Public Service Media and the European Internal Market: Friends or Allies?

Especially in Western and Northern Europe public broadcasters play an important cultural, but also economic role reaching a vast majority of the population and in so doing co-shaping national identities, contributing to informed citizenship and, at the same time, competing for the scarce time of media users. As public service media is a part of Member States' cultural policy toolkits, the competencies of the European Commission in this domain are limited to internal market and competition policies. Looking at public service media from this perspective is at times conflictuous since the presence of public broadcasters might be seen as an anomaly to a free and competitive internal market. This article analyzes how the European Commission deals with public service media in its internal market and competition policies. Its main underlying question is whether the European Commission has been successful in taking into account both economic and cultural aspects relevant to media policy or whether one of these has been superior to the other. Assuming the latter is indeed the case, the axis of the analysis is not only on uncovering friction between diverging policy goals, but equally on suggesting where space for a more balanced approach, for example, in light of the review of the Audiovisual Media Services directive, can be found. Findings are based on a qualitative document analysis. The main argument is that whereas the European Commission used to be somewhat hostile towards public service media as a market distortion, public broadcasters might turn out to be important in terms of realizing both the economic and cultural aspects of European integration. A re-balancing of policies through, for example, the inclusion of public service media's special status in the European Union in the renewed Audiovisual Media Services directive is therefore advisable.