In this book, I examined how public authorities’ reliance on algorithmic regulation can affect the rule of law and erode its protective role. I conceptualised this threat as algorithmic rule by law and evaluated the EU legal framework’s safeguards to counter it. In this chapter, I summarise my findings, conclude that this threat is insufficiently addressed (Section 6.1) and provide a number of recommendations (Section 6.2). Finally, I offer some closing remarks (Section 6.3). Algorithmic regulation promises simplicity and a route to avoid the complex tensions of legal rules that are continuously open to multiple interpretations. Yet the same promise also threatens liberal democracy today, as illiberal and authoritarian tendencies seek to eliminate plurality in favour of simplicity. The threat of algorithmic rule by law is hence the same that also threatens liberal democracy: the elimination of normative tensions by essentialising a single view. The antidote is hence to accept not only the normative tensions that are inherent in law but also the tensions inherent in a pluralistic society. We should not essentialise the law’s interpretation, but embrace its normative complexity.

The analysis in the last chapters reveals a convergence across the various models and jurisdictions considered in addressing the ‘substantive content’ of the obligations of non-state actors. This chapter attempts to describe and systematise what emerges from these judgments into an analytical framework which I term the ‘multi-factoral approach’. An optimal articulation of this approach, I argue, requires a series of steps, three of which I seek to accomplish in this chapter: namely, identifying the various factors at play in a situation; examining their normative grounding and understanding their relevance to the imposition of corporate obligations; and, developing presumptive principles, that help us understand their implications for corporate obligations. I identify and explore the relevance and weight to be accorded to three beneficiary-orientated factors (interests, vulnerability and impact) as well as three agent-relative factors (capacity, function and autonomy). This chapter also shows that none of these factors is alone sufficient to determine corporate obligations.