Media business | Medialiitto once again complained about Yle to the European Commission

Media industry Medialiitto, which represents the companies, has filed a state aid complaint with the European Commission regarding online content published by Yle as text. In its press release, the union says that the complaint concerns online content that has no close connection to Yle’s publications containing moving images or sound.

In 2017, Medialiitto filed a complaint with the Commission about the public funding of journalistic online content published as Yle’s text. This led to the amendment of the Yle Act the following year. After the change in the law, the publication of Yle’s articles in text format was restricted in order to comply with EU state aid rules. According to the Medialiitto, the commission assessed at that time that textual content such as newspaper text is not, in principle, broadcasting, unless it has a close connection with publications containing moving images or sound.

However, according to the union, Yle has continued publishing activities similar to an online newspaper. The union says that, based on the information it has published itself, Yle has published more than 70,000 articles in text format every year, most of which, according to the union, do not meet the commission’s requirements.

Taloustutkimus conducted a survey for Medialiito, in which more than a third of the more than 3,000 respondents considered Yle’s national text content to reduce the willingness to pay for newspaper content very much or quite a lot. For one-fifth of the respondents who stopped their newspaper subscription, Yle’s free text content influenced them to stop their newspaper subscription.

“The study confirms that Yleisradio’s operations have an effect on consumers’ willingness to pay for newspaper content and that Yleisradio’s operations have contributed to consumers’ decisions to cancel their paid newspaper subscriptions”, CEO of Medialiito Jukka Holmberg says in the announcement.

Board of Directors of Yle received a letter from Medialiito in October, in which the association assessed that Yle’s textual content was in violation of the Broadcasting Act and EU state aid regulations. The letter also presented restrictions on Yle’s textual publication.

The Administrative Council said in March that based on the report it received from Yle and two external experts, there are no indications that Yleisradio’s textual content was implemented contrary to the requirements of the Public Broadcasting Act. According to the supervisory council, no grounds were found for the restrictions presented by Medialiito on the publication of textual content either. The Administrative Council justified the publication of textual content by, among other things, the fulfillment of its statutory task and the important security of supply in times of crisis.

Now Medialiitto says that in its complaint it has asked the commission to also assess whether the supervisory board overseeing Yle is independent of the company. The duties of the Supervisory Board include, for example, deciding on Yleisradio’s strategy and financial and operational guidelines. Therefore, according to Medialiitto, the supervisory board is not independent of the company’s management in the way that EU state aid regulation requires of a body that supervises a broadcasting company.

“In other EU countries, the task is handled by an independent authority. For us it could be Traficom or the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority,” Holmberg tells STT.

Correction 10.9. at 10:30 p.m.: According to Medialiitto, the commission’s requirement is not met in a large part of the more than 70,000 articles published by Yle. Earlier in the story, it was erroneously stated that all 70,000 articles would be those in which the requirement is not met.