IJC Experts Have Drafted a New Law on Advertising

The draft law on advertising, developed by the Independent Journalism Center experts Ion Bunduchi and Eugen Ribca, was the topic of a public debate held in Chisinau on Tuesday, July 25. Participants in the discussion – representatives of state structures, of economic agents in the field, of civil society and of development partners – came up with a number of recommendations that will be taken into account in the process of adoption of a new law on advertising.

Nadine Gogu, Executive Director of the Independent Journalism Center (IJC), said at the opening of the event that the IJC had launched in November 2016 a study where they made suggestions and recommendations to improve the law on advertising. “After some discussions we came to the conclusion that we need a new law,” she said.
Debates focused in particular on such issues as the appropriateness of regulating advertising by law and of adjusting the current national legislation to international standards and good practices in the field of advertising; supervision and control of compliance with the advertising legislation; provisions clearly defining political advertising; and issues related to messages of public interest.

Media expert Ion Bunduchi, co-author of the draft law, underlined that 18 out of the 34 articles of the current law contain defective formulations. “We came up with new notions, such as ‘advertising distributor,’ ‘online media,’ ‘political advertising,’ ‘pre-election advertising,’ ‘post-election advertising,’ ‘misleading advertising,’ ‘comparative advertising,’ ‘penetrating (intrusive) advertising,’ ‘message of public interest,’” he explained. He also said that they provided for a mechanism for managing messages of public interest and ways to ensure transparency in the use of public money in the case of production and dissemination of messages of public interest.
Lawyer Eugen Ribca, co-author of the draft law, claims that the new law comes with a clearer regulation of outdoor advertising. At the same time, the draft law supplements and specifies “the duties of the institutions that exercise state control in the field of advertising and that, ultimately, must ensure fair competition, respect of the right of consumers of advertising, and the functionality of advertising market evaluation mechanisms, as statistics in the field of advertising in Moldova is still a big problem,” he pointed out.

According to Galina Zablovscaia, Director of the Association of Advertising Agencies, the new law on advertising must be “anchored in reality” and it must contain clear provisions for providers, beneficiaries, consumers of advertising services, and controlling authorities.
In the opinion of entrepreneur Ludmila Andronic, “we need a framework law referring strictly to advertising – what advertising is, who the subjects of advertising are, what should the advertising content be like in terms of esthetics and ethics, what types of advertising there are.” She also added: “I haven’t found three terms in the draft: ‘advertising agency,’ which is a subject of this market, then ‘media buying’ and ‘media selling.’ If we don’t introduce these important types of agencies into the law, we will never be able to deconcentrate the advertising market.”
It should be mentioned that advertising is currently regulated by Law no. 1227 of 27 June 1997 on advertising. In the last 15 years, the law has been amended 13 times, having undergone 42 changes.