ERGA

 

National regulators in audiovisual media services have, not exclusively, the role of implementing the rules set by the European legislative framework – the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). The European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA) brings together not only the leaders or high-level representatives of these regulatory bodies, but also the experts from these authorities, to advise the Commission on the implementation of the EU’s AVMSD.

ERGA was established on 3rd February 2014 by the European Commission Decision on establishing the ERGA and setting the objectives for the Group. In 2018 these objectives were updated in the revised AVMSD, by which the ERGA was formally established as an advisory body of the European Commission. The current general tasks of ERGA are:

  1. o provide technical expertise to the Commission: (in its task to ensure consistent implementation of the AVMSD in all Member States, on matters related to audiovisual media services within its competence)
  2. to exchange experience and best practices on the application of the regulatory framework for audiovisual media services,
  3. to cooperate and provide its members with the information necessary for the application of this AVMSD,
  4. to give opinions, when requested by the Commission, on the technical and factual aspects of the jurisdiction issues and jurisdiction procedures in the AVMSD.

At the top of the governing structure of ERGA are the Plenary meetings that gather the high-level representatives of all of the member and observer national regulatory authorities. They usually take place two times a year and adopt the work programmes, deliverables and take any strategic decisions of ERGA. To not only prepare these meetings a Contact Network is established that is composed of the delegated representatives of the authorities. The day to day running of the ERGA is executed by the ERGA Board, which is composed of the chair (currently the chief executive of the CBR Ľuboš Kukliš) and two vice-chairs of ERGA. The expert level work and the preparation of the deliverables is than done at the different subgroups and action groups of ERGA, that gather the experts of the regulatory authorities (on two levels either drafters or members of the groups reflecting the amount of work by these two types of participation) that express interest in participating in the different ERGA workstreams. These are established on a yearly basis in the ERGA work programmes.

CBR belongs to one of the most active ERGA members (in most of the work streams) with the following major activities undertaken so far:

  1. from 2017 until July 2018 Mr Luboš Kukliš (Chief Executive of CBR) served as the ERGA Vice-chair and in August 2018 he has been elected as ERGA chair,

 

Historical meeting: The 2019 ERGA Chair (Ľuboš Kukliš, CBR) and vice-chairs: Tobias Schmid (German DLM),

Karim Ibourki (Belgian CSA) together with two former ERGA chairs: Olivier Schrameck (French CSA), Madeleine de Cock Buning (Dutch CvdM)


  1. CBR is organising the ERGA workshops in the area of Protection of minors that have since become the flagship events of ERGA focusing on various topics in 2017 focusing on current and future measures in this area (see activity report), in 2018 focusing on the effectiveness of age verification and media literacy measures (see activity report) and in 2019 the focus will be on the issue of unhealthy foods and beverages,
  2. Ľuboš Kukliš was between 2016 and 2017 chairing the Subgroup on Protection of Minors that has produced the ERGA report on “Protection of Minors in the Audiovisual Media Services: Trends & Practices”,
  3. Ľuboš Kukliš was also chairing in 2018 the subgroup on Internal and External Media Plurality that has produced a major report in this area “Internal Media Plurality in Audiovisual Media Services in the EU: Rules & Practices”,
  4. In 2019 the CBR will be also for the first time organising the 11th ERGA plenary meeting in Bratislava from the 20th - 21st June 2019.