Luxembourg, 09/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - The television broadcasters TV Danmark (Copenhagen) and Kanal 5 Denmark (Hounslow, UK) call on the EU's Court of First Instance to cancel the European Commission's decision of 19 May 2004, which ruled that State aid granted in the form of licence fee resources between 1995 and 2002 to the Danish public broadcaster TV2/Danmark was compatible with the common market. The Commission had concluded the aid was compatible with the common market, except for an overcompensation amounting to 628.2 million DKK which should be repaid by TV2/Danmark A/S.
Rival broadcasters consider the Commission has infringed treaty rules as well as the protocol annexed to the EC Treaty on the system of public broadcasting in Member States. They accuse it of having held that all of TV2's costs relate to public service obligations and could therefore be funded by the State in spite of the lack of a sufficiently precise definition of such public service obligations. The Commission is also alleged not to have examined whether the net costs of TV2 were proportionate to these public service obligations, the Court explains.