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State Aid for Public Service Broadcasting in the European Union

State Aid for Public Service Broadcasting in the European Union. Preben Sorensen & Vincent Porter EURALVA. Scope. Listeners, Viewers and Public Service Broadcasting The Commission’s Second Draft Communication on State Aid to PSB State-aided, or Public Service Broadcasting?

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State Aid for Public Service Broadcasting in the European Union

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  1. State Aid for Public Service Broadcasting in the European Union Preben Sorensen & Vincent Porter EURALVA

  2. Scope • Listeners, Viewers and Public Service Broadcasting • The Commission’s Second Draft Communication on State Aid to PSB • State-aided, or Public Service Broadcasting? • Public Service Remits: from Subsidiarity to Minimum Standards • Monitoring the Development of New Public Services

  3. Listeners, Viewers and Public Service Broadcasting • TV is very important to all EU citizens, but information services not always adequate (see various Eurobarometer Reports) • PSB is third highest beneficiary of State aid in EU (22 billion Euros. annually) • PSB is paid for by Listeners and Viewers – often by regressive taxes • Listeners and Viewers want a range and diversity of programmes related to their democratic, social and cultural needs.

  4. The Commission’s Draft Second Communication on State Aid for Public Service Broadcasting • General Welcome by EURALVA of the Draft Communication as a genuine attempt to chart a forward-looking middle way. • First Shortfall: Failure to distinguish clearly between Public Service and State-aided Broadcasting • Second Shortfall: Exclusive Reliance on Competition Theory, not on social needs, to monitor performance of newly-approved public services

  5. State-aided or Public Service Broadcasting? • An Economic Approach versus a Programming Approach. • The Importance of the Public Service Remit • Amsterdam Treaty, article 16: “Commission and Member States to co-operate … on principles and conditions to enable [psbs] to fulfil their missions” • ECJ: “the recipient undertaking must actually have public service obligations to discharge, and the obligations must be clearly defined” (C 226/1 – Altmark 1) • Subsequent Criticisms of Commission by ECFI on State Aid to Portugal (T 442-03) and Denmark (T 336-04) • Need to replace Subsidiarity by Minimum Standards • Requires broader approach from the Commission?

  6. Establishing Minimum Standards • Harmonisation of public service remits neither possible nor desirable. BUT is each remit • Likely to promote social and territorial cohesion? (Amsterdam art. 16) • Directly related to the democratic needs of listeners and viewers? (Amsterdam Protocol 1) • Directly related to the social needs of listeners and viewers? (Amsterdam Protocol 2) • Directly related to the cultural needs of listeners and viewers? (Amsterdam Protocol 3) • Possible reference (post-Lisbon Treaty) to earlier work on public service broadcasting by Council of Europe

  7. Monitoring Development of PSB Services • Ex-ante Approval by Commission • Mode of Ex-post Monitoring? • EURALVA approves measures to eliminate over-compensation and cross-subsidisation, but • Commission’s proposals may be over-prescriptive since they do not allow consideration of improvements made by new services to democratic, social and cultural needs of listeners and viewers. • All IP rights are ‘anti-competitive’

  8. Finally … • The Commission and the European Parliament should bear in mind that: • it is the democratic, social and cultural needs of Europe’s citizens • as well as media pluralism • which should underpin all their proposals for the future.

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