Opening remarks by Roch-Olivier Maistre

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Thank you for accepting our invitation to talk about Arcom's first 100 days. To be precise, the real anniversary date will be April 10 - we didn't do it on purpose! - but as you know, another national event takes place on that day - I'm referring, of course, to the rerun of Les Visiteurs on TF1. So, a few days ahead of the official date, we wanted to invite you, along with the members of the Collège who are here with me and the teams from the Autorité, as the health situation finally allows us to do so.

As we all know, 100 days is an important first step. You have all followed the genesis of Arcom, a regulator with expanded powers - I'd like to thank the parliamentary representatives here today, as this five-year period has been rich in reforms for us! - to better cope with the accelerating transformation of the audiovisuel landscape. The College and I were therefore keen to keep you informed of its first steps and the various projects underway. In particular, we wanted to raise two points with you:

Firstly, to share with you - and this is what I'm going to talk about - the regulation model that Arcom is pursuing and that it will be deploying over the coming years.

This morning, we also wanted to present three of the new missions we have been entrusted with. They do not, of course, exhaust the very many issues - to say the least - that lie before us, in the economic, cultural, societal or radio fields, but they do illustrate the ongoing transformations of the institution.

• The first mission, which will be presented by Benoît Loutrel, concerns the supervision of online platforms, a mission we have been deploying since 2019 and which continues to expand, thanks to national or European legislative initiatives, with the legislation on digital services that will place our continent at the forefront in this area.
• The second mission, which will be outlined by Denis Rapone, appointed to the College by the Vice-President of the Conseil d'Etat, is the fight agains online piracy and the promotion of legal supplies, which we have been promoting since January, in conjunction with our many partners, and which has already produced some very encouraging results.
• Laurence Pécaut-Rivolier, appointed by the First President of the Final Court of Appeal, will introduce us to our third, lesser-known mission: monitoring the activities of the Office central de lutte contre la criminalité liée aux technologies de l 'information et de la communication in the fight against terrorist and child pornography content, via the Pharos platform, a high-stakes responsibility which Laurence will take on as of June, and for which we are actively preparing.

This presentation will give you an overview of our institution's developments, with, on the one hand, the integration of new players in the field of regulation, be they video subscription platforms or social networks, for example, and on the other, a widening of its remit.

If I had to sum it all up in one phrase, I'd like to quote an African proverb: " Alone we go faster, together we go further ". What we are trying to do is to go both fast and far. Up and running as of January 1, thanks to a long process of prefiguration, we set out to implement our new missions without delay, with initial results that my colleagues will outline to you in a moment.

1. The first point I'd like to raise with you is Arcom's ambition for a renewed model of regulation.

First and foremost, Arcom is a regulator who listens to our fellow citizens, and who strives every day to apply its skills in the interests of the French people: in all its decisions, the College never forgets that we are first and foremost at their service. To guarantee them access to a pluralist political supply, particularly in this period of major elections, to rigorous, high-quality information, and to an ever more accurate representation of the diversity of French society. I would like to remind you that Arcom receives alerts from our compatriots every day: improving the accessibility and efficiency of our procedures for collecting and processing alerts is a constant objective for us. We have just launched a conversational assistant on social networks to better guide the submission of cases before the court, and we will be stepping up our efforts to speed up our procedures for responding to these alerts and taking action in the event of breaches.

To be as close as possible to our fellow citizens, our regulation is also built on proximity. This is the essence of our territorial network, embodied by our regional and overseas France offices, which will soon be rebranded. In addition to the dialogue they maintain with local radio and television operators, when I took office we also wanted these antennas to be active relays for our media and information education missions, in close collaboration with the education authorities, including in the areas of respect for royalties, manipulation of information and online hate.

To this end, we will be updating our agreement with the French Ministry of Education to better cover these new fields, as we are convinced that local networking and awareness-raising initiatives, particularly among young people, are one of the key pillars of effective regulation.

The model of regulation we wish to embody is also one of trust. The coercive dimension of our action is often overlooked, and of course it exists, and we are committed to carrying out our missions in this area to the best of our ability. But we believe in the power of a regulator who creates links, promotes the transparency of rules and, above all, instills confidence in the information and democratic space. Teamwork and networking - not only with the regulated sector, but also with the rest of our partners, including our European and international counterparts - are more than ever at the heart of the regulator's practice. This year, we will be taking over the presidency of the French-speaking regulators' network, REFRAM, and we will continue to play an active - if I dare say decisive - role at European level within ERGA.

This method, which seeks to lead through dialogue and conviction, based on the strength of collegial debate and careful listening to the sector, is the one I have sought to embody since my arrival at the head of the regulator. It's true, as you can see in this room on the 17th floor, that, as in Michel Berger's song, " I have my office at the top of a tower, from where I can see the city upside down ", but our ambition is not to " control [our] universe ": it's simply to understand it, to accompany it in its transformation and to regulate it as best we can.

Finally, the model that Arcom wishes to promote is one of dynamic, flexible regulation. Our actions are not intended to be fixed in time, but to continually adapt to developments in usage, players and technologies. Our aim is not to conserve, but to anticipate, and to take into account as far as possible the economic, technical and behavioral changes at work. In the three presentations that follow, the approaches we take to regulation vary according to the challenges at hand.

Never before has our audiovisual landscape, in the broadest sense of the term, undergone such major and rapid developments; it's only natural that regulation should adapt to meet them. In these new times, much remains to be invented as we work together to build the tools of tomorrow's regulation. That's precisely what makes this period so exciting, and I think I speak for all my colleagues when I say that we're convinced we're living in a formidable era of transformation.

2. The second point I'd like to make is that Arcom has ambitions for the French and European audiovisuel and digital landscape, and I' d like to share three convictions with you.

• The first is that the regulator's compass must remain the protection of freedom of communication and freedom of expression. A public freedom that we must more than ever consider as one of the most precious assets we share. Protecting it means protecting the right to inform, so remarkably illustrated by your colleagues who cover the war in Ukraine at the risk of their lives; it means defending the possibility of debate, sometimes at the risk of offending or even shocking; it means allowing mockery, caricature and criticism. As you know, this is a point to which I am personally very attached, because I am deeply convinced, as Victor Hugo so aptly wrote, that when freedom is saved, " freedom saves everything else ". That's why we will continue to fight with determination, college session after college session, alongside you and with your help, the phenomena that use freedom of expression as a screen: I'm thinking of the manipulation of information or online hatred. As I often say, the law we are implementing is above all a law of freedom.
• My second conviction is that we can never pay too much attention to the plurality of the audiovisual supply, which remains a fundamental pillar of our democracy. This is all the more true during election periods.

In this respect, we have closely followed the work of the French senate's commission of inquiry, with whom we share the desire to modernise anti-concentration rules in the media sector and to strengthen the independence of editorial offices. An IGF-IGAC report was also submitted to the government last week, and we are awaiting its conclusions. In the same spirit, we are closely following the European draft legislation on media freedom (EMFA), based on the values of our continent, to which we recently contributed.

• My third conviction is one I've already shared on numerous occasions: in a rapidly developing audiovisual landscape, we need a strong, independent public service alongside a diversified, robust private supply. With the extinction next year of the taxe d'habitation, on which the audiovisuel licence fee was based, a new scheme will have to be deployed. In this respect, one way or another, it is essential to provide the companies concerned with visibility and stability through a multi-year mechanism. Drawing on its close relationship with the public audiovisuel sector, whose managers it appoints - or should I say, whose directors it monitors on an annual basis - and whose performance under contracts of objectives and means, as well as compliance with specifications, Arcom will play its full part in contributing to future discussions and decisions.

To carry out its new missions with complete independence, Arcom can rely on a solid and united board, made up of nine personalities with recognized skills, and on a team of 355 experienced employees spread across ten departments and sixteen regional offices.

These strengths will need to be reinforced in the future if we are to fulfil our new missions and live up to the responsibilities entrusted to us. We are currently working on a strategic project to define our main priorities for 2025, which will also be the end of my term at the head of Arcom. We hope to finalize it by next autumn and present it to you.

Having embarked on a profound transformation several years ago, Arcom is now deploying its new missions and preparing for the future, so as to be fully involved in the sector's transformation.

I'd like to thank you for your attention, and I'd now like to hand over to the members of the board who are with me today.