Euro TV, Antena C privatisation declared constitutional

The Constitutional Court (CC) declared on Tuesday, June 26, as constitutional the provisions of the Audiovisual Code (AC), which constituted ground for the privatisation of “Euro TV Chisinau” and “Antena C”, thereby rejecting the petition filed by MNA MPs, Ion Plesca, Leonid Bujor and Anatol Onceanu. CC examined the petition without the aforementioned MPs, rejecting their request to postpone the examination. The Court considered that the MPs did not justify their absence according to the legal provisions. According to the representative of the Parliament to the Court, Ion Matu, the provisions of the AC which prohibit the local authorities to found local broadcasters were passed in order to ensure that the local administration does not politically influence the stations and, consequently the voters. Deputy Minister of Justice Nicolae Esanu said that the authors of the petition did not clearly name what provisions of the Constitution or international documents compulsory for Moldova stipulate the right of the local authorities to be the founders of broadcasting institutions. According to him, there is a stable practice at the European Court of Human Rights, which refuses the requests field by the local authorities which consider their rights were violated, justifying that that the fundamental rights and freedoms are rights belonging only to citizens or subjects of private law and not to subjects of public law from the territorial administrative units. “If we would admit that the right to information includes the right to create broadcasting institutions, this constitutional norm will be impossible to protect, as the local administration is not a subject protected by the Constitution”, Esanu says. In the petition submitted to the CC, the MNA MPs asked to verify the constitutionality of the articles regarding the prohibition for public authorities to create private broadcasting institutions. Also, the local authorities were obliged to reorganise the public broadcasting institutions working in their communities. In light of skipping over the legal framework on the creation and functioning of the local public institutions, and the exclusive permission offered in this respect only to Gagauzia and eastern region of Moldova, the MPs consider that several constitutional provisions are being violated: on the local autonomy, rights of local communities, equality in front of the law and non-discrimination, right to information and freedom of expression. According to the MPs, depriving the residents of Chisinau of public broadcasters is a joint plan of the Party of Communists, headed by Vladimir Voronin and of the Christian Democrat People’s Party, headed by Iurie Rosca. Their representatives applied at high level a scheme for the promotion of legal and administrative decisions aiming at partitioning those two media institutions between the groups controlled by the two parties.