Article 19 - Trusted flaggers

Article 18 - Out-of-court dispute settlement
Article 20 - Measures and protection against misuse
  1. Online platforms shall take the necessary technical and organisational measures to ensure that notices submitted by trusted flaggers through the mechanisms referred to in Article 14, are processed and decided upon with priority and without delay.
  2. The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established, where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions:
    1. it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content;
    2. it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform;
    3. it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner.
  3. Digital Services Coordinators shall communicate to the Commission and the Board the names, addresses and electronic mail addresses of the entities to which they have awarded the status of the trusted flagger in accordance with paragraph 2.
  4. The Commission shall publish the information referred to in paragraph 3 in a publicly available database and keep the database updated.
  5. Where an online platform has information indicating that a trusted flagger submitted a significant number of insufficiently precise or inadequately substantiated notices through the mechanisms referred to in Article 14, including information gathered in connection to the processing of complaints through the internal complaint-handling systems referred to in Article 17(3), it shall communicate that information to the Digital Services Coordinator that awarded the status of trusted flagger to the entity concerned, providing the necessary explanations and supporting documents.
  6. The Digital Services Coordinator that awarded the status of trusted flagger to an entity shall revoke that status if it determines, following an investigation either on its own initiative or on the basis information received by third parties, including the information provided by an online platform pursuant to paragraph 5, that the entity no longer meets the conditions set out in paragraph 2. Before revoking that status, the Digital Services Coordinator shall afford the entity an opportunity to react to the findings of its investigation and its intention to revoke the entity’s status as trusted flagger
  7. The Commission, after consulting the Board, may issue guidance to assist online platforms and Digital Services Coordinators in the application of paragraphs 5 and 6.