Ads to be banned from movie theaters

The lawmakers passed in first reading a bill that prohibits screening of advertisements in movie theaters before and after the showing at the suggestion of the Liberal Party. The bill wasn’t supported by the Communist group, which said that the given initiative is a raider attack on the economic entities, Info-Prim Neo reports. The bill’s author Valeriu Munteanu said the movie theaters allow certain economic entities to promote such products as beer brands, food products, taxi services and others, while the viewers forcibly become consumers of commercials. “The viewers who bought a ticket to a movie paid for services of a high quality that do not include watching commercials for a long period,” said the MP. Communist lawmaker Artur Reshetnikov accused the Liberal Party of pursuing certain interests when promoting this bill. His faction colleague Oleg Reidman said the economic entities that placed advertisements at movie theaters until now will no longer want to sponsor free screenings for children and other categories of population on certain occasions. Liberal-Democratic MP Ion Butmalai didn’t back the bill either. He said that by this law they want to eliminate a business. Victor Selin, the head of the Social-Democratic Party, who owns a number of movie theaters, said the bill will lead to a 20% rise in tickets to movies as a part of the maintenance costs were earlier covered from publicity. The bill was approved by the Government in April. The fines for showing advertisements vary between 1,000 and 6,000 lei.