FBiH Government submits initiative to Council of Ministers for amendment of the Law on the Public RTV Service

The FBiH Government today initiated an amendment to the Law on the Public RTV System in Bosnia and Herzegovina before the Council of Ministers of BiH, in the part concerning the collection of the RTV fee. In order to ensure the financial stability of public RTV broadcasting in BiH, i.e., all three public RTV services (Radio Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina - BHRT, Radio Television of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina - RTV FBiH, and Radio Television of Republika Srpska - RTRS), the Federal Government proposes that the monthly payment of the RTV fee be made by holders of licenses for the distribution of audiovisual media services and radio media services, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria. 

Holders of distribution licenses would be legally obligated to pay the RTV fee based on the number of their subscribers.

As explained, the current model of collecting the RTV fee, which is charged alongside fixed telephone line bills, ceases to be valid on June 30, 2016. Furthermore, an increasing number of households no longer have a fixed telephone line. Collecting the RTV fee as part of services for using cable-distributed audiovisual content represents a natural point for RTV fee collection. According to data from the Communications Regulatory Agency, there were 647,054 subscribers in December 2014. This number has since increased.

Imposing the obligation to pay the RTV fee represents a European standard. In all European countries, an RTV fee is paid according to a model chosen by the national state, e.g., alongside the electricity bill (Turkey), through taxes (Finland and France), through quarterly billing (Sweden and Norway), etc.

The amendment to the Law on the RTV System of BiH in the part concerning the RTV fee also implies amendments to the Law on Communications of BiH, in order to make the RTV fee collection model as efficient as possible.

The FBiH Government also proposes that the Council of Ministers of BiH form a working group to further elaborate this initiative, which, in addition to representatives of the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH, will include representatives of the entity governments, the Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK), and the public RTV services and RTV system.

The Federal Government of the Federation also considered and gave consent today to the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on the Public Radio-Television Service in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which proposes an amendment to Article 42, paragraph (4), thereby enabling telecom operators to collect the RTV fee until June 30, 2016, which the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH submitted for opinion to the Federal Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The Federal Government assessed that the original text of the Law on the Public RTV Service in BiH contained a provision under which telecom operators collected the RTV fee during the period of the System's first license, and that this provision was amended to stipulate that operators would collect the RTV fee until October 26, 2015, while in the meantime, no new collection model was defined.

Bearing in mind the importance of ensuring the uninterrupted financing and functioning of the three public RTV services in BiH and the legally established obligation of the Board of the Public RTV System of Bosnia and Herzegovina to propose a new model for RTV fee collection, the Government of the Federation of BiH agrees that the Law be amended in the manner proposed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications of BiH, i.e., that the obligation for telecom operators to collect the RTV fee be established until June 30, 2016.

In doing so, the Federal Government takes the position that all telecommunications operators providing telecommunications services, based on a license issued by the Communications Regulatory Agency of BiH, are obliged to collect the fee, and will, in this regard, initiate the provision of an authentic interpretation of the provisions of Article 42, paragraphs (4) and (5) of the Law on the Public Radio-Television Service in Bosnia and Herzegovina.