20/12/2002

The workshop of the political dimension enlargement chaired by Enzo Cheli president of the Authority for communications guarantees and with the participation of Giuseppe Sangiorgi, commissioner of the Authority for communications guarantees and Péter Bajomi-Lazar, Associate Prof. Dept. Communication, Kodolány University College has written the following final document.
Today, European television is faced with two complementary objectives:
a)The enlargement of audio-visual Europe to the 10 new candidate countries
b) The arrival of digital television.
In this continually changing audio-visual framework, the presence of a strong public service television is a guarantee essential to:
1.the preservation of audio-visual pluralism
2. cultural diversity.

The increase in merger and acquisition operations between commercial operators threatens the plurality of operators in time.
Faced with commercial operators who, to maximize their profits tend to minimise investments in production, public service operators must maximize the service provided to viewing “citizens”, assuring them a diversified offer of quality programmes thus fulfilling their public service mission.
The mixed television system (public + private) that is typical of Western Europe is included in this way of thinking. The national and community public powers are presently involved in creating a political framework consequent to the duality of this system in order to guarantee a balance. However this balance may be threatened by the introduction of digital television if the new rules will be established only by the market. Politicians must arrange a legal and economic framework suited to the new digital environment.
Within the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the legislative process of the last decade has given rise to a legal framework that encourages audio-visual media plurality, although the balance between public service and commercial television is still very frail:
a) the public television of these countries is still marked by almost 50 years of political monopoly;
b) the reduced size of the national markets does not free enough resources to finance original quality productions
This institutional heritage, that translates in a legitimacy deficit of public television, and these economic limits, that hardly attract national investors, have facilitated the development of commercial television networks controlled by multinational and often North American groups in the Eastern Countries.

To resolve these essential handicaps it is better to:
1. assure transparency in the relations between the political powers and television any television that participates in the life of citizens does politics. Therefore it is better to free it of the will of political power without cutting it out of politics, at least assuring that there is an objective treatment of information. This transparency can be assured by the control Authorities, the independence from which must be assured by legislators and legal power.
2. Assure sufficient and continuous FINANCING to PUBLIC SERVICE television operators so that they are able to offer the best to their viewers, especially in developing national and/or regional productions, possibly through international co-operation. Faced with the offer and audience fragmentation risks, international co-operation must also permit European public service television to build federal offers that reflect the diversity of the national identities.
In the new audio-visual balance of the “Great Europe” of the digital era, politicians must guarantee the media plurality and cultural diversity of their programme offers. To this end it is essential, in this new digital scenario, to guarantee the diversified presence of public service television by all distribution means. Starting from the principle that communications, especially audio-visual, must be one of the pillars of construction of the future enlarged Europe.