Strasbourg, 28/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - In its adoption, by 35 votes in favour, 33 against and 4 abstentions, of the report by Irish Liberal Paschal Mooney in Strasbourg last Thursday, the parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has declared itself "extremely concerned at the fact that the negative image projected overseas by Italy due to the conflict of interest surrounding Mr Berlusconi could thwart the efforts of the Council of Europe to promote the existence of independent and neutral media in young democracies".
The Assembly points out that "via Mediaset, Italy's largest privately-owned communication and broadcasting group and one of the largest in the world, Mr Berlusconi controls approximately half of the country's broadcasting". "As head of Government, he is also in the position to exert indirect influence on the public broadcasting service, RAI, which is Mediaset's main competitor", underlined the Assembly, which also stated that this unprecedented control over television (Mediaset and RAI account for 90% of audience share) is worsened by the fact that Mediaset's advertising sales division, Pubitalia '80, holds a dominant position over the television advertising market.
The Assembly calls upon the Italian authorities to: 1) urgently and convincingly address the conflict of interests issue, by making sure that owners of companies also take the responsibility which goes with it; 2) end the political mismanagement "which has long been practised" in media work; 3) take legislative measures to promote media pluralism and end the RAI/Mediaset monopoly.
For the repeal of the law of legitimate suspicion
The Assembly also adopted the resolution contained within the report by German Liberal Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on the Italian law of legitimate suspicion. Also know as the "Cirami law" after its author, this law, adopted in November 2002, permits misgivings over a trial, allowing it to be referred to another court of the basis of "serious local circumstances which could affec the course of a trial". The report states that the application of this law has the effect of: slowing down a trial, with the European Court of Human Rights having lost count of the number of excessive trial duration rulings it has made against Italy; -remove the "natural judge" from the case, and to a certain extent "leave the choice of the judges up to the accused"; to bring the defiance of the accused down on the whole of the magistracy, because unlike objections to a judge, legitimate suspicion calls into question the reputation of the whole court. The Assembly therefore calls on the Italian authorities to repeal the law, and adopt legislation which is more in line with the independence of legal authorities and magistrates, and the separation of power.