Europe Takes Legal Action Over British Satellite

The European Commission is to start legal action against the British Government for failure to comply with a television directive. According to the European Commission, the UK is not strict enough regarding the licensing of satellite channels which can be seen throughout Europe.

All other countries regulate satellite channels in the country where their headquarters are located; the UK believes jurisdiction should be in the country where the signal is uplinked to the satellite. This difference means that some broadcasters could avoid EU rules, whilst others could be subject to the jurisdiction of more than one country.

The row over programming still continues; the commission has written to the government complaining about its decision to allow a 24-hour shopping channel, even though the EU’s broadcast rule allows only one hour of such services each day. The Belgian court recently dropped a case against TNT, for not providing enough European programming, because it could not ban a station which had a bona fide licence from the UK.