Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-08-Speech-4-066"
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"− Madam President, I think that this debate was very important because it made very clear that there is a strong agreement in this House, a strong agreement that the freedom of the press does not have an if or a when, it is the basis of our European Union. We have to defend it, it is a fundamental value, we have to speak up when it is not honoured and we have to act if there is a problem to be solved.
Now there have been several clear demands by this House and I would like to reply to these if the House would permit and listen.
There is the demand by this House to go for the media pluralism approach which has been promised. The work on media pluralism has already made substantial progress and we have published the second step with the risk indicators on media pluralism. Maybe many parliamentarians have not seen these. They are on the Internet; they can be looked at and they are a very important element in being able to conduct this objective work on media pluralism which Parliament has called for.
I must say that I was very disappointed because we had a public workshop on this and not a single parliamentarian turned up to participate in the workshop. Well, the risk indicators have been published now and they can be looked at. They will be the basis for our future work.
Second question: why does the Commission not activate Article 7 of the EU Treaty in the case of Italy? First of all, Article 7 is a very exceptional provision. So far, it has never been activated by the EU institutions. This clause would apply only if there were a complete breakdown of national jurisdictional orders and fundamental rights systems in a given Member State. I do not think that we have reached such a situation in any of our Member States. But – and it is very interesting – the article states that the European Parliament itself has the possibility to activate Article 7 of the EU Treaty. So I call on the European Parliament, if it really thinks there is sufficient proof, to activate Article 7 of the EU Treaty.
Third question: many parliamentarians from all political parties – and I think there is relative unanimity in this House – have asked for an EU directive on media pluralism and media concentration.
This is a fundamental question that has to be discussed in depth. You might recall that the European Commission started to work on the draft for such a directive in the 1990s and you will also recall that all Member States, without exception, were against such a directive at that time because it was considered to be outside the competences of the EU.
Now, maybe the situation has changed today and there will be a large majority of Member States thinking this can enter into the competences of the EU. Of course, it would be possible to arrive at such a very generous interpretation of the Treaty, to allow the EU to tackle the matter. But, before even starting to think about this, the Commission would need to have the strong support of the whole European Parliament. And I would like the European Parliament to identify clearly which internal market problems it wants to be tackled with such a directive.
You know that I personally am not the kind of Commissioner who has a problem in regulating. I have, in the last five years, regulated when it was necessary. But to do this we need clear evidence about the questions we want to answer. Would legislation solve the problems you all have in mind today? Could we justify it under existing EU competences? Is there a clear cross-border dimension? Is there a clear internal market dimension because – remember – the legislation which we have already put on the table was all on the internal market legal basis.
All this would need to be clarified before we could start a legislative process. So I invite Parliament to discuss this seriously and I invite Parliament to respond to this question in an own-initiative report adopted by a majority of Members. Then the Commission will take that a step forward.
In the meantime, the Commission has done its homework by establishing the risk indicators that will help us to analyse this whole problem in all Member States on an objective basis. I think, in the end, that is what the Parliament wants. That is also what the other institution wants, because we do not want political usage of our basic freedoms. We want these freedoms to be a right; we want these freedoms to be a basic value and to be treated as such.
There is also an agreement in this House that the freedom of the media is a problem to be looked at in all Member States. Many of you have not been in this House before so I will just recall the action of the European journalists to set up a European Charter on Freedom of the Press. That was drawn up in order to help mainly the journalists in the new Member States and they had asked for this help from the journalistic community.
I just want to recall this, because it has been said in this House that there are problems with public television in many of our Member States. I recall having gone to one of those Member States – it was Hungary – to reinforce the case for saving public television, and I think that that should be done in all Member States when there is a problem.
It is for this reason that we have voted in the new Television Without Frontiers Directive, with the help of the Parliament, for the establishment of independent media authorities in all of our Member States. I can assure this House that whenever there is a problem in establishing these independent media authorities, the Commission will act.
Now where there is a disagreement in this House is on how to bring together EU competences with media policies. I think that many Members did not hear my introductory statements where I quoted from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is very clear. I also quoted Article 51(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which also states very clearly when the charter is to be implemented and the rules for implementing the charter. So I think that everybody can read this and recall it.
Unfortunately, nobody is listening now, although this is very important.
In my introductory speech, I also underlined the very clear actions, the concrete examples of where the EU can act and has acted, and I underlined the problems which have to be solved at national level. The constitutional court of Italy, which acted yesterday, has clearly shown what that means."@en1
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