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On 4 May 2010 the Εθνικό Συμβούλιο Ραδιοτηλεόρασης (National Council for Radio and Television - ESR) issued a decision (Nr. 220/4.5.2010) condemning a television channel for the transmission of a show ridiculing the Greek Prime Minister. According to the decision, “satire is a way of making social criticism that nevertheless cannot extend to the derision and insult of (the Prime Minister)”. The minority opinion of the President of the ESR was different: the show depicted in a satirical way the pressure applied by the European Union Commissioner on the Prime Minister to undertake a series of painful...

The Συμβούλιο της Επικρατείας (Council of State), the highest administrative court of Greece, made a request for a preliminary ruling to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in its decision 4229 of 29 December 2009 in relation to whether Article 1 para. (d) of Directive 89/552/EEC of the Council (known as the Television without Frontiers Directive), as it currently stands, requires that the provision of payment or similar consideration is a necessary conceptual element of the notion of intention to present advertising in the context of surreptitious advertising. The question was posed on the occasion...

The European Court of Human Rights recently delivered a judgment on the right to freedom of expression of a lawyer convicted for the insult and defamation of a public prosecutor during a television interview. In a case that received considerable media coverage, Georgis Alfantakis, a lawyer in Athens, was representing a popular Greek singer (A.V.). The singer had accused his wife, S.P., of fraud, forgery and use of forged documents causing losses to the State of nearly EUR 150,000. On the recommendation of the public prosecutor at the Athens Court of Appeal, D.M., it was decided not to bring charges...

The first digital terrestrial transmission in Greece of private television channels of national reach through the digital network provider Digea took place on 24 September 2009 in an area of the North Peloponnese, while current planning envisages the immediate launch of transmissions in big, urban centres as well. Greece has thus officially entered the period of digital transition envisaged in the ministerial decision, published in August 2008, which determined the frequencies on which the existing television stations can digitally transmit their analogue programme. On the institutional level,...

On 15 September 2009, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) made public its latest reports on the Czech Republic, Greece and Switzerland, adopted in the fourth round of its monitoring of the laws, policies and practices to combat racism in the Member States of the Council of Europe (for commentary on earlier reports, see IRIS 2009-8: 5, IRIS 2009-5: 4, IRIS 2008-4: 6, IRIS 2006-6: 4 and IRIS 2005-7: 3). Three main recommendations dealing with the (audiovisual) media and/or the Internet can be distilled from relevant sections of these reports. First, in each of the reports,...