Significant amendments to the Law on Electronic Media have come into effect in Latvia.
According to the regulator NEPLP, they lower the threshold of ownership that has to be reported from the previous 25% to at least 5% of a company’s capital. The NEPLP now also has the right to request information about on-demand service providers, channel distributors and beneficial owners of rebroadcast channels. If such information is not provided, NEPLP will have the right to exclude the channel from the list of audio and audiovisual services to be rebroadcast in Latvia.
The regulator predicts that this will lead to greater transparency and security in the media space as a whole.
The second major set of changes concerns TV channels banned in Latvia, or channels excluded from the list of audio and audiovisual channels to be rebroadcast in Latvia. Television channels registered in an “aggressor country”, such as Russia, which threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or national independence of another country, will not be able to receive a broadcast permit in Latvia. Likewise, those channels whose rebroadcast ban in the territory of Latvia has been banned by NEPLP in the last five years will not be able to receive it. It is stipulated by law that the list of audio and audiovisual channels to be rebroadcast in Latvia can include only those ones in respect of which NEPLP has not taken a decision on the rebroadcast ban in the last five years. It is also prohibited to provide an audiovisual service on demand, the content of which fully or partially duplicates the content of electronic media channels, the distribution of which has been prohibited by NEPLP in Latvia.
The third significant change affects television channels rebroadcast in Latvia. Channel distribution service providers, when distributing a channel with a language track that is not in the official language of a member state of the European Union or the countries of the European Economic Area, are obliged to primarily provide this channel with a language track in the national language. For example, if the basic language of the channel is English, then when creating a language track, it should be primarily provided in Latvian, and only then can it be provided in other languages, for example, in Russian.
NEPLP notes that until now, an absurd situation had arisen, when the language track for channels in English was provided only in Russian. At the time of the amendments to the law, out of the 250 channels available in Latvia, 127 channels had a language track in Russian, while only 44 TV channels were available in Latvian. NEPLP emphasises that the Russian language is not affected in any way, because nothing changes regarding its use. Along with these amendments, the Latvian language is given an appropriate meaning.
