Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-18-Speech-1-062"
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"en.20021118.4.1-062"2
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". – Mr President, undoubtedly the media play a crucial role in subjecting the exercise of public and private powers to permanent scrutiny. Media pluralism is therefore of the utmost importance and lies at the very heart of the way our democratic societies operate. Indeed it is one of the core values underlying the European Union, as enshrined in Article 11(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which refers explicitly to protecting the pluralism of the media.
We also have to consider whether such an initiative would comply with the principle of subsidiarity, since the purpose of legislative proposals based on internal market freedoms must in any event be to establish obstacles to the cross-border provision of services, not to regulate for specific situations in Member States.
As to whether it is desirable for the European Convention to provide for the protection of pluralism in general at EU level, I would recall that the Commission, like Parliament, believes the Charter of Fundamental Rights should be incorporated into the basic Treaty and constitutionally entrenched.
Finally, I close with the reminder that the Council of Europe exists, among other things, to preserve cultural pluralism and media diversity. Closer cooperation with that institution should also be envisaged in order to enhance the protection of pluralism in Europe.
On this subject, I can only endorse what you say regarding the situation in the media sector following developments over the past ten years. I would add that while audiences may be focused on a small number of programmes, European citizens have, nonetheless, a far wider choice in their viewing, thanks to a range of technologies.
In this new setting, the Commission has made use of the instruments at its disposal. In applying competition law it upholds freedom of competition in the media, particularly in innovative media services such as the Internet and UMTS. Moreover, it applies the mergers regulation which serves to control the phenomenon of media concentration from the economic angle. In addition, the Community legislator, on the basis of Commission proposals, adopted the television without frontiers directive, the satellite and cable directive and the conditional access directive, which address various aspects of cross-border television broadcasting.
The legislative framework was further supplemented by the e-commerce directive, adopted in 2000, the objective of which is to facilitate cross-border provision of new interactive media services distributed on a point-to-point basis.
Finally, the Commission proposal for a common regulatory framework for liberalising electronic communications networks and services was adopted in March this year. One of its main aims is to open up access to electronic communications networks, including those which carry broadcast content. To this end, it provides that operators who are identified as having a strong market position may have to meet ex-ante obligations on transparency, non-discrimination, accounting separation and access to or use of specific facilities.
The Commission monitors closely the transposition of these directives in the applicant countries as well as in the Member States, ensuring that national media legislation remains consistent with Community law.
While existing Community law instruments undoubtedly have positive repercussions on the protection of pluralism, it has to be said that their purpose is to ensure a certain economic balance between players in the context of the internal market. These instruments directly affect the media sector as an area of economic activity and not – or at least only very indirectly – as a vehicle for delivering information to the citizen.
This situation stems from the fact that even though pluralism is a fundamental freedom recognised by the EU, it is not one of the tasks assigned to the European Community under Article 2 of the EC Treaty. This is borne out by Article 21 of the mergers regulation, which allows Member States to forbid a merger in the interests of protecting pluralism even where it has been approved by the Commission. Consequently, any new initiative based on internal market freedoms would encounter the same limitation as the instruments I have mentioned and would not ensure the protection of pluralism
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The question also arises whether such an initiative could be justified by reference to existing Treaty provisions. The Commission is not aware of any concrete obstacles to exercise of the fundamental freedoms of the EC Treaty, particularly the right of establishment or freedom to provide services within the meaning of Articles 43 and 49, being encountered in the media sector because of national measures designed to protect pluralism
. Moreover, any initiative would have to be aimed at eliminating significant distortion of competition. Under Court of Justice case-law, these are the tests for Community action on the basis of Article 95, involving measures to improve the operation of the single market."@en1
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