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At its 103rd Plenary Session on 19-20 June 2015, the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) of the Council of Europe adopted its Opinion on Hungary’s media legislation, the so-called “media package”. The Commission had been asked to provide such an Opinion by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in January 2015, in particular to identify provisions which pose a danger to the right to freedom of expression (see IRIS 2015-4/2). The 27-page Opinion discusses two particular laws which form part of the “media package”, namely Act CLXXXV of 2010 on Media...

On 24 March 2015, the Council for Broadcasting and Retransmission of the Slovak Republic (“CBR”) dismissed a complaint against a sponsorship announcement (hereinafter referred to as “credits”), which featured a nutrition product for a “stronger male erection” broadcast within the programme service of a major Slovak TV commercial broadcaster. CBR examined the credits with the existing tools for the protection of minors in media, as well as with regard to the difference between sponsorship announcements and advertising. Both versions of the credits contained females approaching men in ordinary situations...

On 16 April 2015, the Slovak Advertising Standards Council (SASC) ruled that TV advertisements of the company “Unilever Slovensko” that compared its products (“Rexona” deodorants) to the products of its main competition (“Nivea” deodorants) does not violate the provisions of the Code of Advertising Practise. The advertisements presented men and women during various physically challenging activities, while emphasising the special characteristic of the promoted product - the prevention of the yellow spots which originate from usage of a deodorant on white clothing. The advertisements claimed in a...

In February and March 2015, the Flemish Media Regulator issued five decisions with regard to infringements of Article 69 of the Flemish Media Decree. This article requires that commercial communication for sugary confectionary shows an image of a toothbrush in a clear and contrasting manner during the full length of the commercial message, at one tenth of the height of the television picture. This requirement is not imposed by the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, but is a stricter provision adopted by the Flemish legislator. Following the monitoring of several commercial television broadcasting...

During the past months the Flemish Media Regulator has closely supervised compliance with the requirements regarding the broadcasting of sponsoring messages laid down in Articles 90-97 of the Flemish Media Decree. In a series of decisions published at the end of March 2015, the Regulator imposed a fine of EUR 1500 on four regional broadcasters (TV Limburg, Focus TV, ATV, WTV) for infringing Article 96, paragraph 1, which states that newscasts and political information programmes cannot be sponsored. In all cases, the newscasts were accompanied by a message mentioning the clothing sponsor of the...