Grosu: Moldova May Set Up a Body to Monitor Internet Publications

A special body may be created in Moldova to control publications on the Internet. This was stated by Speaker of the Parliament Igor Grosu during a program on the RLive channel, infotag.md reports. He explained that amid the war in Ukraine “there is such a need”. The speaker recalled that at the end of last year the National Emergencies Commission suspended the licenses of six TV channels that had committed gross violations of the Audiovisual Media Services Code. These violations were related to the coverage of the war in Ukraine. “These TV channels have two sins - they are affiliated with a bandit and spread Kremlin propaganda. We can’t ignore that. Now they continue online broadcasting, we monitor their work. They haven’t made much progress. Nevertheless, Internet monitoring is a widespread practice. The European Commission has officially asked Tik-Tok to comply with the EU directive on posted content. All countries care about protecting the information space, and we should think about this as well,” Grosu said. He noted that the Audiovisual Council has control over broadcasting, but has no authority to monitor TV channels on the Internet. “Therefore, we may need to create a special supervisory body. The Television and Radio Council controls television. We are now discussing two options: we either need to build a new structure or introduce amendments to the legislation and expand the powers of the Council. But the Council does not like it very much, as there are peculiarities and nuances. We're studying the experience of the Baltic States, Romania, and the European Union countries. But there is a problem, and it must be solved,” Grosu concluded.