The Parliament voted in the second reading the draft law on advertising. The initiative was supported at the plenary meeting of March 17 with 58 votes by the MPs of the Action and Solidarity Party. 16 MPs of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists voted against it.
The document regulates the establishment and implementation of the legal framework for messages of public interest, requirements for ensuring transparency in the advertising market, self-regulation in advertising and political advertising in non-electoral periods, etc.
Among other things, it provides for the establishment and implementation of the legal framework for political advertising in non-electoral periods, which does not currently exist, establishes the entities that cannot be providers of political advertising, as well as the fact that payment for the services of dissemination of political advertising can only be made by bank transfer.
The draft law is part of a broader campaign of the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) focused on amending the Law on advertising and on improving the legal framework in the media field. The document was originally prepared by the IJC experts and was voted in the first reading three years ago, in October 2018. Subsequently, it was withdrawn, and, based on the old draft, PAS party’s MP Dumitru Alaiba registered a new legislative initiative, voted in the first reading at the beginning of November 2021.