Patrick Eveno, media historian, estimated on Tuesday March 8 on franceinfo that the abolition of the audiovisual license fee would not pose “no problem” to perpetuate “public service funding”. Emmanuel Macron during his first campaign rally on Monday evening in Poissy, in the Yvelines, pledged to abolish this fee if he is re-elected. “The simplest thing is to transfer it to the general state budget. We are increasing the budget of the Ministry of Culture and Communication by 3 billion euros” and “it considerably simplifies the administrative collection circuits”according to Patrick Eveno.
franceinfo: What would change the financing of public broadcasting by the state budget rather than the license fee?
Patrick Eveno: It wouldn’t change anything at all. The royalty is a local tax that was created almost 100 years ago, which is obsolete now. We are faced with the abolition of the housing tax, which was collected at the same time as the fee. As we will no longer have that, we will have to create a specific administration to collect the fee, that would be silly. The simplest way is to transfer it to the general state budget. We increase the budget of the Ministry of Culture and Communication by 3 billion euros, and we increase each year according to inflation. It’s not very complicated.
Isn’t there a risk of seeing this budget reduced according to changes in the majority in power?
Nothing can guarantee it. Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to lower it, others wanted to increase it. We can never guarantee, when there are changes in the majority, that there will be no change in public policy. But we see that more and more European countries, since they are the ones that have a license fee, are moving to a budget within the general tax and allocated directly to the license fee. This considerably simplifies the administrative collection circuits.
The fee is automatic: what about independence and maintenance of budgets, if it is removed, for media whose editorial line is not appropriate?
It can also be increased as has been done several times. It is the Parliament which votes the law and the budget, it does not change anything. We can also lower or increase the fee as it currently exists. We can raise or lower taxes and their allocation to this or that public service company. But it is obvious that Emmanuel Macron and his government want to maintain a strong public service. They say, we need it.
Not to be confused with the far right [qui veut privatiser l’audiovisuel public]. We have simplified taxes. There is a whole series of taxes in France that Parliament can change every year if it wants, so we might as well simplify and give [le budget] at the Ministry of Culture, with five-year objective and means contracts for public service companies which are supervised by Arcom (Audiovisual and digital communication regulatory authority). There is no problem that this does not perpetuate the financing of the public service.