On 16-17 June 2016, the Council of Europe (CoE) in partnership with the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics will hold the Annual Meeting of Regional Network of Self-regulatory Bodies. The event will be attended by the representatives of the self-regulatory bodies from the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and the Balkan countries as well as the Russian Federation.

During the annual meeting the media professionals will discuss various issues related to the developments and challenges facing the current self-regulatory institutes in the region as well as the types of the existing media propaganda and the possible ways to combat it. Moreover, the participants will review the possibilities to further increase their cooperation via adopting the documents against media propaganda and introducing the effective cross boarder complaints mechanisms. Finally, the participants will present the current state of the media landscape in their respective countries.

The event will take place at the “Lopota” Hotel, Kakheti Region in Georgia and is organised within the framework of the joint CoE/EU Program “EU/CoE Joint Project Promoting freedom, professionalism and pluralism of the media”. The project was launched in January 2015 and aims to establish regional co-operation among media self-regulatory bodies from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, to ensure regular exchange of information and experience among the self-regulatory bodies in order to improve their visibility, relevance and effectiveness as well as to improve cross-border complaints mechanism pertaining to journalistic ethics and to ensure self-sustainable funding for the regional network of medial self-regulatory bodies.