Digital broadcasts law, opposition: OSCE Experts

“The interactive communication would enable us giving them answers for many comments and interferences made by OSCE, and also interfere with the draft in areas where they are not competent, since this is what they have said. That workgroup is not competent for matters that have to do with the freedom expression or limitations that we have set to these institutions. They said that they will interfere only in cases of technical character. Most of the workgroup members are engineers and lawmakers”, the Socialist MP Alfred Dalipi explains.

While the vice chairman of the Commission, Mark Marku, emphasized that this is a product of the Commission and the Parliament, and when it will be discussed, there will room for changing and improving it.

The interest groups in this meeting have asked some clauses to be reviewed, which are selective and not-coherent with the current market, such as the proposition for opening the race in the market of digital broadcasts.

“We oppose the opening of a competition for licenses, since the race not only has begun several years ago, but now it is a reality. The digitalization process has progressed on terrain much faster than the law. We propose the draft law to have a special clause defining that the national terrestrial and satellite stations, together with the public stations, as the law provides, must be obliged to be part of any digital platform. We propose that the law should include the criterion for sharing the state owned advertisements, which up to now has been made only in electoral campaigns. I invite the authors of this law to review the reality that is there today”, says Fatos Mihali from the Albanian Media Club.

The head of the Commission, Valentina Leskaj asked the government representatives to reveal the digital broadcasts strategy, for avoiding violations with the clauses of this law.

“This law is doomed without a strategy, because it is returning in Parliament. But in the meantime, we have no information about the strategy. I would suggest calling the government representatives to show us their progress with the digital strategy, because we are very late. The limit for passing the law of digital broadcasts was 2012, and it is impossible to be achieved with this pace”, Leskaj declared.

The Media Commission will continue the discussions about this law in the next weeks.

Top Channel