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The Société Française de Production (SFP), a completely State-owned firm that operates in the audiovisual production sector, was created in 1974 further to the dismantling of the ORTF (Office de Radiotélévision Française). The SFP suffered a succession of crises since competition opened up in the audiovisual production sector, and has been granted a number of large subsidies by the State in order to be able to cope with the situation. The European Commission considered the payment of such aid unlawful, on the grounds that they were not justified by any plans for restructuring, and called for the...

Exercise of the right to reply on the Internet comes up against the problem of the lack of specific rules and some judges have been wondering, in the absence of any precedent, about the possibility of transposing to the Internet the existing arrangements for the right to reply, whether in the written press (Art. 13 of the Act of 29 July 1881) or in the audiovisual sector (Art. 6 of the Act of 29 July 1982 and the Decree of 6 April 1987). On 5 June the Regional Court in Paris was called on for the first time ever to deliberate in a case on this point. The applicant, who considered that certain documents...

In a letter dated 29 May to the Chairman of the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (the audiovisual regulatory body - CSA) concerning terrestrially-broadcast digital television, the Minister of Culture and Communication proposed that "co-operation between the CSA and the Ministry should be embarked upon as quickly as possible and at the most appropriate level in order to discern more clearly the nature of the technical, economic and legal difficulties and the solutions envisaged for overcoming them to best advantage". At the top of the list of these difficulties are the problems involved in the...

Article 40 of the Act of 30 September 1986 is intended to protect audiovisual communication companies from excessive foreign influence, thereby assuring a degree of cultural protection in the sector. It prohibits any one person (natural or legal) of foreign nationality from holding, either directly or indirectly, more than 20% of the company capital or voting rights at general meetings of shareholders of a company holding an authorisation to provide a French-language sound or television broadcasting service using Hertzian terrestrial technology. The arrival last December of the American company...

On 7 May, the European Commission decided to commence infringement proceedings against France and sent formal notice in respect of the Decree of 27 March 1992. Article 8 of the Decree prohibits advertising on television for literary publishing, the cinema, the press and distribution. This decision follows two complaints, one brought by a Belgian furniture distributor whose advertising was refused by the France 3-Nord television channel, and the other complaint brought by the magazine press syndicate (Syndicat de la presse magazine - SPMI), with the support of the press editor Emap, whose promotion...