On 30 March 2026, BEREC — the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, whose vice-chairs include Ireland's ComReg — published its early assessment of the European Commission's Digital Networks Act (DNA). The verdict was carefully split. BEREC "welcomes the continued commitment to net neutrality and transparency obligations," but warned that "the narrowing of the end user protection scope and limitations on Member States' ability to maintain or introduce stricter measures pose risks to consumer rights, accessibility and affordability."
The distinction matters, and it is easy to lose in the louder framing. Some digital-rights groups have called the DNA an attempt to "gut" net neutrality. The regulators who actually enforce these rules did not say that. They said the open-internet engine is largely intact, but the surrounding chassis — the interpretive scaffolding and the room for national regulators to act — is being trimmed in ways that could matter more than they first appear.
What the DNA actually keeps, and what it strips
The Commission unveiled the DNA on 21 January 2026 as a modernisation of Europe's telecoms rulebook, consolidating and repealing instruments including the 2015 Open Internet Regulation (OIR) that underpins net-neutrality enforcement across the EU. On the substance of net neutrality, the proposal still prohibits blocking, throttling and discrimination, and preserves end-users' right to access and distribute content and use the services of their choice. BEREC explicitly supports "strict net neutrality obligations subject only to narrowly defined and proportionate exceptions." That is the right baseline, and the DNA broadly holds it.
The genuine concern is legal clarity, not principle. According to analysis by Tech Policy Press, the DNA repeals OIR Articles 3, 4, 5 and 9 and — per epicenter.works — removes 18 of the regulation's 19 recitals while only partially re-incorporating them. Recitals are not decorative; they are how courts and regulators interpret ambiguous operative text. Strip them and you do not necessarily change the rule, but you change how confidently anyone can predict its application. For a single market that prizes legal certainty, deleting nearly all interpretive guidance is a self-inflicted source of risk.
The case for the Commission's approach
The steelman for the DNA is strong, and worth stating plainly. Europe's connectivity sector is fragmented, under-invested relative to the US and East Asia, and slowed by 27 divergent national rulebooks. The DNA's "Single Passport" — letting a provider authorised in one member state operate elsewhere after mere notification — and its move to a single list of authorisation conditions that members can no longer "gold-plate" are aimed squarely at that fragmentation. A genuine internal market for networks would lower costs, speed fibre and 6G rollout, and benefit the very consumers BEREC worries about. Harmonisation is not the enemy of consumer welfare; done well, it is its engine.
That is precisely why proportionality, not opposition, is the right lens. The problem is not that the DNA harmonises — it is the direction of harmonisation where consumer protection is concerned. Limiting member states' ability to gold-plate authorisation conditions for operators is defensible single-market discipline. Limiting their ability to "maintain or introduce stricter measures" protecting end-users is a different thing: it risks harmonising the consumer floor downward rather than the market ceiling upward. A pro-innovation framework should remove duplicative red tape on builders while preserving a robust, common protection floor for the people who use the networks.
Why Ireland has a direct stake
Few member states are as exposed to this design as Ireland. ComReg's Robert Mourik chaired BEREC in 2025 and remains a vice-chair on its 2026 Mini-Board, so Dublin sits at the table where these caveats are being drafted. More concretely, ComReg is an active net-neutrality enforcer: on 19 December 2019 it issued seven Notifications of Non-Compliance to Irish internet providers — including Vodafone Ireland, Three Ireland and Virgin Media Ireland — under Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120, for failing to give consumers required contract information on traffic management and speeds.
That enforcement history is the point. The DNA's repeal of OIR Article 4 — the transparency provision ComReg used in 2019 — and the narrowing of end-user scope go to the exact tools ComReg has actually deployed. BEREC's other structural worry compounds this: it cautions that the Single Passport "risks forum shopping, uneven supervisory burdens and slower enforcement" by concentrating responsibility in the member state of first notification. For Ireland, already the EU base of much of Big Tech under the country-of-origin logic of other digital files, a model that channels enforcement to the home regulator is not abstract.
A proportionate path forward
None of this argues for blocking the DNA. The case for a simpler, investment-friendly framework is real, and net neutrality's core survives in the text. The fix is narrower than the rhetoric: re-incorporate the interpretive recitals that give the rules predictability; preserve a genuine consumer-protection floor rather than capping national regulators' ability to defend it; and design the Single Passport so cross-border enforcement does not stall. BEREC, with ComReg helping hold the pen, has handed co-legislators a precise to-do list. The open internet does not need saving from the DNA — but the DNA does need the regulators' edits to keep it both pro-innovation and pro-consumer.