Legislation on advertising to be amended in Moldova

Chisinau, 11 October /MOLDPRES/ - The national legislation on advertising will be amended. The parliament adopted a draft law to this effect in the first reading today.

The draft was elaborated within a working group for improving the mass media legislation and provides for the establishment of a legal regime of public interest messages (social advertising) and which are regulated contradictorily. Thus, the public interest messages will be able to have as object the constitutional values and principles, fundamental human rights and freedoms, the sound lifestyle and health care, rights and obligations of persons, public authorities and institutions, central or local, conditions of access and use of public services provided free of charge by the public authorities, environmental protection, informing citizens on the electoral period about the elections, residents’ social protection, etc. Each public interest message could be spread both for free and against payment.    

Also, the draft also provides for the implementation of the legal regime of the political advertising on the extra-electoral period, which does not exist at present. The new law will clearly establish who can be supplier of political advertising, as well as the fact that the payment for the services of spreading political advertising can be made only through banking transfer.  

The draft bans the subliminal advertising, deceptive advertising, amoral advertising, discriminatory advertising, sexist advertising, the one which may trigger panic, incites to violence or dangerous actions, the one which encourages, directly or indirectly, the behavior contrary to the law, the advertising through which products, services or professions are denigrated.  

The working group for improving the mass media legislation was set up in June 2017, at an initiative by Parliament Speaker Andrian Candu, with the support of the Joint Project of the European Union and Council of Europe, Promotion of Media Freedom and Pluralism in Moldova. The technical assistance is provided to the group’s members by Freedom House, Internews and the U.S. Embassy in Moldova.   

(Reporter A. Zara, editor A. Raileanu)