Belgium

[BE] Decree of the Media Council of the German-speaking Community of Belgium

IRIS 2010-1:1/55

Christian Mohrmann

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

The tasks of the Medienrat der deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft (Media Council of the German-speaking Community), which is responsible for regulating the audiovisual media in Belgium’s smallest linguistic community, are laid down inter alia in a decree of 27 June 2005. This decree was last amended on 3 December 2009 and is entitled Dekret über die audiovisuellen Mediendienste und die Kinovorstellungen (Decree on Audiovisual Media Services and Cinema Exhibitions).

It governs not only the provision of audiovisual media services and of the transmission networks, services and facilities that fall within the remit of the German-speaking Community but also the organisation of cinema exhibitions in the area of that Community (Article 1).

With the amendments of December 2009, the decree was extensively revised and adapted to the provisions of the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

For example, it now covers all audiovisual media services instead of only the traditional area of television and radio (Article 3).

Furthermore, provisions have been adapted and simplified with regard to audiovisual commercial communication, and product placement is permitted in certain cases (Articles 6 et seq.).