The ruling Fidesz party in Hungary has dismissed criticism on media freedom in the country made by Nellie Kroes, the EC’s VP.
Quoted by BBJ, Gergely Gulyás, the party’s spokesman, said: “Hungary’s media is free and diverse and Hungarian society is also free”.
He added that the levy of the tax was preceded by consultations of several years, and it was a matter of burden sharing, in which companies making extra profit earlier must also take part.
Meanwhile, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT) and European Publishers Council (EPC) have referred Broadband TV News to a letter they wrote to Kroes on July 25 about the controversial new ad tax that came into effect in Hungary last month.
Referring specifically to the impact of the tax on media freedom, it says: “ The tax has two consequences which we would like to emphasise. The first is that it constitutes a clear interference with the democratic function of the media. As the report of the High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism makes clear, there is a linkage between the functioning of European democracies and a free, independent and pluralistic media sector. But a pluralistic media sector is impossible without a functioning, competitive advertising market. Advertising income from many different companies and institutions enable media companies to invest in independent news reporting. Independence means: being independent from state subsidies or from single advertising clients. Media companies cannot be expected to carry out their role of holding public and state institutions to account if they are subjected to capricious, unpredictable and disproportionate financial penalties on this scale”.
It concludes: “We hope that you will be able in these final months of your mandate to make a clear and unambiguous statement that Europe cannot tolerate such a brutal assault on the core values of the European Union, as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
“We will be copying this letter to MEPs who have expressed an interested in media freedom issues, and to selected journalists”.
