The European Communication (Dis)Order.

1.Background and aims of the study In advance of Germany’s presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2020, the Leib-niz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) is preparing a number of reports and investigative studies intended to serve as a basis for discussions for the EU Media Conference in July 2020 and the subsequent Focus Sessions. The aim of the HBI investigations is to identify opportunities for medium- and long-term improvement regarding the coherence of the European legislation regulating information and communication. The current legal order is a multi-level system, consisting of standards at EU, German national and federal state level. These are sup-plemented by provisions from international law, and also self-regulatory standards. Given the structural transformations in public and personal information and communication, the current regulations in this area (which derive from path dependencies that in some cases are decades old) are repeatedly the subject of fundamental debates regarding their coherence, congruence, suitability for current requirements and fitness for the future. This report is aimed at providing a systematic mapping of substantive law giving rise to the cur-rent regulations at European level, describing in overview form the body of secondary law rele-vant for the current EU media order from the perspective of audiovisual offerings, and analysing the individual legal instruments from a comparative governance perspective, thereby illustrating dependencies, overlaps, structural differences and possible conflicts. This also includes possi-ble interfacing and spillover effects of legal instruments from other areas, whose provisions are (also) felt in the media area and which thus de facto have an influence on the media order.