AVMS Review and Media Regulators’ Independence: the Dancing Procession of Echternach?

On Monday September 26 2016 the CULT committee of the European Parliament will hold a hearing on the Audiovisual Media Services review. In its legislative proposal of May this year, the European Commission proposed introducing an obligation for Member States to guarantee the independence of their media regulators (specifying a number of independence requirements). The draft report of the CULT committee that was published earlier this month, however, made various modifications to this. In this blog post Peggy Valcke, research professor at the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law – IMEC/iMinds, argues that the European Parliament should take responsibility for protecting European citizens’ interests in free, pluralistic media and, hence, independent regulatory oversight.