Kuwait Court Backs Talabat Challenge, Cancels Article 15 of Digital Platform Regulations

KUWAIT CITY, Sept 27:  Kuwait’s Administrative Court has canceled Article 15 of the regulations governing intermediate digital platforms and applications for displaying, ordering and delivering products to consumers, ruling that the provision exceeded the legal authority granted to the Minister of Commerce and Industry.

The ruling, issued by a court headed by Counselor Mohammed Jassim Bahman in a lawsuit filed by Talabat Company, canceled Article 15 of the regulations attached to Ministerial Resolution No. 109/2026, issued by the Minister of Commerce and Industry on July 8, 2026, along with all its effects. The court also ordered the administration to pay the expenses and KD 10 in legal fees, while rejecting the company’s other requests.

The court said the minister’s authority to regulate services and issue decisions necessary to implement the law does not extend to creating administrative penalties of a punitive nature without an explicit legislative basis. It noted that the legislature itself had specified the penalties for violations of regulatory and pricing rules and determined which authorities were competent to impose them.

According to the ruling, Article 15 created a comprehensive system of administrative penalties, beginning with a warning and escalating to administrative closure, suspension of activity, temporary blocking, cancellation of the license and permanent blocking. The court found that introducing such penalties through ministerial regulations amounted to exceeding the limits of the minister’s legal jurisdiction.

The court stressed that penalties cannot be created through executive regulations unless an explicit law authorizes the competent administrative authority to impose them. It rejected the ministry’s argument that similar provisions existed in other laws, emphasizing that administrative jurisdiction cannot be presumed or established by analogy with legislation governing different sectors.

The court also rejected the argument that arranging penalties according to the seriousness or frequency of violations resolved the jurisdictional issue, stressing that “good organization of the penalty does not negate the need for jurisdiction to be established in the first place to determine it.”

The court further examined the ministry’s reliance on Decree-Law No. 10 of 2026 regulating work in the digital commerce sector. It noted that although the decree-law was issued on February 22, 2026 and published in the Official Gazette on March 1, 2026, it had not yet entered into force when the challenged ministerial decision was issued. Article 45 provides that the decree-law would take effect one month after publication of its executive regulations in the Official Gazette.

The court added that even if the decree-law had been in force, it would not have provided a legal basis for the penalties created under Article 15. It pointed out that the legislature established a specific mechanism for blocking, requiring a decision by the violations committee and limiting the period to no more than 30 days, in accordance with rules set by the executive regulations.

The court therefore concluded that Article 15 had been issued in excess of the legally prescribed jurisdiction of its source, making its cancellation necessary with all resulting consequences.