Intervention de Martin Ajdari à l'occasion de la visite du régulateur ukrainien

Ci-dessous la prise de parole de Martin Ajdari à l’occasion de la première visite du régulateur ukrainien dans le cadre du jumelage lancé à Rome le 28 février dernier. 

Réunissant les autorités de régulation de médias italienne, française, allemande et grecque, cette initiative vise à renforcer les capacités institutionnelles du régulateur ukrainien, en encourageant l'adoption des meilleures pratiques européennes en matière de régulation des médias et de circulation des contenus sur les plateformes numériques.

Welcome speech of Martin Ajdari, Arcom Chairman, on the occasion of the first study visit between the Arcom and the Ukrainian regulator

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Dear representatives and members of delegations,

Dear friends of the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine,

Welcome to you all for this first study visit since the twinning between our authorities was launched in Rome last February. This twinning is one of the main priorities of Arcom's european cooperation for the next 18 months. I am very happy to be contributing to its implementation and to be following in the footsteps of my predecessor.

This twinning strenghtens an already rich cooperation with Ukraine that has developed both bilaterally (thanks to regular contacts between chairperson) and multilaterally, through our common networks: EPRA and ERGA, and now the European Board of Media Services.

As you know, Arcom leads the “component 1” of this twinning, focusing on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which entails decisive innovations for the current regulation. The aim is to help you harmonise Ukrainian law with the provisions of that directive as far as possible, and it involves: carrying out legal comparisons; drawing up an action plan; and transferring very practical savoir-faire and best practices.

Arcom's teams are at your disposal to share their experience, knowledge and thoughts on regulation. I would like to thank them for their commitment.

I would also like to extend my warmest thanks to our colleagues from the Italian, German and Greek authorities for their involvement in this twinning. The wide range of regulators involved in the twinning helps to enrich the exchanges, with extremely fruitful sharing of experience based on our different regulatory doctrines, practices and experiences. It is therefore priceless for all the participants, as the inaugural session in Rome in February showed.

This study visit to Paris will focus on issues that are part of our day-to-day work as regulators: licensing and authorisation procedures for television and radio services; the fight against hate speech and the protection of minors; and the transformation of our authorities into regulators of digital communication as part of the implementation of the Digital Services Act. These digital regulation issues did not exist, or hardly existed, a few years ago. Today they represent a substantial part of our work and will undoubtedly be our main challenge in the future.

Lastly, this twinning is part of our support for Ukraine, its people and its institutions, which are fighting for the values of freedom, sovereignty and democracy that we hold dear. It is a way for us to tell you that we stand by your side in this tragedy, which concerns us all.

In this respect, I would like to assure you that Arcom is fully committed to working alongside the Ukrainian authorities, in its area of expertise, in the fight against the information war being waged by Russia. On 2 March 2022, we suspended the agreement with the Russian media RT France, and in July of the same year we stopped the broadcasting of several Russian television stations (NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, Perviy Kanal and NTV).

Very recently, on 19 March 2025, we made use of the new powers provided for by a recent piece of french legislation as we put an end by putting an end to the broadcasting of two other channels, « Channel 5 » and « STS ». This fight continues, particularly against the content that Russian media are broadcasting online and that are targeted by European sanctions. It's a medium and long-term job – requiring from us to analyse hundreds of URLs - but we're determined to see it through.

I wish you an excellent study visit.

I would like to give the floor to the chief of the Ukrainian delegation, Dmytro Kardash.