Romania's National Authority for Communications Administration and Regulation (ANCOM) is not an arbiter of the political discourse in the online environment and does not stand guard over all markets in Romania, ANCOM deputy chairman Pavel Popescu told a specialist conference on Monday.
"The Digital Service Act is a very hot topic these days, including in the election campaign. If you look at the week that passed, I sometimes look with sadness at former colleagues in the political arena, who simply use this opportunity of electoral campaign to point the finger at institutions like ANCOM, when there is a small lack of responsibility on the part of those who are involved in political campaigning. In the area of DSA, ANCOM is a national authority and national coordinator in the area of the Digital Service Act. It means that we supervise the suppliers, it means that we constantly collaborate with each institution of the Romanian state which, I emphasise, should actively do its job on this regulation. The regulation says a very simple thing: everything that is illegal today in the offline space becomes illegal in the online space as well. That is, if you, from the Consumer Protection, for example, on the DSA regulation, have to take care that in the online space you identify everything that means illegal product and take it down," Popescu said.
He added that ANCOM is not a "kind of coordinator meting out punishment to all markets in Romania" that deals with absolutely everything, from illegal products to illegal content.
"Today, the world is demanding ANCOM to be some kind of a coordinator meting out punishment to all markets in Romania and dealing with absolutely everything, from illegal products to illegal content. I would not want anyone to imagine, as some irresponsibly do and promote the message that ANCOM is today an arbiter of public discourse. We cannot afford to do something like that and we will never do it. But concretely, when there is a problem of illegal content in the online environment, ANCOM has the necessary levers to discuss with the platforms directly. The platforms know very clearly how they should work today, based on the regulation. We are some kind of integrator of all complaints and we will solve all the complaints that citizens or the rest of the institutions make to us. But we do not exclude the most important thing, namely the fact that each institution, in its area of competence, must do its job."
The ANCOM official also pointed out that the regulator of the local telecommunications market cannot decide to remove any post from the online environment.
"I would like to emphasise one more thing: everyone avoids reading the law. It's extremely frustrating, sometimes for us too, to explain these things, including the fact that we can't go online to say that some post needs to be taken down... We have to be very careful with such things and that is why we have a very clear guide on how political campaigns are conducted, which is available on our website, and on the AEP [Standing Electoral Authority] website," Popescu said.
On February 17, the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU's landmark rulebook that aims to make the online environment safer, fairer and more transparent, starts applying to all online intermediaries in the EU.
Under the DSA, EU users are better protected against illegal goods and content and have their rights upheld on online platforms where they connect with other users, share information, or buy products, according to the European Commission.
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