European Union: Proposed Media Freedom Act including user speech right

On 16 September 2022, the European Commission proposed the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The EMFA would, among other things, introduce safeguards against the “unjustified removal” of content produced by media services providers that meets the “editorial standards” in the Member state in which the provider is established. The EMFA would require very large platforms, defined in the Digital Service Act as platforms with over 45 million users in the European Union, to notify the media service provider of the violations of their terms of service and provide the reasons for content removal before deleting it from their platform. Furthermore, the very large platforms will be required to process the complaints received from media service providers and issue an annual report outlining the number of restrictions imposed on media service providers.