In January 2016, President Andrzej Duda signed one of the most contentious media laws in the EU-history. The government flouted several fundamental EU rights and signed legislation to allow the government to appoint the senior management of public broadcasters. It also introduced a number of controversial amendments to the country’s constitutional court. Despite international uproar, the media law came into force the following day. The EU has decided to take action against Poland under the so-called ‘Rule of Law’ framework. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomes this move as an important step in protecting media freedom in Poland. Following the adoption of the bill, broadcaster ARTE said it no longer had the certainty that freedom of expression, editorial independence and pluralism of public television were guaranteed. ARTE decided to suspend its contractual relations with the public television station TVP.
English: http://www.equaltimes.org/if-we-let-media-freedom-fall ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.