European Media Regulation and State Subsidies, invited guest speaker at conference at Univesity of Porto, Portugal

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. Indeed, Levy (1999: 81) has observed that ‘the operation of European Community competition policy has ….had more of an impact on Europe’s broadcasting industry than any of the European regulation specifically targeted at the sector’. In the early 1990s, the number of European media mergers and joint ventures increased dramatically, and the Commission’s Competition Directorate became very active in decision making on this front (Gibbons 1999, 2000; Pauwels 1998; Levy 1999; Harcourt 2005). However, 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 position adopted in the paper is not aligned with those – perhaps the majority – of scholars who see the European Union as a serious threat to public service broadcasting (PSB). The paper demonstrates this by reference to the two cases, the UK and Germany.