Search results : 1510

The Independent Television Commission has rejected an appeal against an earlier decision by its staff that European Commission funding for a programme on the Euro breached its Sponsorship Code (see IRIS 2000-10: 7). The programme was in CNBC's "Euro Change" series, which had been partially funded by the European Commission. According to the Independent Television Commission's staff, it was a current affairs programme, and under the Code of Programme Sponsorship current affairs programmes may not be sponsored. This prohibition is to ensure that news and current affairs programmes are both free from...

In a recently published ruling, the Oberverwaltungsgericht Berlin (Berlin Higher Administrative Court - OVG) gave its opinion on the question of which legal measures the Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Media Authority - MABB) could use against a TV broadcaster that had shown what it considered to be an extended advertising programme. In the programme ars vivendi, a so-called "top gastronomic TV magazine programme", various restaurants and hotels in the Berlin and Brandenburg region have been featured in rapid succession since 1997; since the total length of the programme was...

The Bundesamt für Kommunikation (Federal Communications Office - BAKOM) has banned the SRG (Swiss public service broadcasting company) from broadcasting the TV commercial "Jetzt ein Stromausfall" ("And now a power cut") by the Forum Stromversorgung Schweiz (Swiss power supply forum). In the run-up to a referendum on two electricity-related petitions, the BAKOM ruled that the commercial constituted unlawful political advertising. The SRG was ordered to cease showing the commercial and to pay to the State the income it had received for broadcasting it. The commercial shows a man and a woman in a...

At its meeting of 27-28 March 2003, the Council of the European Union adopted at its first reading a Directive on the advertisement and sponsorship of tobacco products. The Directive is based on the Commission's initial proposal of May 2001 with the addition of the two amendments voted by the European Parliament on 20 November 2002 (see IRIS 2003-1: 6). One of these amendments guarantees that Member States retain Institute for Information Law (IViR) University of Amsterdam the competence to regulate matters not covered by the Directive. These matters are, for instance, indirect advertising or the...

The Oberster Gerichtshof (the Austrian Supreme Court) referred a number of questions to the Court of Justice of the European Communities for a preliminary ruling regarding the interpretation of Council Directive 84/450/EEC on misleading and comparative advertising, as amended by Directive 97/55/EC. The questions arose in proceedings between the Austrian company Pippig Augenoptik GmbH & Co. KG ("Pippig") and the Austrian company Hartlauer Handelsgesellschaft mbH ("Hartlauer"). Both companies sell spectacles. Pippig markets the spectacles in three specialist opticians' shops and obtains its supplies...