Chisinau authorities suggest advertising agencies should reconstruct streets in municipality

Representatives of the Chisinau administration tell the advertising agencies to forget the conflict with the Austrian firm EPA MEDIA related to the construction of stops in exchange for placing adverts and to suggest other forms of cooperation with the municipality that will benefit both sides and the residents of the capital city. At a meeting called by the Mayor General of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca on Thursday, the municipal councillor Emil Gutu said that the advertising agencies could build roads in Chisinau in exchange for the right to place advertisements along the roads that they will repair. Veaceslav Tarana, head of the Transport and Communication Ways Division, said that the agencies could offer to place adverts on the fences that surround the hundreds of building sites in the municipality in exchange for social projects they could implement in Chisinau. The discussions follow in the wake of the conflict between the national advertising agencies and the Austrian firm EPA MEDIA. The agencies consider that after signing the contract with the City Hall, EPA MEDIA will become a monopolist on the market and will pressurize other advertising companies. At the same time, representatives of the local authorities say that all the companies have conditions for working on the market. Victor Caldaba, lawyer for EPA MEDIA, said that the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the appeal of the Association of Advertising Agencies against the Court of Appeal’s decision to validate the contract between EPA MEDIA and the Chisinau City Hall. According to him, the decision is irrevocable. Caldaba also said that EPA MEDIA cannot become monopolist on the market so easily because it cannot put advertisements without the authorization of the City Hall. Moreover, EPA MEDIA is ready to sell the right to place adverts on the light-boxes of the stations and on the billboards to the advertising agencies. The meeting participants expressed the opinion that the City Hall has more levers to make EPA MEDIA to jointly review a number of clauses of the contract, especially as regards the quality of the stations, which is considered inferior if compared with the stops in the European capitals. According to the lawyer of the advertising agencies Mihai Buruiana, if a Moldovan court made the contract legally valid, this does not mean that the contract is valid indeed. He says that such a contract will be valid only if it is approved by the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC), as the City Hall does not have the right to make such decisions final. However, the advertising agencies have not yet decided whether to appeal the judgements of the domestic courts in the European Court of Justice or not. Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said that if the City Hall authorizes EPA MEDIA to place advertisements, in accordance with the contract, there would be a difficult situation because the billboards existing in the city – about 2 700 - would have to be doubled. Also, the company could become a monopolist by harming the interests of the other market players. Dorin Chirtoaca also said that he questions the legality of the contract because there are deviations from the legislation, but the justice is not as independent and equitable as we would like. He voiced hope that the conflicting sides will reach a compromise so as to jointly work on the market. For the time being, the City Hall does not authorize the advertising companies, including EPA MEDIA, to put new adverts in the municipality as there are no corresponding regulations. These will be worked out in the near future. Under the contract signed with the City Hall in January, EPA MEDIA was empowered with the right to place 1 500 large billboards, 600 smaller billboards and cassettes with advertisements on all the pillars. Last November, CMC announced an investment contest for building public stations. It set up a commission for examining the projects. The commission was to present the regulations concerning the placement of advertisements in the municipality and submit proposals regarding the investment offer of EPA MEDIA. Later, it was established that the former interim mayor Vasile Ursu ignored the terms of holding the contest and signed a contract with the Austrian firm. The national advertising agencies protested, saying that they have not been informed about the contest, which “was held through the back door”.