Community legislation, embodied in Directive 89/552/EC, better known as the Directive on Cross-Border Television, recognises the need to promote the production of European audiovisual works and lays the foundations for boosting the European content industry, obliging television operators to reserve minimum broadcasting times for them, leaving it to the discretion of Member States to establish other mechanisms specifically aimed at promoting audiovisual productions in their official languages.
This Directive has been amended by 2010/13/EU (Audiovisual Media Services Directive), in order to adapt it to the structural change resulting from the incorporation of new technologies in the transmission of audiovisual media services, extending the aforementioned obligations to audiovisual media service providers.
Law 7/2010, of March 31, General of Audiovisual Communication, in Title II, Chapter I, Article 5 establishes the guarantee of the rights of citizens to receive audiovisual communication in conditions of cultural and linguistic pluralism - which implies the protection of European and Spanish works in their different languages. To this end, paragraph 2 of this article establishes the obligation to reserve a European emission quota:
- Thus, the providers of the television communication service of state or regional coverage must reserve to European works 51% of the annual broadcasting time of each channel or set of channels of the same provider, 50% of said quota being reserved for European works in any of the Spanish languages. Likewise, 10% of the total emission must be reserved for independent producers of the provider and half of it must have been produced in the last 5 years.
- And, paragraph 3 refers to the pre-financing obligation: The providers of the television audiovisual media service with State or regional coverage must contribute annually to the advance financing of the European production of cinematographic films, films and television series, as well as documentaries and films and animation series with 5% of the income earned in the previous year by their channels that broadcast these products, when they are less than 7 years old from their date of production. This obligation is raised to 6% in the case of providers of public ownership.
Both obligations were already included in the previous legislation Law 25/1994, of 12 July, amended by Law 22/1999, of 7 June, and by Law 15/2001, of 9 July, being the basic rule on which the Autonomous Communities must establish the regulatory provisions issued according to their competences in the matter. In the field of the General Administration of the State, according to the seventh transitory provision of Law 7/2010, for the case of the financing obligation, the provisions of Royal Decree 1652/2004, of 8 July, approving the Regulation that regulates the compulsory investment for the advance financing of cinematographic films and films for television, European and Spanish, in everything related to competent authorities and applicable procedure, remain in force. After the entry into force of Law 3/2013, of 4 June, on the Creation of the National Commission of Markets and Competition, as provided in article 9.1 of the said law.
In the field of the General Administration of the State, according to the seventh transitory provision of Law 7/2010, for the case of the financing obligation, the provisions of Royal Decree 1652/2004, of 8 July, approving the Regulation that regulates the compulsory investment for the advance financing of cinematographic films and films for television, European and Spanish, in everything related to competent authorities and applicable procedure, remain in force. Therefore, until the constitution of the State Audiovisual Media Council, the Inter-Ministerial Commission for Follow-up of Article 10 of the Regulations will continue to exercise its functions.