March was one of the most important months for platform regulation in Ukraine. In light of the recent TAIEX meeting on the EU Digital Services Act, discussions surrounding platform regulation laws resurfaced regarding potential pre-accession alternatives, previously criticized by civil society and international organizations. Moreover, the ECtHR findings in its recently published decision on the 2017 blocking of Russian social media platforms gave additional arguments for the national security proponents within the state.
The most notable events happening in this period were:
- the ECtHR admissibility decision in Boyarov and Others vs. Ukraine on sanctions against Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, and mail.ru, imposed in 2017;
- the recommendation of the Draft Law #11115 aimed at restricting the activities of online platforms with a non-transparent ownership structure for voting in the first reading;
- the presentation of the media regulator’s Recommendations for combating hate speech in media;
- the continuing process of the public service media’s supervisory board selection.
This series of digests, produced with the support of International Media Support (IMS), provides an overview of the proposed and adopted legislation in the spheres of freedom of expression, media regulation, privacy and data protection, Internet regulation in general, and the activities of the National Broadcasting Council in the area of Media Law implementation.
As usual, the digest contains references to documents discussed in previous issues and provides follow-up on the acts and events described therein.
You can access the March 2026 digest here: #33Mediadigest