Euro MPs open new chapter in battle over media ownership

Date: 05/11/1998

By Chris Johnstone

MEPS have moved to revive controversial proposals for a Europe-wide code to govern media ownership, putting them on a collision course with the European Commission.

The demand for fresh action comes in a report drawn up by Finnish Socialist Reino Paasilinna, which has won the support of fellow MEPs, calling on the Commission to begin work on new proposals for legislation. "Parliament has stated quite clearly that something should be done," said Paasilinna.

However, the Finnish MEP acknowledges that it may be difficult to persuade the Commission to act, given its past difficulties in making progress on the dossier. "It is the end of the current Commission term and they might well not want to touch it," he added.

Single Market Commissioner Mario Monti quietly dropped his widely criticised proposals for curbs on media magnates' shares of national newspaper, broadcasting, and combined markets in February this year and his officials say no further action is planned.

But Monti's move provoked immediate protests from the European Parliament, which provided the initial impetus for his ill-fated attempt to draw up media ownership rules.

Paasilinna's call for action focuses instead on a joint consultative paper drawn up by Industry and Telecommunications Commissioner Martin Bangemann and Audio-visual Affairs Commissioner Manuel Oreja on the converging sectors of telecommunications, television and information technology, which called for a minimum of new regulation in these fast-developing markets.

But Paasilinna's report argues that there is room for European and national regulation of the converging technologies, highlighting a mismatch between the relatively large number of rules governing television with the dearth of regulations on information technology. "Telecommunications comes somewhere in between," he added.

The Parliament's fresh focus on media ownership has provoked a mixed response. Commercial television firms, represented by the Brussels-based Association of Commercial Television (ACT), said the demands being made by MEPs came as no surprise. But they insisted that any bid for fresh controls was out of place. "The debate has moved on. We are now in a digital age," said a spokeswoman.

However, newspaper publishers welcomed the renewed debate as an opportunity to tackle existing national barriers to ownership between different medias. "If it allows publishing companies easier entry into the multi-media landscape, it would be good news for us," said a spokesman for the European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA).

The European Publishers' Council (EPC) forecasts that media ownership will become a hot EU topic by the end of this year. "This issue is not going to go away," said the EPC's Angela Mills.

But the EPC continues to insist that current competition rules are adequate to deal with dominant positions at a European level and national rules are sufficient for local problems.

Bangemann and Oreja are due to present a follow-up communication on converging technologies by the end of the year, although some insiders say it could be delayed until early 1999.

The deadline for companies' comments expired this week, but Bangemann's spokesman said content of the communication was still "an open question". "I do not exclude that media ownership might be dealt with, though how specifically it is difficult to say," he added.