The European Commission welcomed on Tuesday 5 May the adoption by the ERGA (European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services) of a report on the effectiveness of the Code of Practice on Disinformation.
This Code, adopted in September 2018 by representatives of online platforms and the advertising industry under the aegis of the European institution (see EUROPE 12104/1), has, according to ERGA, “significant weaknesses”.
First, regulators consider that the implementation of the Code by signatories is not sufficiently transparent.
They call for the introduction of “a mechanism through which the information from these reports can be independently verified” and consider it necessary that the Commission be allowed to carry out specific monitoring activities, in particular at national level.
They went on to say that the Code, whose measures are considered “too general”, leaves signatories the option of implementing the measures only partially or not at all. The ERGA deplores, in fact, a lack of uniformity in the provisions adopted by the platforms.
Finally, regulators regret that the number of signatories to the Code is limited to major online platforms and does not include “significant platforms/tools” such as TikTok, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Overall assessment. This new report is in addition to the various contributions which will serve as a basis for the Commission to present its overall assessment of the Code.
A study carried out by an independent consultant and an upcoming Commission report on the 2019 European elections will also feed into this assessment.
Last October, the signatories of the Code had presented a mixed assessment (see EUROPE 12359/5).
The Vice-President of the Commission in charge of Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, further indicated that the ERGA report would also feed into “the ongoing work on the European Action Plan for Democracy’, which is still scheduled for publication in 2020 (see EUROPE 12479/9).
To view the report: https://bit.ly/2WsUJV4 (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)