Brussels, 07/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - The first meeting of the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGAM), which was officially set up by the European Commission a month ago, took place on 5 March. The 28 senior representatives from member state national regulatory bodies attended the meeting, as did the representatives from the regulatory organisations in Liechtenstein and Norway and the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities (EPRA), which attended as an observer. At this meeting, the assembly unanimously voted in favour of Olivier Schrameck becoming the new president of ERGAM. Until recently, he has been president of the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) in France. Madeleine de Cock Buning and Jan Dworak, the respective presidents of the regulatory authorities in the Netherlands and Poland were elected vice presidents. This first mandate will be exercised by these elected representatives until the end of 2015.
Commissioner Neelie Kroes heads the Digital Agenda and said that ERGAM is very important for ensuring the independence and pluralism of the media at the very time that they are converging with services that are becoming increasingly online. She pointed out that “the work of this group will be very useful when we plan a review of current legislation”. Kroes described this first meeting as “very productive… there are clearly many common challenges and I am happy that we now have a forum to discuss them”. ERGAM was set up on 3 February by the Commission to advise and assist the latter in its task of ensuring coherent implementation of the directive on audiovisual media services and in other related areas. (IL)