Germany

[DE] Minister Presidents Reach Agreement on “Sports List”

IRIS 1998-4:1/29

Alexander Scheuer

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

The agenda for the Conference of Minister Presidents of the Länder held in Berlin mid-March included a number of items concerning broadcasting legislation and the transformation of the broadcasting regulations into a fourth version of the Agreement between the Federal States on Broadcasting (see IRIS 1998-3: 10).

The only item on which a consensus was reached was the drafting of a list of important social events which must be shown on television freely accessible to all (see IRIS 1998-2: 12). The Minister Presidents are seeking the transposition of Article 3a of the revised Television without Frontiers Directive (Directive 97/36/EC - see IRIS 1997-7: 6) into Section 5a of the new Agreement between the Federal States on Broadcasting adding to the list of events to be shown on freely accessible television the finals of the football European Cups if a German team is playing. It has also been decided that Germany will not adopt the method used by other Member States which include a host of other sports as well as football in the list and seek to include cultural events as well.

The Länder agreed to set up a working party on the other changes to the Agreement between the Federal States; the group would produce procedural proposals in May, for the Minister Presidents to decide on in early June.