Release of Landmark report on advertising self regulation

The Brewers of Europe on 26th May launched a landmark report outlining the results of their commitment to the European Alcohol and Health Forum on advertising self-regulation across Europe. The report, written by the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) has been independently verified by KPMG Sustainability. It shows that progress has been made all over Europe. The Brewers of Europe are now committed to ensuring the ongoing review of advertising self-regulation systems to ensure they keep up to speed with the evolution of societal and cultural demands.

Backing The Brewers of Europe’s work, Robert Madelin, Director General, European Commission stated in the report’s foreword, “The Brewers have worked consistently and in consultation with the European Advertising Standards Alliance to deliver effective and credible self-regulation with progressively broader European coverage.”

Pierre-Olivier Bergeron, Secretary General at The Brewers of Europe: “In 2007, Europe’s brewers made a commitment on self-regulation to the EU Alcohol & Health Forum. Today we see that Europe’s brewers have kept their promise: this independently-verified report illustrates the unprecedented efforts and substantial progress made by the European brewing sector, to ensure responsible beer advertising across Europe through self-regulation. This confirms our strong belief that advertising self-regulation is a sustainable complement to legislation.”

The week before the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a global strategy to reduce harmful use of alcohol. The Brewers of Europe are happy to see the WHO recognises a role for advertising self-regulation and recognise also that it is their duty in the European brewing sector to show that advertising self-regulation works. In this regard, the report is timely.

Europe-wide initiative

Europe’s brewers already had advertising self-regulation codes in place, but wished to ensure all these were operating within credible and effective advertising self-regulation systems. The setup and the scale of the advertising self-regulation initiative were unprecedented: The Brewers took the European Commission’s comprehensive best practice model and developed seven Operational Standards, for the enhancement of advertising self-regulation systems and responsible beer communications in all the European countries.

The report released today demonstrates substantial progress made. Some examples:

• Self-regulation systems were set up in countries where they did not exist before;

• ten countries improved their complaints handling systems through further incorporation of independent elements;

• Consumer awareness of advertising self-regulation systems was increased in 24 out of 27 countries;

• 26 countries have a complaints handling system in place with effective sanctions.

The report illustrates that substantial progress has been made. Moreover, the effectiveness of self regulation is increasingly recognised by the European Union and other policymaking bodies as an important and valid complementary regulatory option.

But The Brewers of Europe want to go further. They are committed to strengthening the self-regulation in place and adapting it to changing societal and cultural expectations as well as to the evolving media landscape, where online communication and social media are increasingly dominant and require attention.

Summing up today, the Secretary General of The Brewers of Europe said, “The Brewers of Europe are delighted that our approach to date has been validated by EASA (the advertising self-regulation experts), through the assurance statement from KPMG (the independent assurers) and the words of support from Robert Madelin (the regulator).”