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By order of the Bulgarian Prime Minister a Working Group has been established in the Ministry for Culture with the purpose of preparing a bill for the electronic media by 30 November 2010. The Working Group includes media experts, representatives of the Council of Ministers, of the Council for Electronic Media and the Communications Regulation Commission, of the Bulgarian National Radio and the Bulgarian National Television, of the Ministry for Culture and the Ministry for Finance and the Independent Producers Association. The Council of Ministers held a discussion about the future of the media...

On 13 July 2010 the Polish Government adopted the Guidelines for the Draft Act Amending the Broadcasting Act (in relation to the implementation of Directive 2007/65/EC). On the basis of these detailed Guidelines the Draft Act was prepared and sent on 30 July 2010 for intergovernmental consultations that have been already concluded. The AVMSD will be transposed into national legislation mostly by amending the Broadcasting Act. The responsible regulatory authority will be the National Broadcasting Council (NBC), which nowadays has responsibility only in respect of traditional radio and television...

In recent times Latvia has been undergoing a legislative procedure to adopt a new Electronic Media Law that is intended to transpose the AVMSD and to replace the 1995 Radio and Television Law (see IRIS 2010-7: 1/28). Now, after a period of long and challenging discussions and actions by various stakeholders and officials the new law is finally adopted and has come into force. The previous reports on the review of the draft Electronic Media Law have already reflected the complicated and slow movement of the draft through the Saeima (Parliament). Saeima adopted the draft Electronic Media Law at the...

On 18 May 2010 Seimas adopted a new wording of the Act on the Funding of Political Parties and Political Campaigns and the Control of the Funding. The new wording of the Act will come into force on 15 September 2010. The provisions of the adopted Act are particularly important to broadcasters as they allow broadcasting advertising clips of political parties in radio and television programmes again. This was not allowed by the previous law (see IRIS 2008-8: 15/26). According to the amended Act such political video and audio advertisements shall not be shorter than 90 seconds duration. However, the...

Up to now, the Ofcom Broadcast Code has prohibited product placement. However, owing to changes in EU and national law, “the placing of references to products, services or trade marks in television programmes in return for payment” is now to be permitted. Ofcom, consequently, intends to amend the Code, removing the prohibition and incorporating enabling rules. It has initiated a Consultation on the matter. Such rules would impact on other rules permitting other types of commercial references (e.g., sponsorship) and the Consultation includes proposals for revising those rules.