Black Sea Broadcasting Regulatory Authorities Forum (BRAF) was established in 2008 in order to serve as an open platform where the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) Member States’ national broadcasting regulatory authorities would hold discussions with respect to the current and perennial issues of the broadcasting sector in Black Sea region and to enhance already existing dialogue and cooperation among themselves.
BRAF consists of 12 broadcasting regulatory authorities representing all BSEC Member States. The principal regular decision making organ of BRAF is the BRAF Annual Conference which is convened once a year. BRAF Charter was adopted in the First Annual Conference held in Antalya, Turkey on 25 - 26 June 2009. The Permanent Secretariat (PS) located in Ankara carries out the secretarial services of BRAF. Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), the Turkish audiovisual media regulatory authority, covers the financial burden with regard to operation of the Secretariat. The Executive Body of BRAF was designed as a “troika” and consists of the current chair, the predecessor and the successor.
Believing that BRAF activities created opportunities for establishing productive relations among the BRAF Members and produced a reliable base for elaboration and realization of multilateral as well as bilateral cooperation in the Black Sea Basin, BRAF PS, as a fully and successfully functioning organization, applied to Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (CDMSI) within the Council of Europe on 5 November 2012 in order to maintain closer cooperation in the field of audiovisual media services. BRAF was granted unanimously the observer status at the Meeting of CDMSI held in Strasbourg on 23-26 April 2013. Meanwhile, BRAF PS applied to BSEC International Permanent Secretariat for establishing more concrete relations. After the completion of the official procedures, BRAF was given the Sectoral Dialogue Partnership Status at the 32nd Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the BSEC Member States held in Chisinau, Moldova, on 18 June 2015.
Alongside the cooperation and discussions in the Annual Conferences, BRAF Members produces valuable outputs such as nonbinding Kyiv Joint Declaration on “Protection of Minors” and the BRAF Book titled “A Decade of International Cooperation in the Black Sea Basin (2008 – 2018)”. To this day, BRAF has hold nine Annual Conferences with the subjects ranging from commercial communication to the protection of minors to the monitoring the audiovisual content via the internet. BRAF also has regular contacts with other regional networks of NRAs in Europe and beyond such as EPRA, CERF, IBRAF, etc.