INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE

The media landscape is increasingly governed by international regulation, and much of the policy is determined by the European Union. The Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice protect the rights of the media to exercise their freedom of expression, whereby the freedom of the press is central. Apart from these approaches based on human rights, media policy is generally regulated by laws governing the internal European market and legislation governing competition and monopolies (Larouche and Van der Haar 2005).

At the level of the European Union, there is in fact no evidence of a specific media law or policy. Instead, general market regulations are in force. The influence of the World Trade Organisation is increasing. This reinforces the shift of emphasis from a national, cultural and legal approach to policymaking to one that examines the marketplace. This is regarded as a shift from a more particularistic approach to a more liberal universalistic approach. The media landscape has, therefore, become just another ‘market’.

The harmonisation of national and European legislation has reduced the ‘bandwidth’ for national policymakers to make exceptions. In addition, the European regulations force national governments to justify their continued support and subsidy for public institutions, such as public broadcasting. There are strict guidelines that force EU members to show that the public broadcasting systems in their countries are not receiving unfair subsidies that inhibit healthy competition from the commercial sector (Van Eijk et al. 2005).

The Netherlands Media Policy, which for the most part consists of legislation governing broadcasting, has traditionally taken a defensive position against the developments at the EU level. It engenders some interesting tensions with EU legislation. In the past, the Dutch government has tried to use cultural policy to avoid commercial competitors breaking open the complicated Dutch public broadcasting system, even though this contradicted guidelines for the free exchange of goods. As of mid-2005, the future form of public broadcasting is being debated in the Dutch parliament. More than ever before, the EU regulation is explicitly considered as one of the relevant boundary conditions.