Germany

[DE] Agreement on Broadcasting between the Federal States in United Germany, amended for second time

IRIS 1996-3:1/19

Andrea Schneider

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

The agreement amending the Agreement on Broadcasting between the Federal States in United Germany, signed by the Presidents of the Länder (the federal states) on 22 June 1995, took effect on 1 January 1996. This is the second time that the Agreement of 31 August 1991 on Broadcasting between the Federal States in United Germany, has been amended. Details of the first amendment, covering protection of the young and regulations on sponsorship, were given in IRIS 1995-1: 9.

The new amendment applies to paragraph 29 of the Agreement, which deals with the use of funds derived from licence fees for specific purposes.

So far, the media authorities of the Länder have been able to use such funds only to cover licensing and monitoring functions, subsidise public access channels and - when specifically authorised to do so in Land law - subsidise infrastructure needed under Land law to provide the whole Land with terrestrial broadcasting services.

The last possibility was to apply only to 31 December 1995, but has now been extended up to 31 December 2000. Länder In addition to subsidising public access channels, the media authorities of the will in future be able to subsidise other forms of non-commercial local and regional broadcasting from their 2% share of the licence fees, when authorised to do so in Land law. They will also be able to subsidise new broadcasting technologies, such as digital radio.