Greece

[GR] Draft Law on Private Radio and Television

IRIS 2006-5:1/24

Alexandros Economou

National Council for Radio and Television

On 11 April 2006, a draft law on the concentration and licensing of media enterprises was presented by the government and could be voted on by Parliament before the end of May. The new text aims to abolish the existing restrictions on ownership of media companies, as well as to reorganize the licensing rules for radio and television stations.

A new concept that dominates the rules concerning audiovisual enterprises ownership is the concentration of control in the media market; for the assessment of such a concentration one must take account of the provisions of the existing law on competition and the provisions of the new law, that determine the rate of infiltration in the market, on the basis of which possession of a dominant position is presumed. The supervision of these rules will be the task of the Competition Authority and not of the actual regulator of audiovisual matters (National Council of Radio and Television).

The current audiovisual landscape is characterized by the existence of a great number of television stations that can hardly satisfy legal obligations, especially with regard to programme content. In view of clarifying this situation, the new text abolishes the category of local televisions (leaving the regional and national stations intact) and introduces greater severity in the licensing procedure: it, for example, prescribes a minimum of employed persons, an obligation to pay an annual fee for the use of frequencies, an assessment of the current and future economic situation of the company etc…

There is also a reference to the obligation on national broadcasters to switch off analogue broadcasting after a transitional period (though no definite periods of time are established), during which they have to diffuse content both via an analogue and a digital platform.