Polish lower house passes media reform bill, which US denounces
According to EURACTIV, Polish lawmakers advanced a bill on Wednesday (11 August) that the opposition says aims to silence a US-owned news channel critical of the government, leading to a swift denunciation from the United States, one of Warsaw’s most important allies.
Washington had warned that failure to renew the licence of Discovery-owned news channel TVN24 could jeopardise future investments in Poland, while opposition politicians have condemned the bill as an attack on media freedoms.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was “deeply troubled” by passage of the bill by the lower house of parliament, which he said targeted the most-watched independent news station in Poland and one of the largest US investments in the country.
“Large US commercial investments in Poland tie our prosperity together and enhance our collective security,” he said. “This draft legislation threatens media freedom and could undermine Poland’s strong investment climate,” Blinken said in a statement.
The media bill would strengthen a ban on firms from outside the European Economic Area controlling Polish broadcasters. It passed with 228 votes in favour, 216 against and 10 abstentions, and will now go to the upper house of parliament, the Senate.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said Poland was bringing in rules similar to those in other European Union countries and added: “We have the right to regulate questions about capital in a way the Polish parliament deems appropriate.”
TVN24’s parent, TVN, is owned by the US-based media group Discovery Inc via a firm registered in the Netherlands, to get around a ban on non-European firms owning more than 49% of Polish media companies.
The bill would forbid such an arrangement and comes shortly before the deadline for the renewal of TVN24’s licence, which expires on 26 September.
In a tweet, Grzegorz Schetyna, a lawmaker from the largest opposition party, Civic Platform, called Wednesday’s vote “an attack on freedom, an attack on media that is independent from the government.”
Blinken also called on Poland not to proceed with legislation that is expected to make it harder for Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers during the Holocaust and kept by postwar communist rulers.
