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In April 2009, the European Court of Human Rights delivered an important judgment in which it recognised the right of access to official documents. The Court made it clear that, when public bodies hold information that is needed for public debate, the refusal to provide documents in this matter to those who are requesting access, is a violation of the right to freedom of expression and information guaranteed under Article 10 of the Convention. The case concerns a request by the Társaság a Szabadságjogokért (Hungarian Civil Liberties Union - TASZ) to Hungary’s Constitutional...

In April the Gazdasági Versenyhivatal (Hungarian Competition Authority - GVH) finalised and published its report examining competition on the Hungarian media markets. The basis of the report was a general sector inquiry launched by the authority on 24 July 2007. Its subject was TV broadcasting in Hungary as a whole. The GVH named three factors as reasons for initiating such a review: - the obvious disproportionality between the audience share of the two national commercial TV channels RTL-Klub and TV2 (together approx. 60 %) and their share on the TV advertising market (together approx. 90 %)...

On 24 February 2009, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) made public its latest reports on Bulgaria, Hungary and Norway, 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 2008-4: 6, IRIS 2006-6: 4 and IRIS 2005-7: 3). In respect of Bulgaria, ECRI encourages the State authorities to “make the media aware, without undermining their editorial independence, of the need to ensure that the information they provide does not help to breed...

On 11 February 2009 the Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület (National Radio and Television Commission, ORTT) decided to reject the proposal of MTM-SBS and M-RTL, the operators of the two national terrestrial television channels, to the decrease of their broadcasting fees. In accordance with the rules of Act I on Radio and Television Broadcasting of 1996 (Broadcasting Act) broadcasters are required to pay an annual broadcasting fee. In the case of terrestrial broadcasters the amount of this fee is defined by the broadcasting contract concluded between the respective broadcaster and the ORTT. MTM-SBS...

In December 2008 the Hungarian Competition Council delivered a decision on the pricing policy of MTM-SBS. This company, which since 2007 has been a subsidiary of the ProSiebenSat1 Media AG, broadcasts TV2, one of Hungary’s two national commercial terrestrial television channels. TV2 has one of the largest audience shares in the country. Although broadcast primarily on analogue terrestrial frequencies, the channel is also available on various analogue and digital programme distribution networks. Until 2006 MTM-SBS granted the right to distribute TV2 for free to platform operators. However, in that...