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Nicolae Posturusu, Deputy Secretary General of the Presidential Administration, presented at the plenary meeting the arguments of President Igor Dodon that are included in the official letter to the Speaker of the Parliament. Among other things, Igor Dodon was dissatisfied with the provisions allowing the transmission of information, analytical, political and military broadcasts only from member states of the European Union, the US and Canada and the states that have ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. The Russian Federation has not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. In his opinion, this leads to concentration and monopolization of the media services in the country.
At the plenary meeting, Socialist MP Vlad Batrincea mentioned that new Code would give excessive powers to the broadcasting regulator: ‘The procedure of suspending the license without the judicial authority has been simplified too much, which was not the case before, and it is very serious for the media’ Batrincea said.
The Socialist MP also reminded that, during the public hearings on this draft, a number of broadcasters said that they would not be able to meet certain requirements for local content requirements.
The report of the Parliamentary Committee for Mass-Media on this draft Law was presented during the meeting by MP Corneliu Mihalache. According to him, the local content requirements were increased in order to take the broadcast media out of the ‘parasitic’ state. ‘Otherwise we will not develop the Moldovan broadcasting, unless we impose rules to promote local products’ Mihalache explained.
Note that on Friday, 2 November, President Igor Dodon returned the Audiovisual Media Services Code to the Parliament for reconsideration.
According to the law, the president of the country can only once ask the Parliament to reconsider the law for any reason that makes the law unacceptable as a whole or partially.
If after reconsidering the law, the Parliament keeps the previously adopted decision or amends the law according to the President’s objections, the President is obliged to promulgate the law within 2 weeks at most from the date of the law’ registration in the presidential administration.
Note that in the case of other laws that President Dodon did not promulgate, and the MPs kept their previously adopted decision, the laws were promulgated by the Speaker of the Parliament, after the President’s suspension by the Constitutional Court.
