Letter from Director General of EBU to President of Social Democratic Party

Letter from Director General of EBU to President of Social Democratic Party:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter explaining the rationale of your proposal for eliminating the public
service media fee.

We understand your good intentions to ensure stable, adequate and predictable funding for
public service media (PSM), which is an important prerequisite for their institutional independence.

However, practice shows that it is very difficult to achieve a political consensus on funding of PSM from the budget. Very often, political deliberations leave PSM with undefined funding for an indefinite period, which has a tremendously negative impact on their production and results in their losing audiences and losing trust. Passing such an important law during an electoral campaign and in a hurry without broad public consultations and involvement of PSM confirm our concerns even more.

Practice also shows that it is it difficult for new governments to commit to fixed PSM allocations in the budget, as it was the case for example in Serbia, which was obliged to return to the licence fee.

We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that such a change with regard to the funding of public radio and television would be notifiable to the European Commission as a new EU State aid measure. In our experience, such cases can take many years to be resolved before the government may implement the new system. The only positive we could see in this process could be the obligation for Romania, to ensure the independence of its PSM supervisory body, in line with the guidance set out in the “EU State aid Broadcasting Communication 2009”.

If the Presidency of your party is really serious about safeguarding an independent PSM in
Romania, we strongly encourage you to preserve the public service media fee. The underfunding of TVR is due to a wholly insufficient licence fee (one of the lowest in Europe, at less than 1 euro per month) in addition to inadequate collection. This needs to be tackled urgently.

We agree that the appointment of the supervisory board needs urgent reform as well and we stand ready to assist and advise the lawmakers on this.

Since its recent severe financial crisis TVR has embarked on comprehensive reforms with the determined leadership of the management and the full support of the EBU. But public radio and television need even more support from you to serve society best.


Yours faithfully,
Ingrid Deltenre
Director General