Brussels, 11/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - The pressure is not easing off. As the justice and civil liberties committee coordinators decided on Tuesday, a special meeting would indeed take place on Monday 17 January in Strasbourg with Commissioners Reding and Kroes, the OSCE and the CULT committee on the repercussions of the Hungarian media law. On Thursday, it will be the turn of the Conference of Presidents of the EP political groups to set out the debates for this session in Strasbourg and to give their opinions on an oral question to the Commission regarding the Hungarian law, in the form of a draft political resolution.
On Tuesday, the ALDE group also posed a number of questions in a hearing on the possible outline of a “European response”. To this effect, it sought advice from two Hungarian experts and the commissioner responsible for media issues, Neelie Kroes. This hearing was met by a very angry response from the Hungarian EPP delegation. In a press release, the group denounced it as an attack on “the freedom of opinion and thought” and accused the group's president, Guy Verhofstadt, of having failed to invite representatives from the Hungarian Presidency. This accusation was rejected by the group, which pointed out that this was only a group event organised by ALDE and was not a parliamentary affair. It also defended its “right to invite whoever it wished to the Tribune”. The atmosphere is somewhat charged.
Nonetheless, does it go beyond a spat over procedures? The experts invited certainly led to the ire of the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban (affiliated to the EPP). Haraszti and Majtényl said that this media law had extremely unprecedented implications, in the bad sense of the word. Unprecedented, in its field of application, which goes beyond audiovisual services and broadcasting and is even extended to the written press, the internet media and blogs, which all have to be registered. Unprecedented, because the system put in place does not involve any counterbalances and will subsequently remove NGOs from the sector, as well as media representatives. The new Media Council will be able to demand any kind of data from the media and will also be able to impose fines based on a series of sometimes “rather vague” criteria, such as “attacks on the general interest, public order and dignity”.
Kroes supported some of this criticism. At a formal directive transposition level on audiovisual services, certain “problems” exist because provisions appear to “also apply to the media whose headquarters are based in other EU member states… which will be contrary to the principle of the 'country of origin' retained in the directive”. Another major difficulty contained in the law involves the fact that it requires “balanced news” for the audiovisual and radio broadcasting media, the written press and online media and blogs. The commissioner said that this demand did not appear very proportionate. She also said that, the principle of “freedom of expression” must be ensured in compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Commission will therefore focus on all of these points in its analysis “this week, as soon as Hungary has provided it with formal notification of the law”.
This determination, however, did not appear to convince everybody. According to some sources at the EP, the only real chance of opposing the Hungarian plans would be to refer to an attack on Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 7 of the Treaty, which would allow for retaliation measures to be taken against Hungary. At the present time “the law in the additional elements criticised, has nothing to do with the audiovisual services directive”. With regard to the possible use of Article 7 of the Treaty, Kroes displayed a certain amount of reservation and said that it was difficult to meet all of the criteria in Article 7. (Cor/transl.fl)