The RBB is taking the matter to the Federal Constitutional Court. A state treaty that came into force a year ago violated the Basic Law, the broadcaster said.
The public broadcaster RBB has announced a constitutional complaint against the state treaty of the states of Brandenburg and Berlin. The complaint against the contract, which has been valid since December 2023, will be submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe next week, a spokesman for Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) said on Friday. The spiegel.de portal also reported.
“The station sees broadcasting freedom restricted, for example, by the mandatory 60-minute separation of the television program to show each country separately,” explained the station spokesman. “The same applies to the regulations for the appointment of so-called “heads of state broadcasters” and the specification of how these staff are to be integrated into the organization of the broadcaster. The determination of where and how many regional offices and studios should be set up also violates the freedom of broadcasting.”
The legislature included provisions in the new regulation that “could neither be justified as a consequence of the events of 2022 at RBB, nor with the aim of repositioning the station in a sustainable and future-proof manner”. However, they violated Article 5 of the Basic Law in violation of the RBB’s fundamental right to freedom of broadcasting.
The RBB expresses concerns
The public ARD broadcaster RBB plunged into a deep crisis in the summer of 2022. At the center of the allegations of nepotism and waste are the director Patricia Schlesinger, who was dismissed without notice, and the resigned chairman of the board of directors, Wolf-Dieter Wolf. Both denied the allegations.
The RBB expresses serious constitutional concerns with regard to the regulations governing the design of the newly introduced board of directors with the strict specification of the number of management members and their areas of responsibility as well as the unexceptionable public advertisement of every position to be filled as well as the liability issues of supervisory bodies and directors.
RBB director Ulrike Demmer emphasized: “We have carefully examined the route to the Federal Constitutional Court for almost a year; it is not an end in itself. The constitutional complaint seems unavoidable to us in view of the numerous interventions in the freedom of broadcasting in the State Treaty. The question is not whether the RBB could implement the individual regulations, but whether the regulations now under challenge are constitutional. If they aren’t, they shouldn’t be the basis of our work.”
Text: dpa/ Editor: JN
Source: www.digitalfernsehen.de
