Advocacy

Quotas for European and national product

26-05-2011

The problem’s point:

At present the legislation on Radio and Television broadcasting contains provisions which are not entirely consistent with the Art. 10 of the European Convention on Transfrontier Television (hereinafter referred to as Convention).

According to the Convention “Each transmitting Party shall ensure, where practicable and by appropriate means, that a broadcaster within its jurisdiction reserves for European works a majority proportion of its transmission time, excluding the time appointed to news, sports events, games, advertising, teletext services and tele-shopping. This proportion, having regard to the broadcaster's informational, educational, cultural and entertainment responsibilities to its viewing public, should be achieved progressively, on the basis of suitable criteria”.

Whereas the Convention provides that the Radio and Television broadcasters should have more than half (i.e. at least 51 percent) of European works, it is logical to assume that the Ukrainian works are also attributed to “European” and therefore should be included in the European product quota fixed in the Convention.

Instead, the current version of Part 1, Article 9 of the Law of Ukraine “On Radio and Television broadcasting” (hereinafter referred to as the Law) provides that the national audiovisual product or musical works of Ukrainian authors or performers should make not less than 50 percent of the general broadcasting volume of each broadcaster.

The part 4 of the Art. 28 of the Law does not meet the Convention’s requirements in this part stating that the licensees (except satellite broadcasting) in the intervals between 07.00 and 23.00 must comply with the following ratio between Ukrainian and foreign programs:

European programs should be not less than 80 percent, including not less than 50 percent of Ukrainian programs.

Based on the foregoing, and given that today there is a big problem with filling the broadcasting time by national product which would fully meet the quality indicators, bringing the broadcasting legislation into conformity with the Convention’s requirements will enable to solve existing problem.

We pay your attention to the international experience as for quotas regulation

№	Number of the State	European product Quota	National product Quota
1.	France [1]	60%	40%
2.	Canada		60 % Canadian programs from 18 to 24 hours
3.	Estonia	50%	35%
4.	Hungary		20%
5.	Bulgaria [2]	50%

We pay your attention to the fact that the international law of foreign countries does not fix quotas regulating more than 60% of the product in the TV channels programs because actually they are the restriction on the use of another language or foreign programs broadcasting. The practice of quotas use or fixing in broadcasting license considers the restrictions of freedom and language discrimination as unlawful. Instead, the Ukrainian legislation regulates 80% of the product broadcasted.

 

Background

• The Law of Ukraine “On the ratification of the European Convention on Transfrontier Television” from 17.12.2008 (the validity date for Ukraine is 01.07.2009).
• The Law of Ukraine “On Radio and Television broadcasting” from 21.12.1993

 

The TIC’s Position

Whereas the Convention provides that the Radio and Television broadcasters should have more than half (i.e. at least 51 percent) of European works, and the Ukrainian works are also attributed to “European” ones, therefore we believe that the quite sufficient quota for European works in the current legislation will be at least 51 percent, including not less than 30 percent for national ones.

 

Required actions:

1) we propose to state the article 9 of the Law of Ukraine “On Radio and Television broadcasting” as follows: “The national product should make not less than 30 percent in general broadcasting volume of each broadcaster”.

2) to state the Part 4, Article 28 of the Law of Ukraine "On Television and Radio as follows: “The licensees (except satellite broadcasting) in the intervals between 07.00 and 23.00 must comply with the following ratio between Ukrainian and foreign programs:

- European programs should be not less than 51 percent, including not less than 30 percent for Ukrainian programs”.

 

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[1] France took engagement to reduce soon the quota to 50% for European programs, including 35% for French programs.

[2] In Bulgaria, at least 50% of programs should be Bulgarian or European.

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