The Belgian Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) wants to bring RTL Belgium under its control, but the broadcaster said it only accepts Luxemburg regulator ALIA.
As from June 29 June, the CSA, the media regulator for French-speaking Belgium, said it takes control and will no longer send complaints against RTL Belgium to its Luxembourg counterpart ALIA. The CSA will now deal with the files relating to the broadcaster under Belgian French-speaking legislation, which applies to all audiovisual media whose activities are entirely oriented towards the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
Since 2010, no complaint against RTL Belgium has been processed by the CSA, following its decison on Aprol 1, 2010, to forward all complaints to ALIA. The question of whether editorial responsibility for the three RTL Belgium channels was exercised in Luxembourg or in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation was never decided, either by the Belgian Council of State in 2009 or by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2010.
The decision to deal with complaints from the public again in Brussels follows several monitorings of RTL Belgium’s channels and an analysis of the criteria for linking their competence to Belgium rather than in Luxembourg.
The withdrawal of the decision of April 1, 2010 comes at the end of an in-depth analysis carried out by the Services of the CSA of the situation created by an actor exclusively active in the Wallonia-Brussels federation but on which Luxembourg claims competence.
However, RTL belgium said it will continue to only accept ALIA as its regulator, not the CSA. “RTL Belgium does not intend to take part in what is only a communication campaign of the Francophone organisation and will continue to comply with the control of the only regulatory authority on which it depends, ALIA. Its role as a regulator and control body in the rule of law that is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and, unlike the CSA, does not use its role as a legislator,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
