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On 17 January 2011 Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, addressed the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee in an extraordinary meeting on the state of play of the Commission’s examination of the recently adopted Hungarian Media Law (see IRIS 2011-2/30). Concerns have been raised regarding the compliance of the new rules with the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive, as well as, more generally, their respect for fundamental media freedoms, such as freedom of expression. Commissioner Kroes pointed...

On 2 November 2010 the Hungarian Parliament adopted Act CIV of 2010 on Freedom of Expression and on the Basic Rules of Media Content. This new piece of legislation is also dubbed as “Media Constitution” by its introducers, reflecting its fundamental nature. The promulgation of the Act was preceded earlier in the summer by an amendment of the Constitution relevant to the media and by the creation of the Nemzeti Média- és Hírközlési Hatóság (National Media and Communications Authority - NMHH) as a new “converged” regulatory authority (see IRIS 2010-8/34). The scope of the new Act covers a variety...

On 29 July 2010, Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, presented the regular report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the organisation’s main decision-making body. The report consists of overviews of issues raised in the participating countries, activities of the Representative in the last period and planned activities for the next reporting period. A large part of the report consists of the analysis of issues raised in 26 of the OSCE participating states. In the last period the Representative had to deal with several issues concerning media freedom, such as media pluralism,...

Following the general elections in spring the newly formed Hungarian Parliament has begun to reshape the legislative framework for the media. As its first step the Constitution was amended in early July. The amendment defines the role of public service media (which is to contribute “to preserving the national and European identity, to preserving and enriching Hungarian and minority languages, to strengthening national cohesion and to fulfilling the needs of national, ethnic, religious communities and of the family”). Beyond this broad remit a new provision of the Constitution also defines the basic...

In October 2009 Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület (National Radio and Television Commission - ORTT) completed the tender process granting the right to broadcast two separate radio programme services on the two existing national analogue radio networks for the following seven years. In the previous twelve years these networks were used by the commercial radio broadcasters Danubius Rádió Műsorszolgáltató Zrt. (connected to the EBRD via the Accession Mezzanine Capital) and Sláger Rádió Zrt. (a subsidiary of the US-based Emmis Corporation). Their broadcasting licences expired in November 2009. Earlier...