Search results : 340

On 19 July 2011 the European Commission sent requests for information in the form of letters of formal notice, the first step in the process of an EU infringement procedure, to 20 EU member states. The member states in question, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, have not yet notified to the Commission measures to implement the new EU Telecoms Package, formally adopted after two years of heated negotiations at the end of 2009...

On 22 March 2011, the Spanish private copying levy received another serious judicial setback, as the National Court (Audiencia Nacional) declared the nullity of the 2008 Order which set out the fees, the devices and the equipment which are subject to payment of a fair compensation for private copying. The Court analysed the administrative Order that set the fees in 2008 and concluded that it is incomprehensible that, while the standard fixed fee for analogue devices took the form of an Order, with all the prescribed procedures that this entails, the standard set with regard to the digital levy...

The European Commission has finished the preliminary analysis of the measures implementing the Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive into national law notified by 16 Member States: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Subsequently, the European Commission has sent fact-finding letters to these states inquiring about these implementing measures. The Commission is thus seeking to ensure that all provisions of the AVMS Directive have been correctly transposed into...

On 7 April 2011 Advocate General Yves Bot delivered his opinion on case C-281/09 of the European Commission v. Spain on the question of the legal definition of television advertising spots and other forms of advertising under the EU’s Television without Frontiers (TWF) Directive. The question arose when Spain was accused by the European Commission of failing to comply with the advertising rules of the TWF Directive. Article 18 of the Directive imposes an upper time limit of 12 minutes per clock hour to the transmission of television advertising spots and teleshopping, while other forms of advertising...

In a judgment of 15 March the European Court of Human Rights decided that an elected representative’s conviction for causing serious insult to the King of Spain was contrary to his freedom of expression. The case concerns the criminal conviction of a politician of a Basque separatist political party, Mr. Arnaldo Otegi Mondragon, following comments made to the press during an official visit by the King to the province of Biscay. During a press conference Otegi Mondragon, as spokesperson for his parliamentary group, Sozialista Abertzaleak, stated in reply to a journalist’s question that the visit...