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In IRIS 1997-5: 12, we reported on the Spanish Real Decreto-Ley (Royal decree) 6/1996 on the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector. This Royal Decree was replaced on 24 April 1997 by Law 12/1997 concerning the liberalisation of telecommunications. The reason for the replacement of the Royal Decree by this new law is a formal one. A Royal Decree is a Statute adopted by the Government (which is only possible in the case where there is an extreme and urgent need) which directly has force of law but needs to be approved by the Parliament within 30 days of its adoption by the Government. Parliament...

The European Commission, by means of its Commissioner who is responsible for the Internal Market, Mr Mario Monti, has expressed its intention to begin an infringement proceeding against Spain. The Commission considers that Law 17/1997 (the Digital Television Act - see IRIS 1997-2: 10, IRIS 1997-4: 14 and IRIS 1997-5: 12) infringes the provisions in the EC Treaty concerning the Internal Market. The controversial provision of the Spanish law stipulates that the use of multicrypt decoders will be imposed in the case where the two existing digital satellite television broadcasters (Canal Satélite and...

The Spanish Telecommunications Supervisory and Arbitration Authority, the Comisíon del Mercado de las Telecommunicaciones (CMT) was established by Royal Decree No. 6/96 in June 1996. It is comparable to America's FCC and Britain's OFTEL, and is a public law corporation. Its tasks range from safeguarding free competition in the telecommunications field, through regulating prices and network access, to the arbitration of disputes. But final decisions in the field it covers lie with the Spanish Government, which retains control in such important areas as the fixing of tariffs and conditions for combining...

The draft Digital Television Act (see IRIS 1997-2: 10 and IRIS 1997-4: 14) received final approval from the Spanish Parliament on 17 April 1997. The most important amendment made to it requires the two major groups, PRISA (Canal Satélite Digital) and Distribuidora de Televisión Digital (DTD) to agree on which decoder to use; if they do not reach agreement within two months, the Act will impose the Multicrypt system. The Socialist Party, which voted against approval of the Act, has already expressed its intention to appeal to the Constitutional Court. The Bill to regulate the transmission and retransmission...

In IRIS 1997-2:10 we reported on the adoption of a decree by the Spanish Government on the outline conditions for marketing digital television programmes. This decree effectively transposes Directive 95/47/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the use of standards for the transmission of television signals into Spanish national law. In the interim, as part of the approval process, the Spanish Parliament has transformed the decree ( see IRIS 19972: 10) into an ordinary act - the Digital Television Act. At the same time the Media Committee decided on important changes...