European Media Regulation and State Subsidies

Competition law and regulation is a very special area where EU policy has direct effect on the Member States. Therefore, it is precisely the field where the EU might be expected to play a strong deregulatory, pro-market role. In the particular field of state aid – or subsidies – the EU has not yet impacted the press, for reasons that the paper will attempt to explain. It will then go on to concentrate on state aid to public broadcasting where things have been very different. This is an area where scholars disagree vehemently about how to interpret EU regulation. The paper takes a different position to those academics – perhaps the majority – who see the European Union as a serious threat to public service broadcasting (PSB). It justifies this by reference to the two cases, the UK and Germany.