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The Austrian government coalition between the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Freedom Party (FPÖ), which has been in power since the last parliamentary elections, has included a number of issues relevant to media law in its coalition agreement; notably, both parties are keen to promote technical innovation in the form of digitisation as well as traditional media policy measures to support the country’s media. As far as digitisation is concerned, the coalition partners are pursuing a comprehensive research strategy with a treaty on research, technology and innovation, along with measures to improve...

In Vienna on 23 January 2018, the Austrian Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court) ruled that Österreichische Rundfunk (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation - ORF) had not paid an inflated price for the rights to broadcast the UEFA Champions League and had therefore acted in accordance with the Bundesgesetz über den Österreichischen Rundfunk (Federal Act on the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation - ORF-Gesetz) (Case no. W120 2111451-1). The legal dispute followed a disagreement between ORF and the Austrian private television broadcaster PULS 4 TV GmbH, which is owned by Munich-based...

On 14 February 2018, the Austrian regulator KommAustria rejected a complaint by several private broadcasters against public service broadcaster ORF (case no. KOA 11.220/18-001). According to the private broadcasters, the analysis of the two channels’ evening schedules over the previous 18 months had shown that the quality of ORF’s evening prime-time programmes broadcast between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. had, at least on the channels ORF eins and ORF 2, been inadequate. They had therefore asked KommAustria to issue a decision confirming these findings. One of ORF’s obligations under Article 3(1) of the...

In a decision of 25 October 2017 (6Ob116/17b), Austria’s Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court - OGH) submitted a series of questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerning the legal classification of so-called hate speech and its consequences under European law. In particular, the questions concern the scope of hosting providers’ obligations to take down illegal content in the light of Directive 2000/31/EC (E-Commerce Directive). The (interim) decision concerned hate speech published on the Facebook social network. On 3 April 2016, a private user of the online platform, registered...

In a decision of 12 January 2018, the European Commission prevented Austrian regulator KommAustria from introducing measures that would place the national public service broadcaster ORF at an undue competitive advantage. The decision concerned KommAustria’s plans for continued regulation of the market for analogue terrestrial radio broadcasting in Austria. Unlike other broadcasting markets, the analogue radio broadcasting market has not seen growing infrastructure competition or inter-platform competition due to the importance of analogue FM radio devices, particularly in cars. KommAustria stated...