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During the last general elections, several courts were called upon to make rulings as to the conditions of access of the campaigning parties to electoral broadcasts on state-owned radio and television channels. The RTBF board of governors had laid down a regulation restricting access to those parties with seats in all the Assemblies concerned by the elections of 21 May (Senate, the Lower House, the Regional Parliaments), in the avowed aim of blocking access to the extreme right-wing parties. This system, which favoured the established parties, was of course criticised by the smaller parties that...

The decision handed down on 16 June by the Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation), following the considerable number of leaks over the last months in court cases, laid out in strong terms a reminder of the fundamental principles of the presumption of innocence and the respect for human dignity and honour that each person has the right to enjoy. On 23 June, several offices belonging to the Le Soir daily newspaper were searched. Mr.Mafféi, the Brussels appeal court judge in charge of the investigation, spent three and a half hours interviewing René Haquin, the journalist covering the Agusta case...

By Ministerial Decree of 17 September 1993 "Coditel-Brabant", a Brussels cable operator, was prohibited to transmit the programme "TNT/Cartoon Network" on its cable network. In a court action against the Ministerial Decree and against the refusal of cable transmission by Coditel based on this Decree, it was argued by Turner's TNT/Cartoon Network that the Ministerial Decree was infringing the Directive on "Television without Frontiers" of 3 October 1989, which prohibits Member States to restrict retransmission on their territory of television broadcasts from other Member States of the European Union...

The State Council, the high administrative Court in Belgium, has ruled in a judgment of 2 March 1995 (Case No 51.964) that VT4 is to be given access to the Flemish cable networks. By Ministerial Order of 16 January 1995 the Flemish Minister of Cultural Affairs refused to permit the Flemish cable networks to distribute the television programmes of VT4. A decision of 24 January 1995 by the President of the 4th Chamber of the State Council had already provisionally suspended the Ministerial Order. In its judgment of 2 March the State Council affirmed the suspension. The Ministerial Order is now suspended...

To make room for the disputed distribution of the programme of the new Flemish private commercial broadcaster VT4 of the Skandinavian/American media company SBS, cable operators in the Brussels area have decided to stop the distribution of the programme of Nederland 3, one of the public stations of the Netherlands. This decision has lead to potests of, on the one hand, the Government of the Netherlands and, on the other hand, Dutch Members of the European Parliament and journalists. The Dutch Government has pointed out to the Flemish Minister of Culture, Mr. H. Weckx, that according to the cultural...