The Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) has adopted a new law stipulating local language quotas for TV stations.
According to Mediasat, the legislation (Bill no 5313) requires national TV channels to allocate 75% of their airtime during the day in each of the two time intervals (07.00 to 18.00 and 18.00 to 22.00) to content in the Ukrainian language.
Meanwhile, regional TV channels are required to meet a 60% quota and three-quarters of all news programmes aired on Ukrainian channels have to be broadcast in Ukrainian.
The authors of the law stressed that there was a 75% requirement on Ukrainian language content up until 2012, after which it quota was decreased on several occasions.
TV channels that current fail to meet the quotas are liable to a fine equivalent to 5% of their licence fee.
