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Broadcasters go to the Federal Constitutional Court to collect transmission fees
| Reading time: 2 minutes
The history of public service broadcasting
When the public service broadcaster was founded, the model was the BBC. ARD and ZDF have the imperative of distance and independence from the state. They are financed through the radio license fee, which repeatedly causes discontent.
Public broadcasters want to charge a higher transmission fee before the Federal Constitutional Court due to the blockade of Saxony-Anhalt. Unfortunately, ZDF had no other choice, said director Thomas Bellut.
rePublic broadcasters are taking legal action after Saxony-Anhalt blocked an increase in the license fee on January 1. This was announced by ZDF, ARD and Deutschlandradio independently on Tuesday.
“Adjusting premiums has now become a political problem in Saxony-Anhalt. Therefore, the ZDF unfortunately has no choice but to call the Federal Constitutional Court, ”said ZDF director Thomas Bellut. Obviously, the procedure has become the toy of politics in a federal state, which is actually supposed to prevent the “KEF procedure, organized out of state.”
A failure of the increase would affect “the industry, which has already been shaken by the pandemic, in a massive and sustainable way,” said Bellut. “The ZDF could no longer develop its effect as the largest customer in this market as before.”
ARD President Tom Buhrow emphasized: “Unfortunately, a constitutional complaint is unavoidable. Without sufficient, independently determined funding, the range of programs, which is rooted in all regions of Germany, will suffer. “
Deutschlandradio said that funding based on the needs of public broadcasters was no longer guaranteed from 2021. Therefore, it was decided to file a constitutional complaint. Artistic director Stefan Raue emphasized: “We must already follow a strict course of austerity to be visible in the digital world with our offerings. Therefore, not increasing the rate would inevitably affect programming. “
Saxony-Anhalt Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU) decided not to allow the state parliament to vote on the state transmission tariff treaty. Despite several crisis meetings, the state CDU had emphasized that under no circumstances would it accept an increase in the radio license fee by 86 cents to 18.36 euros by January 1, 2021.
The alliance partners SPD and Greens wanted to support the project from all countries. The CDU could have enforced its veto with AfD votes. Haseloff definitely wanted to avoid a joint vote with the AfD. In the event of the CDU-AfD veto, the SPD and the Greens threatened the end of Kenya’s first national coalition, which had been in power since 2016.
