Our commitment to net neutrality

The rules enshrine the principle of net neutrality into EU law: no blocking or throttling or discrimination of online content, applications and services.

Every European must be able to have access to the open internet and all content and service providers must be able to provide their services via a high-quality open internet. Under these rules, blocking, throttling and discrimination of internet traffic by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) is not allowed in the EU, save for three exhaustive exceptions (compliance with legal obligations; integrity of the network; congestion management in exceptional and temporary situations) and users are free to use their favourite apps and services no matter the offer they subscribe to.

All traffic has to be treated equally. This means, for example, that there can be no prioritisation of traffic in the internet access service. At the same time, equal treatment allows reasonable day-to-day traffic management according to objectively justified technical requirements, and which must be independent of the origin or destination of the traffic and of any commercial considerations. Common rules on net neutrality mean that internet access providers cannot pick winners or losers on the internet, or decide which content and services are available.

The rules also give certainty for internet access providers and providers of content and applications to offer specialised services with specific quality requirements, including necessary safeguards to ensure the open internet is not negatively affected by the provision of these services. Specialised services cannot be a substitute to internet access services, can only be provided if there is sufficient network capacity to provide them in addition to any internet access service and must not be to the detriment of the availability or general quality of internet access services for end-users.