Television broadcasting activities. 'Television without frontiers'

By 292 votes to 195 and 25 abstentions, the European Parliament adopted the report by Mr Gerardo GALEOTE QUECEDO (PPE, Es) and Mr Karsten HOPPENSTEDT (PPE, D) on a limited amendment of the 'Television without frontiers Directive. The EP proposed, in particular, the following amendments: - Field of application: the scope of the directive should be enlarged to include the new services on individual demand. - Responsibility of Member States: the EP has specified the criteria for jurisdiction. It has also introduced derogations from the obligation for Member States to ensure freedom of reception if a television broadcast seriously infringes the provisions on advertising, teleshopping, the protection of minors and public morality. Also introduced is the possibility of rapid judicial remedy and financial penalties in the event of non-compliance with the rules guaranteeing pluralism; - Binding transmission quotas: the general-interest channels should have an obligation to devote the majority proportion of their transmission time to the showing of European works. The Member States should ensure the implementation of quotas 'by appropriate and legally effective means' and no longer merely 'where practicable'. They should also encourage the showing of non-national European works. Calculation of transmission time reserved for European works should exclude studio-bound programmes. The special-interest channels, for their part, should reserve 25% of their programming budget or 5% of their turnover to European works. Furthermore, broadcasters should reserve, at their discretion, 10% of their transmission time to works created by independent producers; - Clarity and principles for advertising, spots and teleshopping: advertising, spots and teleshopping windows should be readily recognizable and kept quite separate from other parts of the programme service by optical and/or acoustic means. Advertising and teleshopping may not be offensive to religious, philosophical or political beliefs. The EP calls for not more than one interruption for advertising, for each complete period of 45 minutes, during the showing of feature films. The amount of advertising inserted during a feature film should not exceed 15% of the film's duration. The combined amount of advertising should not exceed 15% of the daily transmission time, or 20% including teleshopping. Derogations should be limited to local and regional channels. Protection of minors and public morality: the EP proposes (a) an obligation on general-interest channels to set aside a time slot for children's programmes, within which any programme which might be detrimental would be prohibited; (b) an obligation to give an advance warning by acoustic means, and to provide a visual symbol of programmes containing scenes which might be detrimental; (c) the setting up of bodies consisting of experts (educationalists and media specialists) to monitor and classify the content of programmes before transmission; (d) that television receivers must be equipped with a filtering device limiting access by minors to programmes which might be detrimental. - Updating of the directive: the EP proposes a new general revision ten years after the entry into force of the revised directive. �