MEPs clash over public service broadcasting

Date: 20/04/2000

By Peter Chapman

MEPS clashed this week over the extent to which public service broadcasters venturing into the commercial world should be made to keep separate accounts of their activities.

The argument erupted as the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee voted on Commission plans for new rules to govern 'transparency' in the public sector.

The EU executive launched its proposals late last year in a bid to boost its ability to investigate the activities of state-funded companies across all sectors of industry. Private sector firms have complained to competition officials about public sector companies allegedly using their financial clout unfairly to squeeze out private rivals in the commercial arena.

However, the Commission did not specify which sectors would be covered by the proposed new rules and left the question open of how member states should require broadcasters which receive money from the state or from licence fees to offer public service programmes to account for their activities.

The committee's rapporteur, German Socialist Christa Randzio-Plath, called for public-service channels to be removed from the scope of the planned new rules, arguing that the regulations would force television companies to identify - and account separately for - each and every programme on their schedules which fell beyond their public service remit. However, critics of her approach claimed it could result in the state-aided broadcasters being let off the hook altogether, despite their increasing forays into the commercial sector.

In the end, the committee reached a hard-won compromise. "They made a reference to the protocol in the Amsterdam Treaty which notes the special status of public broadcasters in the EU, but said that it applies to activities beyond their remit. For us that is good," said a lobbyist for one private sector television company.

MEPs have clashed over the extent to which public service broadcasters venturing into the commercial world should be made to keep separate accounts of their activities.