The 9th Meeting of the Independent Regulators and Broadband Expert Working Group (IRB EWG) of the Eastern Partnership Electronic Communications Regulators Network (EaPeReg) took place in Belgrade, Serbia, on 3-4 March 2020. The meeting gathered representatives from all six Eastern partner countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine) as well as from EU Member States (Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Romania) and Serbia.

The meeting gave the participants from all three regions (EaP, EU and Western Balkan countries) a valuable opportunity to present their ongoing projects on broadband development and to exchange their views and vision on this matter.

The main outcome of the meeting was the adoption by the working group experts of the Methodology on National Electronic Communications Regulatory Authorities Independence Assessment for Eastern partner countries.

This Methodology is envisaged as an instrument, created for the Eastern partner countries under the EU4Digital Facility, to establish an independent national regulatory authority (NRA) for electronic communications where such body is not in place, or to assess the independence of the exiting NRAs, which will serve as guidelines for a self-assessment of the independence of the NRA every time such an evaluation is needed.