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The European Commission has closed its procedure in accordance with Article 2a of the TVWF Directive involving the Romanian and the Hungarian media authorities and a television broadcaster called Cool Tv. Cool Tv is a television channel operating under Romanian jurisdiction but broadcasting in the Hungarian language for primarily Hungarian audiences. In recent years the Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület (Hungarian National Radio and Television Commission - ORTT) has received several complaints from viewers regarding one particular programme of the broadcaster entitled “Cool Sex”. The programme,...

The agreement on Switzerland’s participation in the MEDIA programme, concluded on 26 October 2004 between Switzerland and the European Union (EU) as part of the second round of bilateral negotiations, reached the end of its term on 31 December 2006 (see IRIS 2006-5: 9). Further to the negotiations launched in March 2007, the Swiss Confederation and the EU signed, on 11 October 2007, the renewal of this agreement so that Switzerland would be able to participate fully in the 2007 MEDIA programme. The text of the new agreement is only very slightly different to that of the agreement concluded in 2004....

The European Commission adopted its Sixth Report on the application of the “Television without Frontiers” (TWF) Directive on 24 October 2007. The Commission is required to adopt such bi-annual reports under Article 26, TWF Directive. The period covered by the Sixth Report is 2005 and 2006. The main objective of this report is to describe and analyse the salient facts relating to the application of the Directive during this period. The Report commences with an outline of recent developments in the television market in Europe. This explanation of developments is followed by a discussion of the Foreign...

On 29 November 2007, the European Parliament approved without amendments the Council’s Common Position on the proposed new Audiovisual Media Services without Frontiers Directive. The Common Position adopted on 15 October 2007 formalised a text which had throughout the legislative process been the object of inter-institutional negotiations: the informal contacts between the Parliament, the Commission and the Council culminated in a final text approved with no amendments by Parliament. The Commission had originally proposed a regulatory construction consisting of a core of rules applicable to all...

In June 2007 the Parliament of Hungary adopted two acts relevant to media regulation. This included Act LXVII of 2007 introducing a series of amendments to Act I of 1996 on Radio and Television Broadcasting (Broadcasting Act). The aim of these amendments is exclusively to bring the Broadcasting Act into line with EC regulation related to broadcasting and consumer protection. The amendments concern mainly the rules of jurisdiction and the procedure of the Országos Rádió és Televízió Testület (National Radio and Television Commission - ORTT). They are mainly of a technical nature. While Act LXVII...