September was marked by the submission of several ambitious draft laws to Parliament for consideration, which could impact the media sphere in both the short and long term. The draft 2026 budget includes increased funding for both public service media and the media regulator, although the benchmarks still fall short of what is required by the legislation. The recodification of the Civil Code may update the catalogue of users’ rights, but at the same time, it appears to shift the balance too much towards the protection of privacy rights. An important step was the continuation of the selection process for Suspilne’s Supervisory Board, with two new members selected and five more to follow.
The most notable events happening in this period were:
- the presentation of Svyrydenko’s government Program of Activities, including in the media and digitalisation spheres;
- the submission of the Draft State Budget for 2026 to the Parliament;
- the Verkhovna Rada speaker’s efforts at recodifying the Civil Code provisions on personality rights aimed at covering the digital domain;
- the continuing processes of the public service media’s supervisory board selection;
- the NBC’s decision on the tobacco products’ advertising.
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 the documents discussed in the previous issues of the digest and provides a follow-up to the acts and events described therein.
You can access the September 2025 digest here: Digest #27 – September 2025