Greece

[GR] Institutional Changes

IRIS 2004-8:1/19

Alexandros Economou

National Council for Radio and Television

The institution of a General Secretariat for Communications with responsibility for audiovisual matters in place of the present Ministry for the Press and the Mass Media, which is now abolished, constitutes a significant structural change made by the Greek Government put in place by the legislative elections held on 7 March.

According to Article 2, paragraph 2 of Act No. 3242/2004 (voted last May by the Greek Parliament), the new body will be one of the Prime Minister's offices and he may appoint a person to be responsible for supervising its operation.

The Prime Minister has taken up this option and has appointed the present Minister and Government spokesman Mr Theodoros Roussopoulos, a former journalist on the Mega Channel private television channel.

When he first spoke before the Parliament (on 6 May 2004), Mr Roussopoulos said that the Government was currently looking into new provisions to promote the transparency of companies in the audiovisual sector, but had not forgotten several other provisions of the current Act No. 2328/1995 that were still not being applied.

The procedure for granting television licences operated by the ESR (the independent authority for audiovisual matters) (see IRIS 2004-1: 14) is currently in difficulty because some companies are unable to comply with the legal scheme in force. Moreover, the Symvoulio tis Epikratias (the highest administrative court in Greece) will soon be pronouncing on several of the provisions contained in the Presidential Decree, on the basis of which this procedure has been organised.