Today, ANCOM has held a new meeting with representatives of civil society with whom it has an active partnership for the implementation of the provisions of the DSA Regulation in Romania. During this meeting, the Authority presented the actions planned for the next period, meant to ensure the proper preparation, information and coordination of all the involved actors (public institutions, political actors, civil society, VLOPs) so that the 2025 presidential elections take place in good conditions. 

On behalf of civil society, representatives of Expert Forum, Active Watch, the Center for Public Innovation, Funky Citizens, the Association for Technology and Internet and the BROD project (Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media) were present at the meeting. A representative of the Permanent Electoral Authority attended the meeting as an observer.

ANCOM representatives highlighted once more the importance of three documents that must guide online platforms in terms of electoral processes and that must become a benchmark for participants who hold different roles in the electoral context.

These documents are:

• Commission Guidelines for providers of Very Large Online Platforms and Very Large Online Search Engines on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes,
• the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation and
• The Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online +.

The Authority reiterated the important role of the European Commission in relation to large platforms. On this occasion, ANCOM announced that it would organize bilateral meetings with the large online platforms to establish their response procedure to any requests from the relevant Romanian authorities in each field.

More over, civil society representatives were invited to be actively involved in a series of events to be organized by ANCOM in the coming period, such as a roundtable regarding the national elections to which representatives of relevant authorities, large online platforms and relevant NGOs will be invited in order to understand the objectives and the role played by each participating party. Furthermore, ANCOM aims to organise a "table top exercise" intended to test the response capacity of all participants in the electoral context: public authorities (who`s roles are defined as such by the specific legislation), large online platforms (which must follow compliance with the legislative acts, the European Commission Guidelines and the commitments assumed by signing the Codes), political actors and relevant NGOs in the field.