Television Pluralism and Diversity and the European Commission’s Competition Policy – The Western European Experience

This article assesses the question of media concentration in the European Union (EU) in the context of the regulatory approaches taken by the Member States and the EU. It argues, despite common perceptions that the EU’s approach to protecting media pluralism is governed by a purely market approach, it is also entrenched in a significant public interest basis. It argues that media concentration is increasing due to the weakening of a commitment as to the importance placed on the protection of media pluralism by the Member States. Subsequently national governments are supporting national champions and removing regulatory barriers for company growth in order to protect their own market players while at the same time enabling national companies to exploit even greater economies of scale by expanding into neighbouring countries both within the EU and outside of the area. At the same time the growth of the European Commission (EC) as a key regulator in the area of competition policy at the Community level has reshaped the scope of national regulation in this field. In this respect, a policy at the EU level has been to employ competition policy in order to support European Champions that are able to exploit greater size on the global market, but also to protect media pluralism on a national level by allowing media companies to expand in the different media markets across the common market zone. These contrasting policy trajectories will be discussed by reviewing the ECs media related decisions, and the article will conclude that although individual Member States retain the right to enforce media concentration regulations under the merger regulation there appears to be little will on behalf of many of the major