EU-Report Accession Bulgaria

Chapter 20: Culture and audio-visual policy

Bulgaria has made some progress since last year's Regular Report.

Amendments to the Law on Radio and Television entered into force in November 2001 aiming at further transposing the audio-visual acquis. These were intended to strengthen the regulatory body in this sector and to streamline licensing procedures. As a result, a Council for Electronic Media was established in November 2001 to replace the National Council on Radio and Television as the Bulgarian national regulatory body. Like its predecessor, the Council for Electronic Media is an independent specialised body. It regulates radio and television activity through the registration and issuing of licenses and exercises supervision to ensure that the actions of radio and television operators are in line with the law. The Council's staff has increased from 45 in 2001 to 61 in spring 2002 and the institution has been allocated new premises. The budget for 2002 for this body has been increased by around 13%.

Since the law came into force, the Director of the Bulgarian National Television was dismissed in December 2001 because of failure to comply with the newly-introduced requirement of five years of experience. The amendments to the Law on Radio and Television were applied retroactively. The director who had been dismissed appealed against the decision in court and won.

A Memorandum of Understanding, providing for Bulgaria's participation in the Media Plus and Media Training Community programmes, was signed in July 2002 taking effect from January 2002.

In the field of culture, the Association Council decision allowing Bulgaria to participate fully in the ``Culture 2000''. programme from 2001 was adopted in October 2001.

Overall assessment

Progress has been made in implementation through the introduction of a single licensing procedure. The introduction of a new registration regime can be seen as a step towards deregulation of the media environment. However, the 2001 amendments to the Law on Radio and Television did not address the issues of financing the Council of Electronic Media and the public broadcasters.

The Council for Electronic Media's administrative capacity to deal with monitoring and sanctioning powers needs to be further strengthened, particularly as far as monitoring of regional and local broadcasters is concerned.

Bulgaria is party to the Council of Europe Convention on Transfrontier Television and its amending Protocol.

Conclusion

In its 1997 Opinion, the Commission concluded that provided that the necessary legislative measures were pursued with sufficient urgency and were accompanied by the necessary structural adaptation of the industry, it was reasonable to expect that Bulgaria should be able to meet EC requirements in the audio-visual sector in the medium term.

Since the Opinion, Bulgaria has made significant progress, particularly through the adoption in 2000 of a Law amending the 1998 Law on Radio and Television, as a result of which Bulgarian legislation in this area has achieved a high degree of alignment with the acquis. The necessary administrative structures are in place.

Negotiations on this chapter have been provisionally closed. Bulgaria has not requested any transitional arrangements in this area. It is generally meeting the commitments it made in the accession negotiations in this field.

Bulgaria should focus further efforts on the strengthening of the administrative capacity of the national regulatory body in the field of broadcasting.

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