In a vote held on Monday, the European Parliament’s committee on culture and education (CULT) has officially endorsed its amendments to the Digital Services Act proposal. Importantly for the EBU, CULT has adopted amendments that would protect editorial media content and services that appear on online platforms from take downs and interferences by the platform operators.
We acknowledge the work of Sabine Verheyen, Chair of the CULT committee and rapporteur on the DSA, to include a safeguard that would limit the control of platforms on media content. We now urge the European Parliament’s lead committee on DSA, the IMCO committee (Internal Market and Consumer Protection), to take these and other CULT amendments on board when it prepares its DSA report for a vote on 8 November.
Inclusion of a prohibition in the DSA on platform interference with our content is crucial. As media, for our content and services we have strict EU and national media laws, regulatory oversight and professional editorial standards. Despite this, platforms regularly remove media content and apps, and they block our accounts without any warning. The DSA must ensure that media organizations remain solely responsible for the content and services they produce. Platform operators should neither be responsible nor liable for our content.
We also welcome the adoption of other amendments put forward by the CULT committee on the DSA as well as its amendments to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which were also voted on Monday. These include:
DSA
DMA
The CULT Committee’s opinions on the DSA and DMA, together with those other European Parliament committees, will be put forward to IMCO - the European Parliaments’ lead committee. Members of IMCO (the Internal Market and Consumer Protection committee) will decide on how the opinions will appear in the final European Parliament reports.