Summing up The Week: The Issue of Media Concentration Returns into Public Discussions

This week, the Council of the European Union presented its conclusions about Moldova, where it highlighted the need to improve national legislation in order to limit media ownership concentration and to ensure media pluralism. The Government approved the draft of a new Broadcasting Code, which contains provisions on decreasing concentration. Also, a group of socialists registered a draft law on modifying article 66 of the current Broadcasting Code, aiming to reduce the number of broadcasting licenses held by one beneficiary.

On Monday, February 15, the Council of the European Union issued 13 conclusions on the progress of the Moldova-EU Association Agreement in the current political conditions in Chisinau, and one of those conclusions concerns mass media directly. Thus, the Council reminds that freedom of the press is a fundamental element of democratic life and appeals to the Moldovan Government to improve national legislation in order to limit media ownership concentration and to ensure media pluralism.

On Wednesday, February 17, the Government approved the draft Broadcasting Code that had been proposed as a legislative initiative by a group of MPs in March 2015. Among other things, article 77 of the draft, “Limitation of ownership concentration in broadcasting,” stipulates: “(1) To protect diversity and pluralism of opinions, the Broadcasting Council shall limit ownership concentration and extension of audience share in broadcasting to dimensions that could ensure economic efficiency, but would not generate dominant positions in creation of public opinion. (4) No broadcaster, except public broadcasters, can air more than 2 program services in one administrative-territorial unit of level two or in one municipality.”

We shall mention that on February 10, the Government did not approve a draft law on modifying the Broadcasting Code, registered in June 2015 by Party of Communists MPs Corneliu Mihalachi and Galina Balmos (currently non-affiliated MPs), because of “errors in legislative procedure.” The two MPs proposed modifying article 66 (3) of the Code so that one individual or legal entity could have “not more than two broadcasting licenses, without the possibility to have exclusiveness.”

Also on Wednesday, February 17, Party of Socialists MPs Vladimir Turcan, Eduard Smirnov, Grigore Novac and Adrian Lebedinschi registered in the parliament a new draft law as a legislative initiative. By that, they propose modifying and supplementing article 66 of the Broadcasting Code by replacing  in paragraph 3 the phrase “not more than five broadcasting licenses” with the phrase “not more than two broadcasting licenses,” and in paragraph 4, the phrase “not more than 2 broadcasters of different types” with the phrase “not more than 1 broadcaster of different types.”