Co-Regulation in the EU Media Sector

New technologies and progressive internationalisation have led to widespread and profound changes in the European Union. This development presents a challenge for the State as regulator. Various studies have already warned about the risk of traditional concepts of regulation failing and have formulated a need for new concepts and instruments, in order to augment the existing and – in part – to replace them as well.

The concept of "co-regulation", a new form of regulation (as the EU Commission’s Governance White Paper said), has already been applied in the member states and on the European level and has gained access to the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

The study concentrates on the media offerings (press, broadcasting, online-services and interactive games), as these represent fields of application for new instruments of regulation and at the same time claim generally a cutting-edge role. The project provides an overview of existing surveys on the topic. Furthermore, measures of co-regulation in the media sector of all 25 member states and in three selected non-EU-countries were examined on the basis of a definition of co-regulation. Particularly in legal protection of minors and regulation of advertising, co-regulative approaches can be found. This mainly affects electronic media, film and computer games. Apart from insights on the effectiveness of co-regulation measures in reaching public objectives, the conformity of such measures with European legal precepts was analysed.

One result is that co-regulation in principle is suitable for the realisation of European directives. Since the effectiveness very much depends on the concrete configuration, regular evaluation is required. The survey provides templates for the advancement of existing and the introduction of new approaches. Particularly with regard to the question of transparency and participation, there are risks to which the concrete embodiment of co-regulatory concepts has to respond.

The results of the study form the basis for further research of the Institute regarding new forms of regulation, for example, governance in the social web.