The final vote came after many months of debate and last minute amendments to the draft agreed by the ruling coalition and the leftist opposition.

Michal Kubicki reports

The last minute changes to the original draft were approved by the Parliament following suggestions from the Upper House – the Senate, in which Prime Minister’s Civic Platform has an overwhelming majority. As a result, the media act does away with  licence  fees from radio and TV-users but does not specify the financing mechanism for the public media.

A special public media fund is to be created but while originally an equivalent of the amount collected in licence fees in 2007 was to be set aside as an obligatory state subsidy for public media, the approved legislation does not specify any concrete sum. 

According to Prime Minister Tusk, there is no reason why public television should be the only institution, apart from the army, to be guaranteed high state budget subsidies.  

What lies therefore behind the government’s strategy?

Click on the icon to listen to a report which includes comments from Lukasz Warzecha of the daily Fakt and free lance journalist Marcin Sobczyk.