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In a decision of 1 March 2018 (Case no. 7 A 11938/17), the Oberverwaltungsgericht Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate Higher Administrative Court - OVG Rheinland-Pfalz) ruled that the German broadcasting contribution fee is compatible with European law. A private individual from Trier had complained about the levying of outstanding payments by Südwestrundfunk (SWR), arguing that the fee was incompatible with European law because it gave public service broadcasters an unfair advantage over their private competitors. However, this argument was rejected by the court. In its decision, the OVG stated...

On 21 February 2018, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned two television advertisements on the grounds that they breached the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising (BCAP Code) rules relating to the protection of children. The decisions provide helpful guidance on alcohol advertising, and advertisements which may be harmful to children. The first television advertisement was for a discount supermarket chain, Aldi Stores Ltd, and formed part of their 2017 Christmas campaign, which featured a computer-generated image of a carrot in a number of parodies of popular films. The advertisement...

The Court of First Instance in Brussels has ordered Facebook to stop tracking users on third-party sites, and to destroy all similar data it has illegally collected thus far. The judgment is the latest in a long-running legal battle between the Belgian Privacy Commission and Facebook. The former started court proceedings against the social network site in 2015, when a study revealed that Facebook tracked non-users and logged out users for advertising purposes through “data cookies” on external websites (“third-party tracking”). Summary proceedings resulted in a judgment by the Brussels Court of...

The Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA) approved the amendments made to the Broadcasting Code on December 2017. The Broadcasting Code was first drafted and approved in 2014 by the regulator. In 2017, the Council of Complaints, the body in charge of public complaints related to ethics in broadcasting programmes, started a revision process of this Code. According to AMA’s press release, this revision was necessary “in view of the swift development of the audiovisual media industry, the trends in programme production, as well as the way information and entertainment offered by audiovisual operators...

On 31 January 2018, the European Commission decided that Sweden’s intention to impose a ban on alcohol advertising on two UK-based broadcasters that target mainly Swedish audiences is not compatible with EU law. This is the first Commission decision to be based on Article 4 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2010/13/EU) (AVMSD). Under the AVMSD, the laws applicable to a broadcaster are determined on the basis of the country-of-origin principle. According to this principle, a broadcaster must comply only with the rules of the EU member state in which it is established, even if it broadcasts...