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In August 1997 the Council of Ministers (Federal Government) instigated proceedings to have the decree of the Flemish-speaking Community of 20 December 1996 on the authorisation of televised services annulled. According to the Council of Ministers the televised services which the Flemish-speaking Government (and in future the Flemish-speaking Media OfficeCommissariat voor de media) may authorise extend beyond the concept of broadcasting and television. According to the Council of Ministers the televised services which the http://services.obs.coe.int/en/index.htm Flemish-speaking Community is...

On June 1998 the Court of Appeal in Brussels delivered a decision in the dispute between Uradex, a company managing the neighbouring rights of writer-performers and performing artists (the artists) and the Professional Radio and Tele-distribution Union ( RTD), an umbrella organisation for Belgian cable distributors. The main point in the Uradex claim was that the members of the RTD were prejudicing the artists' neighbouring rights by broadcasting their services on cable without authorisation. Uradex therefore applied to the Court for an order to put a stop to such unauthorised broadcasting by...

On 31 March the Flemish Parliament voted some important amendments to the 1995 Decree on radio and television. The revision of this Decree was necessary considering the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC) on the application of the Television without Frontiers Directive (Case C11/95, CJEC 10 September 1996 and Case C-56/96, CJEC 5 June 1997, see IRIS 1996-10: 3 and IRIS 1997-7: 5) and because of the decision of 26 June 1997 by the European Commission (see IRIS 1997-9: 4) that considered the monopoly of the Flemish commercial broadcasting organisation ( VTM) to be...

On 4 March 1998, the Flemish Parliament voted on a new Decree guaranteeing a right of free newsgathering for the Flemish audio-visual media. This right includes a right of access to events taking place in the Flemish Community and the right to take images and sound of the event, as well as the right of short reporting by any Flemish broadcasting organisation, even if another broadcasting organisation holds exclusivity rights on this event. The right of access can be restricted only in extraordinary circumstances. Short reporting of events by broadcasters other than the holder of exclusive rights...

In 1997 the Belgian Communities, given responsibility in 1971 for regulating television, assumed responsibility for collecting broadcasting licence fees. The annual amount (BEF 7,488 for a television, BEF 1,092 for a car radio) is still fixed at national level, but the product is allocated to the Communities' budgets, in which it constitutes one of the very few tax revenues. The very Community-minded governments were therefore much more motivated to collect the fees efficiently than was the national service, set up within the former Régie des Téléphones (State-run telephone service) but marginalised...