Brussels, 14/11/2006 (Agence Europe) - Obstacles to the adoption of the draft directive for updating the television without frontiers directive seem less marked, which would appear to suggest that the future German presidency will be able to close the dossier during the first half of next year. On 13 November a majority of Member States gave their support to the draft compromise presented by the Finnish presidency of the EU (EUROPE 9305). In the follow-up, MEPs from the European Parliament's culture committee adopted a report on Monday evening whose contents is far from being that of the compromise approved by the Council, to the extent that the rapporteur on this dossier, Ruth Hieronymi (EPP-ED) said at the end of the meeting that “is won't be too difficult to get the EU25's agreement”.
Although it is controversial, the draft compromise presented by the Finnish presidency succeeded in bringing the points of views closer together, such as that of a country extremely opposed, like the United Kingdom, which was afraid of the directive having a too extensive field of application, and France, which was concerned of excessive flexibility regarding provisions on advertising. At the end of the Council, the French minister of culture and communication Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres welcomed the “relatively well balanced compromise” achieved by the Twenty-Five and his British counterpart, Shaun Woodward, who followed this line affirmed, that “balance is the right word to describe the text”. The six point presidency compromise focuses on: 1) Quotas for European programmes. These will remain and Member States will monitor possibilities for tele-visual broadcasting bodies being able to reserve a majority portion of their channel time to European productions. This provision will not apply to time allocated to news, sport, advertising, gambling, teletext services and television-purchasing. The rule encouraging broadcasters to dedicate at least 10% of their programming to European productions produced by independent televisual broadcasting will remain the same. 2) New Services. These are incorporated in the directive's field of application, including internet services (with the exception of private web sites and services created by private end-users exchange and call booking services chosen for user previewing. Quotas will not be applied in the case in point but Member States are expected to ensure that European productions are promoted. 3) Service providers fall under rules of the country of origin, namely, where it has been set up, with safeguards implemented so that this provision cannot be got round, by, for example, having a letter box in another Member State. 4) Product placement, providing products free, for example (cars, clothes, watches etc) for indirect advertising will in principle be banned but each Member State will remain free to authorise it except for children's programmes. 5) Major events, such as in sport (where one channel has exclusive broadcasting rights) should be available to other channels which could have intervals within them for brief news updates. 6) The compromise makes advertising rules more flexible. Currently, in general, there are no breaks every 45 minutes. In the future, the standard will be 30 minutes for programmes, except entertainment and sports, but advertising will not be able to exceed more than 20% of broadcasting an hour.
On Monday evening, MEPs from the EP's culture committee gave their support to the Council's position, while highlighting the need to better inform viewers about indirect advertising, including product placements. They also refused to reduce the minimum interval from 45 to 30 minutes between commercial breaks for films, children's programmes and news. The text will be examined by Parliament in plenary session in December, then submitted to the Council again, which is expected to attain a political agreement under the German presidency. Only a minority of Member States: Sweden, Ireland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Austria demonstrated their opposition to the Council over their opposition to the compromise text.
At the end of the culture committee vote, the British Conservative Syed Kamall (EPP-ED) said that MEPs on “the committee had voted to over-regulate the EU's existing media industry”, which was likely to lead to suffocating the development of European initiatives and provide competition from third countries with a competitive edge. The Greens/EFA, on the other hand, deplored the fact that the parliamentary committee supported the Council's position, explaining: “last night's vote…will leave consumers as the real losers of this revision”. The evening before saw the Greens and the Socialists posing as defenders of European television, particularly in advertising. On this point, they will not have been disappointed by the committee's recommendation to maintain current provisions on advertising spots. (ol)