EU: Transfrontier Convention

The UK Advertising Association is to meet officials of the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport on 23 March to brief them further on the advertising and media industries’ concerns over the negotiation of the Council of Europe’s revised Transfrontier Broadcasting Convention. Later this week a key drafting group meeting on the text will take place at which an attempt will be made to agree the compromise text of Article 24a. These meetings follow the AA’s letter of protest to the UK Government against the proposed consolidated text of the revised European convention, and in particular Article 24A, which represents a small but significant and potentially serious departure from the country of origin principle. If revised as planned, the convention could lend itself to being used by some countries as a means of blocking broadcasting from other countries, thus undermining the principles of the newly revised EU Broadcasting Directive.