Broadcasters will be obliged to transmit at least 30% of local content in prime time, between 6pm and 12 midnight. Such a provision is contained in a bill to amend the Broadcasting Code that was passed in the final reading on March 30, IPN reports.

The Broadcasting Code adopted in 2006 didn’t specify the broadcasting time for local content. Experience showed many of the broadcasters avoided prime time, choosing often the nocturnal time.

The new amendments clearly stipulate when and for what the Broadcasting Coordination Council can impose penalties and what the consecutively of penalties is. The Council is obliged to choose a company for measuring audience as a result of an international contest once in five years.

The goal of the bill is to stimulate national production and, respectively, to increase the number of jobs and qualification in the media, to set out clear rules for broadcasters and to exclude possibilities of abuse on the part of the national broadcasting regulators.

Liberal-Democratic MP Vadim Pistrinciuc said such a bill will not achieve its goal to protect the media market from foreign propaganda, especially from Russia. The bill favors the media groups – one that is affiliated to the power and another one that is affiliated to the Party of Socialists – and the common vote on this draft law proves this.