The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) celebrated its 15th birthday in 2007. Its role and reputation have changed markedly since it was set up in 1992. The Cross-Border Complaints system that was immediately established continues to serve us well. But it’s not just about making it easy for people to complain about ads that originate abroad. EASA has been tackling some of the most pressing issues in advertising regulation today.
Pro-active, particularly in sensitive sectors
EASA has co-ordinated pan-European monitoring of thousands of alcohol and food ads in up to 15 member countries. The results have so far been positive: 96% of alcohol ads and 97% of food ads have complied with the appropriate rules.
Moving with the times
EASA has initiated a project looking at whether, and how, to extend self-regulation into digital media. The work continues and good progress has already been made identifying what should and shouldn’t be covered by the rules. Also, thanks in part to successful EASA lobbying, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive encourages member states to consider effective self-regulatory solutions when implementing the new law on TV and TV-like services.
Open, transparent, effective, participative and independent
The EASA Charter Validation Report was presented to the European Commission at the end of the year. There’s still some way to go, but the self-regulatory organisations (SROs) of EASA made big strides towards meeting their target commitments. Two SROs (Poland and Lithuania) became fully operational and two others (Cyprus and Estonia) were in development. More new countries than expected established a code of advertising practice. Progress was made introducing ‘appeals’ processes, the publication of decisions and online complaints forms on websites. Good inroads were also made on the issue of stakeholder involvement in SRO’s juries.
"The agreed best-practice model is pretty good, if rather challenging for self-regulation practitioners... there is a real need for all interested parties to recognise that this model could not be built overnight."
Robert Madelin, Director General of DG SANCO and Chairman of the Advertising Round Table.
