Eight television stations and one radio station were sanctioned by the Audiovisual Council (CA) with fines totaling 375,000 lei for violating the provisions on audiovisual commercial communications. The decisions were taken on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, during the public meeting of the authority.
After examining the monitoring results, the biggest fine, of 90,000 lei, was imposed on ProTV Chișinău, followed by HIT FM TV and HIT FM Radio, which were each fined 60,000 lei. Premiera TV received a fine of 40,000 lei, and Next TV – 35,000 lei. One TV and Star TV were fined 30,000 lei each, Jurnal TV – 20,000 lei, and Exclusiv TV – 10,000 lei.
The sanctions were imposed after thematic monitoring of several providers. Among the violations found by the CA are the failure to separate advertising from other audiovisual content, exceeding the maximum allowed duration of 12 minutes for advertising, non-compliance with the provisions on product placement, the lack of mandatory warning messages in the case of advertising for food supplements, the broadcasting of disguised commercial communications in news programs, as well as violations related to self-promotion.
“We are trying, for the first time, to ‘enter’ advertising and respect each other, to see where there are gaps in the legislation and where there are attempts to mislead us. I would agree to understand the providers, but in the long run, this is harmful and does not bring profit,” commented journalist Vasile Botnaru during the meeting.
“Most of these provisions are taken almost identically from the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Such situations are also complicated for the audiovisual sector in other countries, with some cases even reaching the Court of Justice of the European Union. There are several cases in the field of advertising, but the basic principle remains the same: maximum transparency must be ensured for any type of commercial communication, so that the user clearly understands what they are hearing and seeing and there is no doubt about the mix between purely editorial content and advertising or sponsored content,” added another CA member, Ruslan Mihalevschi.
Referring to the reorientation of advertising budgets towards the Internet, platforms, and social networks, Orest Dabija said: “This is not only happening here, but is a global problem, and providers are adapting and must adapt even more to this situation. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be fair competition in this small audiovisual advertising market, as it is.”
