Brussels, 03/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - Following an initial report on 17 February, the Greens/EFA, S&D, ALDE and GUE/NGL groups will again attempt on 10 March in Strasbourg to get their draft resolution adopted on the Hungarian media law. The decision was confirmed on Thursday 3 March, during the morning conference of the presidents of the EP groups. The EPP Group remains opposed to this project but did not vote against this agenda.
On 17 February, the political groups effectively abandoned the idea of obtaining a vote on their common draft resolution at the last minute, because the Hungarian authorities had the night before announced their vote on accepting all the requests from the European Commission on the litigious points in the media law. Hungary also said it was prepared to immediately submit its amendments to the Hungarian Parliament. This announcement was enthusiastically welcomed by the commissioner for the media, Neelie Kroes, who thus short-circuited the resolution of the political groups.
Kroes had previously identified four problem areas in the Hungarian law: compulsory registration of audiovisual media and blogs, penalties in the event of non-respect of the legislation, balanced coverage of events for audio-visual media and penalties for “contempt”, which were judged to be too vague by the European Commission. Hungary said that it was prepared to make progress on all of these points and the controversy between Hungary and the European Commission is therefore at an end.
Nonetheless, the political groups at the EP, with the exception of the EPP, will again work towards a common resolution vote. The conflict is not really over, indicated one source from the Greens Group. It said that the Commission had failed to grasp the essential points from the very beginning, such as the question of the Hungarian Media Council's independence and its particularly political composition. Most of its members are close to the Fidesz party currently in power. The political groups would also like to tackle the concerns raised by the OSCE and the Council of Europe. All these points will again be included in their draft resolution. (S.P./transl.fl)