Search results : 1106

Since 1 March 2010, anyone under the jurisdiction of a court may claim in proceedings before a court, either administrative or judicial, “that a legislative provision infringes the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution” - this is the prior questioning of constitutionality. Thus Canal+, in support of its application to the Conseil d’Etat for the cancellation of a decision by the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory body - CSA) in March 2010 ordering it to broadcast a communiqué (see IRIS 2010-4: 1/22), called for a referral to the Constitutional Council on the...

On 17 December 2009 the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (audiovisual regulatory body - CSA) called on Canal+ Distribution to change the numbering of the terrestrially broadcast television channels NRJ 12 and BFM TV in the offer of its Canal Sat package, in response to the channels’ desire to be given the place numbering they have for digital broadcasting, i.e. 12 for NRJ 12 and 15 for BFM TV, whereas they were numbered 36 and 55 respectively in the package. Canal Sat then appealed to the Conseil d’Etat for the decision to be cancelled (see IRIS 2010-2: 1/18). In a decision delivered on 9 July...

The Court of Cassation has found in favour of Orange (a subsidiary of France Télécom) in its dispute with its competitors SFR and Free, which claimed it was making access to its sport channel Orange Sports dependent on subscription to its triple-play offer (television, Internet and telephone) (see IRIS 2009-6: 12/19). The applicants claimed that the two-fold exclusivity for distributing and broadcasting exclusive audiovisual programmes constituted joint selling, which is prohibited by Article L 122-1 of the French Consumer Code, and hence was an act of unfair competition on the part of Orange....

On 24 June 2010, the European Commission issued a set of reasoned opinions to 12 member states (Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia) requesting that they proceed with updating their national broadcasting legislation in order to bring it into compliance with the Audiovisual Media Service (AVMS) Directive. The Directive, which replaced the Television without Frontiers Directive of 1989 (as amended), was adopted in December 1997 with the intention of bringing the EU’s broadcasting rules up to speed with the digital age. The...

The Act designed to open up to competition and regulate the on-line gaming sector adopted on 6 April 2010 was gazetted on 13 May 2010, after validation by the Constitutional Council, thereby achieving the French Government’s aim of allowing the market to be liberalised before the start of the football World Cup. The Act is intended to open up the market for on-line gaming (betting on sporting events, betting on horse racing, and poker) in a regulated fashion by authorising, through the new authority regulating on-line gaming (Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne - ARJEL), operators who will...