Belgium

[BE] CLT-UFA Television Returns to Luxembourg

IRIS 2006-3:1/16

Mara Rossini

Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam

Since 1 January 2006, RTL-TVI, Club RTL and Plug TV have ceased to be television broadcasting services in the French-speaking Community. That, in any case, was the view held by the Belgian PLC TVI which, until then, was the editor of these services. On 3 October 2005 its board of directors decided to not request renewal of the authorisation that it had been granted by the Government of the French-speaking Community in 1996 for the RTL-TVI and Club RTL services, and which lapsed on 31 December 2005. At the end of December 2005, TVI also announced its renunciation of the authorisation issued in March 2004 for its third channel (Plug TV).

According to TVI, editorial responsibility for these three services now lay in the hands of the Luxembourg company CLT-UFA, of which TVI is a subsidiary. The concession granted to CLT-UFA by the Luxembourg Government covered RTL-TVI and Club RTL and other programmes with an international dimension. The Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (the French-speaking Community's audiovisual regulatory body- CSA) did not seem convinced by this line of argument, and on 1 February 2006 it brought a complaint that TVI and CLT-UFA were broadcasting the RTL-TVI and Club RTL services without authorisation. The complaint does not prejudice the decision that will eventually be taken, but merely indicates the commencement of the procedure. TVI and CLT-UFA must now submit their written observations, and they have been called to appear before the CSA's authorisation and supervision board on 15 March 2006.

There will no doubt be a number of further stages in this matter. It raises more particularly the question of the "establishment criteria" laid down in Article 2 of the "Television Without Frontiers" Directive. It will perhaps also be necessary to refer to Article 2(7) of the French-speaking Community's Broadcasting Decree of 27 February 2003, according to which the French-speaking Community has authority overeditors of services established in a Member State of the European Union or Party to the European Economic Area Agreement whose activities, as observed by the CSA's authorisation and supervision board after consulting the Commission of the European Union, are entirely or mainly directed at the general public of the French-speaking Community and the services are established in one of these States with a view to evading the rules that would apply to them if they were under the authority of the French-speaking Community.