EASA has been coordinating monitoring projects to assess sectoral compliance in different markets since 2003. Compliance monitoring projects are a proactive way to identify issues and imminent legislative threats and work as a learning exercise for advertising practitioners.

During a monitoring project experts from self-regulatory organisations in EASA’s membership are asked to verify if ads for a specific sector comply with the self-regulatory provisions in place at national level or with voluntary industry commitments. Self-regulatory experts have the capacity to review anything from television ads to internet advertising and apps.

EASA’s role is to coordinate the work of the self-regulatory organisations, perform quality check to ensure consistency, and compile aggregated top line reports as well as individual company reports. Monitoring projects are usually followed by a workshop organised by EASA where final results and concrete examples of ads are presented.

More information can be found in the monitoring reports available below.

Value of Running Compliance Monitoring Projects

• Provides a sector with a layer of understanding regarding compliance based on actual performance;
• Measures the compliance with rules in place at national level and to check implementation of voluntary industry commitments;
• Provides a basis for a sector to engage on the non-compliant areas and review the issues arising in a proactive way;
• Provides a way to analyse current compliance across several markets in a consistent and coherent way and allow an easy cross-market and cross-media comparison of the results;
• Offers learning opportunities for individual companies and/or sectors by showing clear tangible examples and help practitioners understand the application of the rules in place at national level through individual company reports;
• Helps show progress and compliance trends when performed on a regular basis.

EU Pledge Accountability Mechanism

The EU Pledge Accountability Mechanism was initially designed and implemented by EASA in 2018. Its purpose is to allow the handling of complaints revolving around alleged EU Pledge commitment breaches and to further increase the Pledge’s accountability and transparency in line with DG Santé’s request. The mechanism features a panel of 9 SRO experts coming from SRO members of the network. For every case received, 3 of the experts assess the case and adjudicate with the support of EASA and the EU Pledge’s secretariat. 

EU Pledge website