Focus Session hosted by the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media under the auspices of the German EU Presidency
Thursday 24 September 2020, 11.00-12.30
Video sharing platforms such as YouTube or Facebook have been in the radar of EU media regulators for a good few years now. But as this online landscape changes and develops, EU Member States are up against a close deadline to adopt the rules contained in the AVMSD, revised in autumn 2018. We’re inviting you to an online Focus Session co-organized by the European Audiovisual Observatory, part of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the current German EU Presidency. Free registration for our Focus session on the regulation and responsibility of video-sharing platforms is now open and you can sign up here
At present the EU legal text covering video sharing platforms is the Audiovisual media services directive (AVMSD) which was revised in the autumn of 2018, partly in order to better cover the VSPs and their activities. However EC President Ursula van der Leyen has sketched the outlines of a new Digital Services Act Package which would include an upgrade of the EU liability and safety rules for digital platforms, services and products in order to complete the Digital Single Market. A public consultation on what these new rules should include is currently underway with 8 September as a deadline for submission of suggestions. Subjects currently under debate in media circles include, for example, the responsibilities of digital services to address the risks faced by their users and to protect their rights and also the fairness of competition between the various e-commerce platforms currently in operation. Clearly several major questions need to be addressed: How can the existing regulatory approaches be developed? How can regulation be better implemented? Is there a need for further regulation of VSPs? What could regulatory approaches look like?
Join the debate moderated by the Observatory’s Head of Legal Department, Maja Cappello. We’re bringing together European experts in this field: Jean-François Furnémont, CEO and Founder of Wagner-Hatfield; Sally Broughton Micova, Lecturer in Communications Policy and Politics, University of East Anglia; Alexandra Evans, Head of Child Safety Public Policy, Europe, Tik Tok; Anna Herold, Head of the Audiovisual and Media Policy Unit, European Commission; Ania Helseth, Public Policy Manager - EU Affairs, Facebook; Luboš Kukliš, Board member of ERGA and Executive Director of the Slovak Council for Broadcasting and Retransmission (CBR); and Marco Pancini, Government Affairs and Public Policy Director for Europe, YouTube.
See the full programme here
You’ll be able to interact with our panelists via chatbox during our Q/A session.
Observatory Executive Director, Susanne Nikoltchev stated: “the Observatory has been reporting on VSP regulation for many years now. Given the current public consultation carried out, we were delighted to be invited by the German EU Presidency to host the reflection on this topic.”