Marketing communications for certain more sensitive products require a bit more active work to ensure they are responsible before circulating them to the wider public. Ads for alcoholic beverages are covered by additional content standards and sector-specific legislation. Ensuring that these ads are responsible, that they abide by the highest standards, going far and beyond regulatory requirements, has been a long-standing priority for EASA’s self-regulatory network.
EASA has worked closely with its members (both ad self-regulatory organisations (SROs) and ad industry associations) to develop effective rules and ensure responsible ads in this field.
All advertising, regardless of sector, should be legal, decent, honest, and truthful and conform to accepted principles of fair competition and good business practice, prepared with a due sense of social responsibility and based on principles of fairness and good faith. This is codified in every of the 27 national ad self-regulatory codes in Europe, based on international standards set out by the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Advertising and Marketing Communications Code. The ICC has also issued additional guidance, namely the Framework for Responsible Alcohol Marketing Communications, on applicable standards and helping to interpret the Code’s provisions specifically for alcohol products. EASA feeds back insights to the ICC as part of the Code’s and Framework’s regular updates, inspired by the latest marketing trends and upcoming issues.
For a starter and as a general rule of thumb, ads for alcoholic beverages should never:
- encourage excessive or irresponsible consumption,
- present abstinence or moderation negatively, or
- suggest any link with violent, aggressive, dangerous or antisocial behaviour or an improvement of cognitive or sexual faculties.
The protection of vulnerable groups, such as minors or children, is a fundamental pillar of advertising self-regulation. Ads for alcoholic drinks should never be aimed at individuals under the legal drinking age (LDA). They should never show under-LDA people consuming alcoholic beverages, and should not be placed in media or events where a majority of the audience is known to be under the legal drinking age.
All 28 SROs are enforcing alcohol-specific ad standards, through dedicated guidance pieces, best practice recommendations, or specific rules in 26 European countries, all complementing applicable legislation.
Partnerships with other institutions
EASA endorses the advertising principles of the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) and has worked with the Brewers of Europe, Wine In Moderation, the Responsible Marketing Pact of the World Federation of Advertisers, and other sectoral organisations to ensure high ad standards in the alcohol industry across Europe.
We regularly coordinate monitoring exercises with ad self-regulatory organisations to check the compliance of advertisements of alcohol beverage industry brands. These exercises are crucial to the development of advertising practice and a useful training exercise for all the participants in the self-regulatory process.
EU-level regulatory developments
In February 2021, the European Commission published its European Beating Cancer Plan, complemented in November 2021 by an Implementation Roadmap, which commits to reducing the exposure of young people to alcohol marketing through close monitoring of the implementation of the Audiovisual Media Service Directive (AVMSD). In a dedicated own-initiative report (February 2022), the European Parliament points out cancer’s alcohol-driven risks and the role of a healthy diet in cancer prevention, along with possible steps to improve information to consumers, commercial communications and sponsorship, and to protect children from commercial communication on alcohol and HFSS.
The latest AVMSD Council Conlusions adopted in May 2025 assess that the AVMSD provides additional value and specific rules that apply to all providers determining what audiovisual content can be harmful to minors.
