The provisional agreement on the Regulation of digital platforms (see EUROPE 12938/6) increases the chances that the Council of the European Union will be able to agree on its negotiating position on the proposed Regulation imposing more transparency on online political advertising before the end of June.
A compromise proposal by the French Presidency of the EU Council clarifies some provisions of the initial proposal presented in November 2021 as part of a legislative package to strengthen the integrity of elections held in the European Union (see EUROPE 12840/5).
In particular, the legislative proposal imposes transparency obligations on the activities of political advertising service providers and publishers whose media carry a political message. For example, a service provider will have to keep information on the services they provide, the client, the amounts received and, if applicable, the election or referendum concerned.
Benefiting from this data transmitted by the service providers, publishers will have to make available, for each political advertisement: - a statement that it is a political advertisement; - the identity of the sponsor; - a transparency notice to help understand the context of the political advertisement and its objectives.
Based on the future Digital Services Act (DSA), the French Presidency of the EU Council specifies that digital platforms will have to make available - in real time - the information contained in transparency notices through the publicity registers (Article 30 of the ‘DSA’ Regulation).
Competent authorities may ask service providers for any information they will need to hold under the future Regulation. Considering that the impact of a breach of this obligation will be greater during an electoral or referendum campaign, the French Presidency suggests that, in the month preceding a popular vote, the required information should be transmitted to the competent authorities within 48 hours, instead of the normal 10 working days.
Interested parties - researchers, civil society and journalists - will be able to have access, free of charge, to the information that service providers and publishers of online advertising must hold.
See the compromise proposal: https://aeur.eu/f/1mf (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)