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Through the German Motion Picture Fund (GMPF), the Federal Republic of Germany plans to support the production of feature films and television series from 1 January 2022 until 31 December 2023, with an estimated total budget of EUR 150 million. The support takes the form of direct grants to producers and co-producers of certain feature films and TV series. The expected scale of the GMPF meant that it required European Commission approval under EU state aid rules. On 27 October 2021, the Federal Republic therefore informed the Commission of the plan to continue with the scheme, which was first established...

In a judgment of 23 December 2021 (case no. 20 O 43/19), the 20th civil chamber of the Landgericht Stuttgart (Stuttgart regional court – LG Stuttgart) ruled that the ban on regional TV advertising by national TV broadcasters, enshrined in Article 8(11) of the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty – MStV), breached EU law because it was incompatible with the freedom to provide services (Article 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)) and the principle of equal treatment laid down in Article 20 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The plaintiff is a...

The dispute over the distribution of the RT DE television channel in Germany is threatening to become another area of conflict in what has, for many years, been an increasingly tense relationship between the Russian Federation and Germany. On 16 December 2021, RT (previously known as Russia Today) launched RT DE, a new live German-language channel. However, it did not have a German broadcasting licence for the channel, but instead used a licence issued in Serbia. A previous attempt by the broadcaster to obtain a licence from Luxembourg had failed. However, since the broadcaster does not hold...

On 9 December 2021 (case no. 16 O 297/21), the Landgericht Berlin (Berlin regional court – LG Berlin) granted an interim injunction in proceedings brought by the nine public broadcasting corporations that comprise the ARD, declaring the broadcast of certain clips from ARD programmes by a private broadcaster as illegal on account of copyright infringements. The dispute began when private broadcaster BILD TV, recently launched by the Axel Springer media company in August 2021, showed excerpts from the public broadcasters’ election programming in its own BILD LIVE programme. On the...

In November 2021, the Rundfunkkommission (Broadcasting Commission) of the German Bundesländer, which acts as a joint discussion forum and decision-making body on media policy and related legal questions for the Heads of the State and Senate Chancelleries, published a draft proposal on the remit and structural reform of public service broadcasting. If the proposal is adopted, it will be the third time that the Medienstaatsvertrag (state media treaty – MStV) has been reformed, the current version of which came into force in November 2020. Its main purpose is to future-proof public service...