This event organised in Brussels first took stock in a closed session of the activities and lessons that ERGA (The European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services) learned during the EU elections that took place in May. At the same time, the future role of ERGA with respect to monitoring the implementation of the Code of Practice and a general approach to addressing challenges of disinformation and online platforms were considered in a panel discussion. This included also the director of the Office of The Council for Broadcasting and Retransmission, Ľuboš Kukliš, who is currently the chairman of ERGA.

This comes at a time when ERGA prepares for the second phase of its monitoring activity providing feedback to the European Commission on the overall assessment of the implementation of the Code of Practice.

The public part of the workshop that was opened with a speech of Mr Kuklis offered a unique “reality check” if platforms are progressing in the fight against disinformation as seen by some of the most prominent academic voices including Mr Trevor Davis from the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics. They presented some striking results that examined the role and risks associated with the video-sharing platforms. At the same time, there was immediate feedback from the present platforms to these findings. This stimulated a very interesting discussion.

The second part of the workshop was focused on the implementation of the AVMSD provisions related to the video-sharing platforms, that are now progressively being transposed into the different EU national frameworks (including in Slovakia). The panel discussion offered in this regard an interesting mix of platforms (including Facebook, Snapchat and a local Bulgarian platform VBox7) together with the Irish regulatory authority BAI that will probably be responsible for some of the most important platforms in Europe and prominent academic in this field Ben Wagner from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.