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On 27 February 2022, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, released a statement outlining further measures to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Among these measures, von der Leyen announced that the EU would ban the state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries. High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell confirmed this in a separate statement, in which he affirmed that the EU was “taking a crucial step to turn off the tab for Russia's information manipulation in Europe by banning Russia Today and Sputnik from broadcasting...

On 4 November 2021, the Italian Government approved Legislative Decree no. 208/2021 (“New AVMS Code”) implementing Directive (EU) 2018/1808 of the European Parliament and of the Council that amended Directive 2010/13/EU (“AVMS Directive”). Legislative Decree no. 208/2021 has repealed and substituted Legislative Decree No. 177/2005 (“Previous AVMS Code”). As is customary in Italy, the European Delegation Act 2019-2020 entrusted the Government with the transposition of several EU Directives into national law, with Article 3 dictating the guiding principles to...

Recently the Latvian media regulator, the National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP) has taken a more active enforcement stance against unregistered on-demand audiovisual media services, as well as promoting compliance with the relevant rules, by issuing guidelines. On 2 December 2021, the NEPLP announced that it has decided to penalise natural persons involved in the unlawful provision of an on-demand audiovisual media service – Brīvvalsts TV. According to the announcement, the NEPLP carried out a thorough examination of their website to assess its conformity with the features of...

In a press release of 12 October 2021, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne regional court – LG Köln) announced that it had decided in summary proceedings (case nos. 28 O 351/21 and 28 O 350/21) that YouTube had unfairly deleted two user-generated videos, featuring reports and interviews concerning COVID-19, on the basis of its general terms and conditions. As part of the “#allesaufdentisch” campaign, which went viral at the end of September this year, various German artists uploaded onto the YouTube video-sharing platform video clips of interviews with comments by so-called...

In three rulings published on 9 September 2021, in relation to the well-known German social media influencers Leonie Hanne, Cathy Hummels and Luisa-Maxime Huss (case nos. I ZR 90/20, I ZR 125/20 and I ZR 126/20), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided whether influencer posts should be labelled as advertising. The proceedings were instigated by an association in competition, which had accused the influencers of engaging in surreptitious advertising pursuant to Articles 8(1)(1), 8(3)(2), 3(1) and 5a(6) of the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (Unfair Competition...