Brussels, 21/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has closed the investigations it opened in 2003 against France, Italy and Spain further to complaints tabled by private broadcasters in the 1990s (TF1 in France, Mediaset and its RTI subsidiarity in Italy, Telecinco and Antena in Spain). The three Member States have undertaken to bring in “timely measures” called for by the Commission and to make changes to how they fund their public broadcasters. According to Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, “The Commission and the Member States have worked together to ensure that public service broadcasting maintains a central role whilst avoiding market distortion”.
At the end of 2003, the Commission said that the payments made to the public broadcasters, which their private-sector competitors complained about, were acceptable, but recommended measures to make the funding system for public broadcasters more transparent and in line with the rules on State aid for public broadcasting services (which stipulate that funding cannot exceed the bare minimum needed to carry out the public service mission, that it is not used in favour of the broadcaster's commercial activities and that it is transparent). The Commission stated that Italy had already transposed the recommendations in 2004 and that France and Spain had undertaken to do so in the near future. Spain will thus remove the Spanish State's unlimited guarantee in favour of RTVE by the end of the year, putting an end to a system whereby the State is the last resort for all of the national broadcaster's debts (EUROPE 8565). France has two years to change the funding system for public television channels France 2 and France 3.
Last March, the Commission called for clarification on the funding regimes of the German, Irish and Dutch public broadcasting bodies, notably for the funding of new services, such as broadcasting over the Internet (EUROPE 8901).