Lewiatan Confederation and Employers of Poland against Remote Control Act
The Lewiatan Confederation and Employers of Poland have sent opinions to the Chancellery of the Sejm criticizing the governmental bill that secures the first channel numbers on the operator lists of channels for TVP. The session of the Sejm committee at which the bill was to be discussed was postponed from yesterday to next week.
In the opinion sent to the Sejm, the Lewiatan Confederation, which brings together entrepreneurs, recalled that the work on adapting the Polish telecommunication law to European regulations has been underway for more than two years but only at the last stage of such work provisions amending the Broadcasting Act were added to the Act on Provisions Implementing the Act on the Electronic Communications. As was underlined, this happened without any consultations with the public.
“This type of law-making is contrary to all principles of a transparent and fair legislative process,” stressed the Lewiatan Confederation in its opinion.
The Employers of Poland, an organization that brings together entrepreneurs, also highlighted the lack of public consultations. The organization recalled that the bill also introduced the need for operators to offer the possibility for subscribers to buy a single channel (now television stations are usually offered in bundles). “The mere introduction of the option of choosing individual television channels will lead to an increase in the costs of the entire offer and will make the purchase of individual channels completely unprofitable for the customer and, in the longer term, will limit the choice of channels and reduce their availability,” the Employers of Poland emphasized in their opinion.
As the organization added, by amending the must carry/must offer principle, the Act will provide a tool to increase TVP’s viewership.
The Lewiatan Confederation argues that it is necessary to delete statutory provisions not directly related to European regulations and to abandon work on the regulations intended to change the must carry/must offer principle and the channel list. Employers of Poland called for the deletion of the aforementioned amendments to the Broadcasting Act from the bill.
The National Bank of Poland and the National Council of the Judiciary did not submit any comments to the bill (to the part relating to amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure, among others).