BEC, criticized by NGOs. “Violates freedom of expression”

Coalition member organizations NGOs for the citizen, including the Center for Resources for Public Participation, ActiveWatch and Expert Forum, expressed their disagreement on Monday, compared to the decisions of the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) aimed at complying with the regulations regarding the election campaign in the online environment.

According to a statement of the Center for Resources for Public Participation sent on Monday, the BEC published a first series of decisions aimed at complying with the regulations regarding the election campaign in the online environment, and most are ‘violations of freedom to express simple social networks’. In the opinion of organizations, BEC ‘prevents voters from expressing their political opinions and preferences’.

‘BEC actions confirm the fears expressed by several civil society organizations immediately after the adoption of GEO 1/2025 regarding the organization of the presidential elections. Thus, we warned in January, through an open letter of the Coalition NGOs for the citizen, that the text of GEO 1/2025 can regulate personal posts, made by private users of the social networks, including personal photographs with the favorite candidate ‘, the quoted statement said.

According to him, after the adoption of GEO 1/2025, the Permanent Electoral Authority issued its own decision by which it tried to clarify the conditions that a material must meet in order to be considered political. A first criterion is for the material to be distributed in the election campaign by a political actor. However, the decision of the AEP does not clarify the term ‘political actor’ in addition to the GEO, so the predictability in the application of these regulations remains ‘as low’. « Therefore, it remains up to the BEC to decide how they apply them in practice, » explained in the statement.

‘Crossing the decisions recently published by the bulb we find multiple situations in which they violate freedom of expression. Thus, several of these BEC decisions concern ordinary users of social networks (some even identified with first name and name), who post personal opinions and who cannot be qualified automatically as ‘political actors’ within the meaning of the EU regulation 2024/900 on the transparency and targeting of a public advertising. We remind in this context that the definitions of the Regulation, as opposed to those of GEO 1/2025, concern only people who pay advertising, specifying that « the political opinions expressed with personal title are not considered to be political advertising », the Resource Center for Public Participation also transmitted.