The Draft Law no. 218 Re-examined in the Framework of Public Consultations

The authors of the draft law no. 218 on the amendment and supplementing of the Broadcasting Code of the Republic of Moldova conducted public consultations on this document on Thursday, 14^th of July. The idea to conduct the debates was announced the day before on the website of the Parliament, what explains the low level presence of media experts, members of Parliament, civil society, in general. It is also worth mentioning that, within the one-week period of time after the adoption in the first reading of these amendments by the Parliament, there was a chain of negative reactions both at the local, and at the international level. In this context, the member of Parliament Sergiu Sârbu, one of the authors of the draft law no. 218, stated that some “have distorted the meaning and the content of the draft”, therefore, there is need for public consultations “in order to dismantle the myths, to discuss and to collect recommendations”.

A chain of negative reactions

The chain of negative reactions started on Friday, 8^th of July, the day after the first reading vote of the amendments to the Broadcasting Code, with a statement of the Association of Russian Journalists. They expressed their concerns about “the exclusion” of the news and information broadcasts from the programme schedule of the broadcasters that retransmit the channels of the Russian Federation in the media space of the Republic of Moldova and “the substantial reduction of the amount of broadcasts in Russian language”.  

On Monday, 11^th of July, there was a reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Its communique specifies that “the proposed modifications to the Broadcasting Code are meant to limit the activity of the Russian press, considering that Russian is an inter-ethnic communication language in the Republic of Moldova”. The note of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs qualifies as “unfriendly” the above-mentioned measure and warns that “Moscow will undertake a careful monitoring of the developments of this initiative”.

On 12^th of July, the Governor of the Gagauzian Territorial-Administrative Unit claimed in a statement that “the modifications examined by the members of Parliament are intended to eliminate the Russian TV channels from the broadcasting field and the Russian language from the public sphere in Moldova”. Irina Vlah warned Chișinău that: “If the parliamentary majority approves the legislative modifications to the Broadcasting Code, the cable television networks of the Gagauzian autonomy will continue to broadcast the Russian and other TV channels at a full extent”.  

On 13^th of July, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Dunja Mijatović, submitted a letter to President of the Parliament, Andrian Candu, pointing out, among other issues, that: “It is counterproductive to attempt to restrict the freedom of speech by the means of an extremely restrictive legislation”. “I am sure that members of Parliament will carefully review the draft law before adopting it in the second reading, so that its provisions do not contain any ungrounded restrictions for the freedom of expression and the free flow of information”, Mijatović stated.

Suggestions for the second reading

Before starting the consultations themselves, the members of Parliament Vladimir Hotineanu, chairman of the parliamentary Committee for the mass-media, and Sergiu Sârbu, Democratic Party deputy, as the author of the draft law, made presentations - pleas in favour of the document - of 10 and, respectively, 30 minutes, to explain the main theses of the document. The deputy Sergiu Sârbu underlined, among other issues, that “the draft is not intended to prohibit the Russian TV channels in Moldova”, that “the restrictions will exclusively concern the informative, analytical and military broadcasts” and that the document was endorsed by the Council of Europe and OSCE experts. 

In reply, Nadine Gogu, the director of the Centre for Independent Journalism, reproached to the Democrat deputy that he had cheated while stating that the draft law does not prohibit the retransmission of TV channels or radio stations, but only of broadcasts. “The draft no. 218 that is in front of me clearly specifies: „Article 9 shall be supplemented with new paragraphs - 2 and 3. Paragraph 2: broadcasters and service distributors are prohibited to transmit and retransmit the TV channels and radio stations which contain informative, informative-analytical and political programmes and broadcasts that are not produced in the EU member-States, or in the States that ratified the European Convention on Cross-Border Television”...

The media expert also expressed some other objections to the Democrat deputy: “You have somehow cheated when you said that the bill had been expertized and favourably endorsed by the OSCE. All of us had the opportunity to see the conclusions of the OSCE expertise that clearly disapprove the prohibition of the retransmission and you have probably seen the OSCE press-release and the letter sent to Mr. Candu by Dunja Mijatovic who is concerned about this draft law and made suggestions to be taken into account in the second reading in order not to admit any violation of the freedom of expression and of the access to information”.

The participants in the consultations have also tackled a series of other issues to be taken into consideration in the second reading of the draft law. “From the perspective of the media business or TV business, we are living in an area where abnormalities occur”, stated the director of Realitatea TV, Dumitru Țîra, who also pointed out that nowhere in the world, except the Commonwealth of Independent States area, TV channels are retransmitted. In his opinion, retransmitted TV should not exist for the sake of the country’s information security. “There is an obvious misunderstanding of what retransmitted television means and what is a television under national authority, that is a TV channel that holds a licence, but is mostly based on the retransmission of a television from outside the country”, the director of Realitatea TV pointed out.

Dinu Ciocan, Chairman of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC), evoked an old episode, when 14 broadcasters initiated a lawsuit against the BCC, challenging the legal provisions according to which they were compelled “to broadcast 30% of autochthonous production in prime time, half of which should be in Romanian language”. He also added that “at the time, in 2014, the apple of discord consisted in the 4 hours of broadcast of autochthonous products that had to be transmitted in prime time in Romanian language”.   

In the opinion of the unaffiliated deputy, Corneliu Mihalache, “we do not have a Moldovan analytical information space, but we have an analytical information space built from outside, that imposes to us certain visions, certain values. Therefore, the provision requesting to establish and keep a share of autochthonous production is an important one, because “we cannot speak about the development of the Moldovan broadcasting sphere, without this requirement for autochthonous products”.

According to the director of the Centre for Independent Journalist, “the debates would have been much more productive, if we had the possibility to intervene during the presentation of Mr. Sârbu, because when a presentation is made, there might be ideas for solutions, recommendations, or, in fact, that is the aim of debates, not just to comment, but also to propose solutions which might be taken into consideration”. Nadine Gogu expressed her regret that a low number of experts, members of Parliament, people who would really have something to say and, probably, would bring counterarguments, attended the event, “because, otherwise, you will just tick off the public debates, claiming that we are transparent, but in fact the situation is different”.