Izvorni znanstveni članak
Television Pluralism and Diversity and the European Commission’s Competition Policy – The Western European Experience
David Ward
; Director of the Centre for Media Policy and Development. London UK
Sažetak
This article assesses the question of media concentration in the European Union
(EU) in the context of the regulatory approaches taken by the Member States and
the EU. It argues, despite common perceptions that the EU’s approach to protecting
media pluralism is governed by a purely market approach, it is also entrenched
in a significant public interest basis. It argues that media concentration
is increasing due to the weakening of a commitment as to the importance placed
on the protection of media pluralism by the Member States. Subsequently national
governments are supporting national champions and removing regulatory barriers
for company growth in order to protect their own market players while at the
same time enabling national companies to exploit even greater economies of scale
by expanding into neighbouring countries both within the EU and outside of the
area. At the same time the growth of the European Commission (EC) as a key
regulator in the area of competition policy at the Community level has reshaped
the scope of national regulation in this field. In this respect, a policy at the EU
level has been to employ competition policy in order to support European Champions
that are able to exploit greater size on the global market, but also to protect
media pluralism on a national level by allowing media companies to expand in the
different media markets across the common market zone.
These contrasting policy trajectories will be discussed by reviewing the ECs media
related decisions, and the article will conclude that although individual Member
States retain the right to enforce media concentration regulations under the
merger regulation there appears to be little will on behalf of many of the major Member States to support media pluralism. This inevitably leaves a regulatory
void between national and supranational regulatory spheres and the issue of media
concentration is neglected in favour of companies and to the detriment of media
pluralism.
Ključne riječi
European Commission; media pluralism; regulatory approaches; television production; commercial television
Hrčak ID:
26392
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.12.2005.
Posjeta: 2.039 *