TV regulation is becoming a cross-border issue

Following the classification of an Arabian media network as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU television regulators agreed to co-operate more closely in order to keep hate speech off European TV channels. 

At their second meeting in Brussels, on 24 March 2006, TV regulators from all EU member states plus Croatia, Turkey, Norway and Liechtenstein discussed the recent case of the Al-Manar satellite television station, based in Lebanon and operated by the Hizbullah terrorist group, which has been classified a terrorist organisation by the US administration. The Commission says that “in the course of 2005, the close cooperation between European broadcasting regulators ensured that no European satellite system carried further clear hate broadcasts like those of Al Manar.”

Regulators said that the provisions of the Television without Frontiers Directive, which outlaws incitement to hatred on religious, racial or gender grounds, should be extended to on-demand audiovisual media to ensure that these do not become “the next vehicle of hate”. The Commission’s legislative proposal for the revision of the directive includes such an extension and would even rename it, the “Audiovisual without Frontiers” directive. Industries such as internet service providers are opposed, however, to the extension of the directive’s provisions to so-called non-linear services. 

Read more with Euractiv

High-speed internet for all is now a Commission priority

A wide range of EU policy instruments and funds are now being activated to boost the spread of broadband internet to poorer regions.