JURI Committee publishes final report on challenges of sports events organisers, to be soon debated in European Parliament
The JURI (Legal) Committee of the European Parliament has published its final report (find here) with recommendations to the Commission on challenges of sports events organisers in the digital environment – and included a crucial safeguard for news media.
The report spearheaded by Angel Dzhambazki (ECR, BG) states that “the measures aimed at protecting broadcast rights against illegal use and piracy must not affect press freedom or the news media’s ability to inform citizens”.
It is expected to be adopted in plenary on 17 May.
The report passed with 18 votes in favour, and 6 votes against. Throughout the lengthy Committee process, NMC’s outreach has been directed towards balancing the interests of sports events’ organisers and highlighting the importance of journalistic access to and reporting on such events, as part of news media’s intrinsic role of monitoring and reporting to the public.
While the report declares that a sport event, in itself does not qualify for copyright protection, it addresses the importance of broadcasting rights as a major source of income for organisers, the violation of which would pose a threat to funding in the long term.
As a result of NMC’s fruitful discussions with MEPs, the preamble of the report echoed the opinion of the the CULT committee, under the responsibility of Tomasz Frankowski (EPP, PL).
The Report also in point (M) recalls that to organised sport the greatest value of the live footage is the first 30 minutes. On a final remark the report in (Q) emphasises the importance of free to air coverage of sport events so as to bring sport to as broad a range of people as possible.
