Draft Law No. 11115 has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada for consideration, which proposes to regulate the activities of information sharing platforms, including the Telegram messenger.
The corresponding card was published on the parliament’s website.
The document was authored by MPs from the European Solidarity party – Mykola Kniazhytskyi, Rostyslav Pavlenko, Mykhailo Bondar, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Iryna Friz, Sofia Fedyna, from the Servant of the People party – Mykyta Poturaiev, Liudmyla Marchenko, from the Voice party – Yaroslav Yurchyshyn and Natalia Pipa, and from the For the Future party – Iryna Konstankevych.
The explanatory note to the draft law states that the regulation proposed by the current law “On Media” remains incomplete, which manifested itself in the inability of the state to effectively respond to a number of problems in the information sphere.
“In the context of a full-scale aggression against Ukraine, these problems pose obvious threats to national security. This draft law is intended to provide government agencies with appropriate tools,” the document states.
The draft law sets requirements for providers of information sharing platforms to disclose their ownership structure and sources of funding upon request. At the same time, the conditions do not allow media entities owned or financed by residents of the aggressor state to operate in Ukraine.
The draft law also proposes to establish a legal presumption that the inability to carry out an inspection due to the lack of communication with the provider (both due to the lack of representation and the failure to provide the requested documents and information) is a ground for recognizing the ownership structure of such a provider as non-transparent.
Public authorities, local governments, their officials, and representatives of financial services are not allowed to use information sharing platforms with non-transparent ownership structure of their providers. It is also not allowed to install these platforms and related services on devices used for official purposes, in accordance with the practice of some EU countries and Switzerland.
The draft law has been sent to the relevant committee for consideration.
