Swedes fight to keep toy ad ban

Date: 16/11/1995

By Fiona McHugh

SWEDEN is digging in its heels for a tough battle over the right to keep advertisements aimed at children off its television screens.

With a long-running row over quotas for home-grown TV programmes all but settled, discussions about what should or should not be beamed into sitting rooms around the Union are to centre on commercials rather than films at a meeting of EU culture ministers next week.

“This means a lot to us. We do not think it is morally acceptable to use such a powerful advertising medium as artillery against children. It is used to cheat young children who are not able to understand exactly what is happening,” explained one Swedish diplomat.

Margot Wallström, Sweden's culture minister, is expected to plead with her counterparts to bolster her country's increasingly shaky ban on the advertisement of toys.

That ban, adopted in 1991 to protect children from the charms of advertising, has become less and less effective in recent times as TV stations have used EU law to get around it.

The 1989 Television Without Frontiers Directive says that broadcasters must obey rules in the country from which, and not to which, they broadcast. That means stations such as the London-based TV3 can direct toy advertisements at children in Stockholm from the UK, where advertising rules are more lax.

Sweden has tried to force foreign stations to take such advertisements off the air, but its right to do so is about to be challenged in the European Court of Justice by publishers who say it breaks EU broadcasting rules.

With that challenge looming, Stockholm is desperately trying to strengthen its case by changing EU rules.

It wants a clause added to the directive which would allow governments to take action against advertisers who defy national rules by using foreign broadcasters.

So far it is supported by Greece, Belgium and Ireland, where similar bans exist, but has won little sympathy from the UK, Germany and other member states.

Sweden had originally hoped for an EU-wide ban, but has been forced to scale down its ambitions in the face of stiff opposition from certain member states and Europe's multi-billion-ecu toy industry.

Toy manufacturers argue the ban is unjustified and leads to heavy financial and job losses in the industry.

“Television advertising is one of the only means of communicating information about toys to children. Such a ban deprives us of our most efficient marketing tool,” explains Stephan Luiten of Toy Manufacturers of Europe (TME), an association which represents 80&percent; of Europe's toy manufacturers.

“We reject the argument that we are trying to take advantage of children. They are in fact very discriminating consumers and even if they were not, they are not the ones with the money. There is at least one other filter - their parents.”

The toy industry also claims children suffer from the ban as a lack of advertising revenue dries up money for investment in children's programmes.

According to an industry survey of 15 top EU television channels, there is a direct link between revenue from children's advertisements and investment in children's programmes.

For example, say industry experts, the Flemish station VTM, which in accordance with Belgian law runs no toy advertisements, also produces no original children's programmes of its own.

“The main objective of the Television Without Frontiers Directive is to stimulate quality European programmes. These bans do exactly the opposite. They shrink stations' budgets and so force them to buy in cheap US programmes.”

TME has accused the Greek government, which bans toy advertisements before 10pm, of seeking to protect home industries and not children.

“The Greek ban was the result of pressure on the Athens government from Greek wholesalers and distributors, who saw it as a way of protecting their share of the national toy market,” it says.

That claim is vehemently rejected by Greek diplomats who insist it is a moral and not a commercial choice. “These rules are in place to protect children. All the players, including Greek toy-makers, have to abide by them. We do not have different rules for Greeks.”

How member states will line up on this issue is still unclear, but emotions are sure to run high if Wallström does not get her way. Sweden has made the strengthening of this ban one of its priorities for 1995. With anti-EU feeling on the rise, it does not want to suffer any humiliation at the hands of its European partners.