Europese Commission keurt steun aan Finse kranten in het Zweeds en andere minderheidstalen goed (en)

The European Commission has authorised, under the EC Treaty’s rules on state aid, a €500,000/year scheme to support newspapers written in Swedish and in minority languages in Finland. The Commission considers that the scheme will contribute to media pluralism and to the protection of minority languages in Finland, while having a limited negative impact on competition and trade between Member States.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “I am happy to approve aid which promotes media pluralism and multilingualism, while having a limited impact on competition. This measure is well targeted and clearly fits consumers' interests".

The Finnish press support scheme has been in place since 1971 and has remained broadly unchanged since then. The Finnish authorities now intend to implement significant changes concerning the scope of the beneficiaries and the eligibility conditions and therefore notified these changes to the Commission.

The subsidies are granted to newspapers and the corresponding electronic media published in national minority languages, such as Sámi and Romany, and in Swedish, as well as for the production of Swedish-language news services. The targeted beneficiaries are small circulation newspapers (with a maximum average circulation of up to 15.000 copies) and the subsidies cannot exceed 40% of the newspapers' operating costs. The overall budget of the measure is 500,000 euros per year.

In the absence of specific guidelines for dealing with state aid to the press sector, the measure was assessed directly under article 87(3)(c) of the EC Treaty. While acknowledging that the beneficiaries of the subsidies may compete to some extent with other companies involved in the production of newspapers, the Commission came to the conclusion that the very limited impact of the measure on competition is largely compensated by the positive effects of the scheme on the promotion of media pluralism and multilingualism in Finland.

The non-confidential version of the decision will be made available under the case number N 537/2007 in the State Aid Register on the DG Competition website once any confidentiality issues have been resolved. New publications of state aid decisions on the internet and in the Official Journal are listed in the State Aid Weekly e-News.