THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act) (1), and in particular Article 43(4) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) Article 43 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 requires the Commission to charge providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines annual supervisory fees, the overall amount of which is to cover all estimated costs, as reasonably determinable beforehand, that the Commission incurs regarding the supervisory tasks under that Regulation.

(2) The costs to be estimated for the supervisory fees charged in year n should be determined by taking into account all human resources to be employed by the Commission in the year n+1 to carry out the tasks referred to in Article 43(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, including officials, temporary and contract agents and seconded national experts. Taking into account that the estimation refers to future costs, it should be based on average costs, expressed in terms of Full-Time-Equivalent increased by the average applicable social contributions and operating expenditure related to these human resources. This operating expenditure should therefore include average costs incurred in order to host and enable a Full-Time-Equivalent unit of personnel to work in the Commission IT and physical infrastructure, for instance as regularly determined by Commission services in the context of calculation of average costs of personnel for the purpose of legislative financial statements.

(3) In addition to the abovementioned costs for human resources, the Commission also needs to estimate other operational and administrative expenditures that are specifically related to the fulfilment of the tasks referred to in Article 43(2) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, such as studies, hiring of experts, surveys, missions, organisation of meetings or development or use of specific software or IT tools or services. The yearly estimation of the overall amount of costs, moreover, should take into account the difference between the estimated costs and the incurred costs of the previous year as resulting from the annual report adopted by the Commission.