Co-Regulation in the EU Media Sector

The European Commision's results and summary of the study are available for download: Audiovisual and Media Policies Info Centre.  
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 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.
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.