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The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office), Germany's competition authority, has expressed reservations concerning the plan of RTL Television GmbH Deutschland to acquire sole ownership of news channel n-tv . RTL, which currently owns 50% of the shares in n-tv Nachrichtenfernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, is planning to purchase the remaining 50% from CNN/Time Warner. The Bundeskartellamt claims that the merger would affect the whole television advertising market in Germany. Together with ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, the Luxembourg-based RTL Group already holds a so-called collective dominant market position,...

On 31 January 2006, the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (Federal Ministry for Business and Technology) published a new draft law amending current telecommunications legislation. An amendment to the Telecommunications Act had already been agreed by the Bundestag in June 2005, but was never adopted because of the drafting in of a mediation committee and the premature end of the parliamentary term. One new addition to the draft agreed in 2005 concerns the regulation of "new markets", which is explained in Art. 9(a). According to this provision, new markets should only be covered by...

On 26 January 2006, following the publication of a revised Bill, the Bundesjustizministerium (Federal Ministry of Justice) organised a hearing for interested parties on the second wave of copyright law reforms. Since the first wave of copyright law amendments transposed into German law the binding provisions of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Information Society in 2003 (see IRIS 2003-9: 13), no further regulations have followed. A draft for the second wave was published in September 2004, but was not adopted during the parliamentary term ended autumn 2005. The new revised draft concentrates...

The European Commission has sent "reasoned opinions" to Germany and Luxembourg. Both these countries have failed to implement Directive 2003/33/EC of 26 May 2003 on the advertising and sponsorship of tobacco products. The two non-compliant EU Member States had already been targeted by the Commission in October 2005, when a "letter of formal notice" was issued to their addresses. If they neglect to comply within two months, they face legal action and, ultimately, a ruling by the European Court of Justice that they have failed to fulfil their obligation to transpose EU legislation. The Commissioner...

The Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg media authority - mabb ) has filed an action for annulment with the Court of First Instance of the European Communities against a decision of the European Commission. The disputed decision challenged the legality of subsidies granted to support the transition to digital terrestrial television (DVB-T) in Berlin-Brandenburg (see IRIS 2006-1: 7). The Commission had decided that the state aid granted by the mabb in order to finance the launch of digital terrestrial television was unlawful under the terms of Article 87.1 of the EC Treaty. The...