Fresh attempt to break impasse over TV licenses

Parliament Speaker Nikos Voutsis is to chair a fresh session of House and deputy speakers today to discuss the matter of convening the National Broadcasting Council (ESR) in a bid to break a deadlock that followed a court decision deeming the government’s recent auction of television licenses unconstitutional.

There are few hopes that the initiative will yield a compromise, however. The meeting follows last week’s effort to secure cross-party consensus for new legislation by outgoing State Minister Nikos Pappas, who was upgraded to digital policy minister with responsibility for the media over the weekend. Pappas’s proposed amendment, suspending a law that had transferred the authority for carrying out the auction to him from the ESR was only backed by coalition partners SYRIZA and rightwing Independent Greeks, as well as PASOK.

The main conservative opposition New Democracy in particular has demanded a categorical abolition of the Pappas law.

The government, for its part, has sought to blame ND for perpetuating the previous status quo in the broadcasting sector, which SYRIZA has linked to corruption and vested interests.

SYRIZA is lagging behind ND in opinion polls. The latest, carried out by Alco for Parapolitika and published over the weekend, gave the conservatives a 6.4 percent lead over SYRIZA. ND garnered 22.2 percent of the vote, SYRIZA 15.8 percent with Golden Dawn 6.6 percent.