On Tuesday 10 January, the European Commission announced its decision to refer Spain to the Court Justice of the EU for failing to recover State aid, judged to be illegal, for the digitisation of its television network. Spain has not suspended payments in place at the moment, as it was supposed to have done.
In October 2014 and June 2013, the European Commission said that the aid granted by Spain to pay for the switch-over from analogue to digital terrestrial television in certain remote regions and other regions did not comply with the European competition rules.
Under the principal of technical neutrality, public funding of this type has to be made available to all transmission platforms (terrestrial, satellite, cable or Internet), without discrimination. However, Spanish measures benefited only terrestrial digital technology. They also created a discrimination between the various terrestrial operators. Certain operators of terrestrial platforms received a selective advantage over their competitors. These restrictions may have prevented consumers from benefiting from any advantages, such as a wider choice and lower prices. In its decisions, the Commission therefore ordered the subsidies to be paid back to the Spanish authorities in question.
More than three and a half years after the adoption of the first decision and more than two and a half years since the second, the Spanish authorities have recovered only a very small proportion of the aid paid out (around 2% of the estimated amount of the first decision and none at all for the second). Furthermore, Spain is continuing to pay for the operation and maintenance of some of the digital terrestrial television network, in breach of the decisions. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)