Culture Minister Oto Klempir (Motorists) will submit a bill to the parliament on Monday that will abolish television and radio license fees, Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) announced today on social media following a meeting of the working group on public media.
According to Babis, the cabinet will discuss the amount that Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (CRo) should receive from the state budget instead. He said the allocation would be fair, predictable, and would include an inflation clause.
Representatives of the ruling coalition met CT Director Hynek Chudarek and CRo Director Rene Zavoral today. After the meeting, both confirmed that no specific figure had been mentioned regarding the funding media outlets would receive from the budget.
Babis added that the goal of the change is not to dictate content to public media or to control them, as the opposition claims. “The goal is to ensure that citizens no longer receive bills for a service they do not use themselves,” he said. The prime minister praised the fair and objective conduct of the directors of CT and CRo. “I believe that the upcoming debate in the Chamber of Deputies will also proceed on this level,” he wrote.
According to the prime minister, the coalition today once again explained to the CT and CRo directors its plan to abolish funding through license fees. “Public media are funded by means other than license fees in 17 European Union countries, and Poland, for example, is also preparing a similar move,” Babis said. In his view, the current system made sense 35 years ago.
“It wasn’t exactly a working group, but rather a meeting with representatives of the coalition council, where the leaders of all three government parties sat across from us, and where we were more or less unilaterally informed of the government’s intention to discuss a bill on Monday that would repeal the current license fee law, and instead replace it with a new law that would address the CT and CRo financing from the state budget,” said Zavoral.
He added that he does not want to agree to a compromise, and is therefore demanding that the license fee system be maintained. In the event of its repeal, Zavoral wants to fight for the highest possible amount of funding.
“The amount of money we receive should remain the same, that is our view,” said Chudarek. “There should be an adjustment for inflation, and as for me, I’d like to push through a qualified constitutional majority for approving any changes, or separate approval in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, so that it can’t be tampered with.”
Klempir stated that this should be a mandatory expenditure from the Ministry of Culture’s budget chapter. “Our entire coalition has an interest in ensuring that no financial undermining or uncertainty regarding public service media actually occurs,” he said. According to Klempir, the proposal should ensure transparency and long-term funding. The law should take effect on 1 January 2027, the minister added.
Minister of Sports, Prevention, and Health Boris Stastny (Motorists) said the bill is complete, including the explanatory memorandum, and the only thing missing is the allocation of funds from the state budget. “It has an RIA (impact analysis), and it is in line with the European Media Freedom Act, as well as with the Ministry of Finance,” he added.
According to Stastny, the bill will not undergo any further public consultation period, as Klempir’s original proposal has already gone through that process, and after government approval, it will go directly to the Chamber of Deputies. He argued that safeguards for independence would be ensured by the current laws concerning CT and CRo.
Chamber of Deputies Speaker Tomio Okamura (SPD) told reporters that coalition members had learned new information today about the financial management of CT and CRo that had not previously been publicly available, such as television rights, sports broadcasts, and programme production. “We still need to seriously analyse this information. Discussions about the amounts involved are still ongoing,” said Okamura. He said they also discussed criticisms of the work of both media outlets with the directors, such as the imbalance in coverage between the ruling coalition and the opposition during the previous election term.
CT is operating with a budget of CZK 8.5 billion this year, while CRo has planned revenues and expenditures of more than CZK 2.7 billion. The original comprehensive bill, which the government ultimately will not use, called for a return to 2024 budget levels, before last year’s fee increase. This would mean a reduction in the amount allocated to CT and CRo by CZK 1 billion for television and CZK 400 million for radio.
CT deputy director Milan Fridrich said this would mean laying off 300 to 500 people out of nearly 3,000 public television employees, and canceling part of the programming. Radio would also have to adopt similar cost-cutting measures. CT and CRo employees are currently on strike alert.
