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One less tax for the French… but one more concern for public media employees. The CGT, CFDT, FO, SNJ, SUD, Unsa, CGC and CFTC unions are calling on the employees of France Télévisions and Radio France to strike and demonstrate in Paris on Tuesday, June 28, due to fears for the future of the public broadcasting caused by the announcement of the abolition of the television license fee.
The executive wishes to replace the contribution to public broadcasting from 2022 with a current budget over several years and ensures that the end of the fee will not lead to a reduction in the means of public broadcasting. This measure would force the State to find an additional 3.14 billion euros each year, in addition to the 560 million it was already paying to compensate for the non-payment of the fee by the lowest-income households, according to a Senate report public in June.
“Abolishing the license fee, an affected resource, means making public broadcasting more precarious and impoverished by shifting it to the general state budget” so by making it permeable “to the arbitrations and the incessant political pressures”, react the unions in a joint press release. While the Senate report also proposes to merge France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde (RFI and France 24) and INA from 2025 into a single public company called France Médias, the trade unions are concerned about the hypotheses advances to reduce the operating cost of public broadcasting, such as a merger between the regional networks of France 3 and France Bleu.
“The prospect of dismantling [du service public] for the benefit of a private sector ruled by media billionaires is unbearable. It is by the yardstick of the level of independence of information that we measure the maturity of a democracy”, add the unions. A study (in English) published in December 2021 and conducted on public media in 33 countries shows that large and secure funding over several years of public media, as well as strong structural protections for the political and economic independence of these media, are correlated with democratic healthy.
To replace the fee, the unions are demanding, among other things, the “implementation of a universal tax allocated to public broadcasting”whose “the return would be at least equivalent to the current amount of the royalty”and a “dedicated funding to fight fake news”.
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