ADVOCACY®ULATORY ASSISTANCE
Product Specific Advertising
Advertising for alcoholic beverages
Alcoholic drinks are not ordinary consumer goods. When inappropriately consumed, there is a potential for abusing alcoholic beverages which can lead a small proportion of the population and particularly vulnerable people to dependence and/or harmful conducts.
For these reasons, legislative measures have been ruling over the advertising of alcoholic beverages in Europe for the last 15 years. Many of these EU-wide restrictions are established by the “Television Without Frontiers” directive and many Member States took additional restrictive measures. In addition, the advertising industry policies itself thanks to agreed standards whose purposes are to eliminate inappropriate advertising and to initiate a range of socially responsible messages preventing any abuse of alcohol.
In April 2009, egta compliedwith its commitment to the EU Alcohol & Health Forum and launched its compendium of applicable rules on TV advertising for alcoholic beverages across Europe (please see the press release). The objective of the compendium is to provide advertising professionals with a benchmarking tool and, in turn, facilitating the exchange of best practices across Europe in the area of responsible advertising.
The compendium is based on a survey conducted across 21 European countries and according to the outcomes, TV advertising appears to be the most restricted means of marketing communication with regards to alcohol advertising. In countries where statutory law establishes a total prohibition to advertise alcoholic beverages on TV, such as France and Sweden, other media (such as radio, the press and outdoor advertising in France and the press and Internet in Sweden) are available for the advertising of alcoholic beverages. In some other countries, where there is a general availability for alcohol advertising on TV, restrictions are in place concerning the type of programme where the advert is broadcast or the time of broadcast, such restrictions often do not apply to other broadcast media. egta’s compendium also highlights that sales houses comply with a wide range of advertising self‐regulatory codes of conduct and individual companies codes of ethics applicable to advertising on alcoholic beverages. You can find the egta compendium on the egta homepage (www.egta.com).
Please be aware that the publication of this compendium is prior to the creation of a new egta database compiling the information on all regulations, self-regulatory standards and industry codes of conducts on audiovisual advertising of alcoholic beverages across EU member states. The egta database will be made available for all broadcast advertising professionals in the frame of a dedicated website on responsible advertising on alcoholic beverages during 2011.
Advertising for medicinal products
Pharmaceutical products cannot be treated alike regular consumer goods, notably because of their physiological effects and, in the case of prescription-only medicines, because of the need for medical supervision. For obvious health reasons, it is clear that specific limitations on commercial communications for medicines should be maintained.
The European directive of 31 March 1992 relating to “medicinal products for human use”, as revised in 2004, establishes that:
- the advertising for “Over The Counter / OTC” medicines is legal and must comply with a set of very specific criteria
- any form of advertising to the general public of medicines which are only available on medical prescription is prohibited
Whereas the EU legislation and the European Commission acknowledge that all single market principles must apply to OTC medicines and that these can be advertised, OTC medicines remain subjected to very different and restrictive rules across the Member States. With regards specifically to these products freely available to the public, egta believes that advertising restrictions existing at national level should be lifted since these are not justified by public health considerations and represent unnecessary breaches to single market principles.
With regards to prescription-only medicines, egta questions the need to maintain today's wide-ranging prohibition on commercial communications whereas patients are more and more eager to be informed about available treatments and to become informed actors of their own health. egta believes that new forms of communication rendered possible by technologies in the audiovisual sector, and particularly on-demand services, could offer possibilities to address this legitimate call from patients and thus positively contribute to maintaining high levels of public health across Europe.
Discussions on this issue and notably on how to differentiate prohibited direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) and branded information which could be allowed, must be pursued by health policy stakeholders. TV and radio sales houses are keen on contributing to this debate with practical examples of possibilities offered by new technologies and on developing a specific European code of conduct relating to on-screen information on medicines.
For more information, please refer to egta's position paper.
Advertising for tobacco products
The advertising or sponsorship of tobacco products is banned across the European Union by the “Television Without Frontiers” directive, as for television, and by the “advertising and sponsorship of tobacco products” directive, as for radio.
egta and its members fully respect this ban, which is not to be called into question in view of the scientifically-established harms of tobacco consumption.
Television broadcasters would nevertheless welcome a clarification of the legislation in the case of live retransmissions of international sports events taking place outside the European Union and which are themselves or whose participants are sponsored by tobacco manufacturers (e.g. a car of the Alger-Dakar rally-raid).
egta - 22, Rue des Comediens - 1000 Brussels - Belgium - Tel.: + 32 2 290 31 31 - Fax: + 32 2 290 31 39 - www.egta.com
