Brussels, 16/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 15 October, the General Affairs Council adopted a common position amending various provisions in the draft Television Without Frontiers Directive unveiled by the European Commission on 13 December 2005. The Council agrees with the basic ideas set out by the Commission but wants various clauses made clearer. Alongside planned structural amendments to the directive on television broadcasting and on-demand services, the amendments cover: a) the country of origin. The country of origin principle is recognised but the Council adds a special mechanism to deal with cases where television programmes are broadcast wholly or mostly to a member state other than the one where the broadcast is established; b) product placement. Protect placement should be banned for all programmes produced after the transposition deadline for the directive, but exemptions are provided for certain types of programme; c) protection for children. Codes of conduct should be developed for the advertising of junk food aimed at children, whilst the quantitative rules on interruption of programmes are stricter for children's programmes. With the aim of protecting children, the common position adds an obligation with regard to on-demand services through filtering systems or other access restrictions for programmes which might seriously impair children's physical, mental or moral development; d) short news reports. The Council wants to create an EU-wide right to give broadcasters access to events of high interest to the public for the purpose of short news reports, whilst the details of its application would be left to the member states to decide; and e) promoting European broadcasting works. Media service providers have a new obligation to promote the production of and access to European works. The common position has been submitted to the European Parliament for second reading under the co-decision procedure. (I.L.)