payment.

The bill defines such concepts as platform economy, digital platform, intermediary digital platform, order delivery point (EDP), product card, and others.

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In addition, it establishes the mandatory content of contracts with partners (sellers, performers, owners of points of delivery), the procedure for changing their terms, providing discounts on goods, acts of reconciliation of mutual settlements, the application of sanctions, and introduces a digital pre-trial dispute resolution system.

The bill also specifies the procedure for actions in case of detection of defects in goods or services. In particular, the functionality of making claims to the seller (or performer), on the return of goods and money directly on the platform itself will be implemented.

"Relations between intermediaries and their partners and users have their own specifics. At the same time, many unregulated issues so far the industry has tried to solve independently, which created an imbalance in the interests of participants in the new relationship, so the bill responds to the most urgent requests of business," summarized the Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Reshetnikov.

Earlier, on February 18, "Izvestia" got acquainted with the research of the service of safe transactions with freelancers Solar Staff and the bank for entrepreneurs "Blank", where it was reported that the total growth of the number of IE in 2024 amounted to 5% year on year. According to analysts, young entrepreneurs (under 1999 and younger) accounted for 3.26% of the total number of registered sole proprietorships in 2024. This is higher than the figures for 2023 (2.89%), but inferior to the data for 2021-2022 (4.35%). The average age of UIs nationwide reached 35 years, and the median age was 34 years.

Last year, on December 5, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin instructed the Ministry of Economic Development to develop a draft law "On platform economy". The bills were developed on the instructions of the head of the government staff Dmitry Grigorenko. The deadline has been set for February 2025.