European public television

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Proposal for a petition to the European Parliament

A. given that European citizens’ understanding of the history and culture as well as of the social, economic and political reality of the various countries within the European Union, and of the very functioning of the Union itself, is in general extremely patchy and often distorted by outright political prejudice;

B. given that national media services are now regularly strive to promote souverainist and nationalist ideologies and anti-European rhetoric through the systematic misinterpretation of the activities, objectives and results of common European institutions;

C. given that the strategic challenges that the European continent must respond to and many of the problems within member States entail not only a supranational approach, but also forms of active collaboration among governments, and that to achieve this end, it is absolutely necessary that the citizens of the different states have a mutual awareness of each others’ concerns and common needs;

D. given that the cultural, and in particular, the audiovisual, production of individual member countries of the Union is still largely confined to the Country in which it is produced, thus leading cultural nationalism to become a corollary of political souverainism;

E. given that there is a strong need for quality information and that the role of public television stations is not to compete with commercial programming and advertising markets, but to guarantee citizens a useful service that private media do not provide, and therefore to offer primarily information and knowledge;

F. given too the numerous positive aspects of European television and transnational networks, such as Euronews and Arte;

we ask the European Parliament to invite the Commission to submit a working proposal to create a television network for the Union directed at the citizens of the twenty-seven member countries, in these countries’ respective languages, following the models already mentioned and other useful examples;

we ask the European Parliament to ensure that, with regard to this project, the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament and the governments of the member states be the shareholders of the Union’s television network, subsequently also in conjunction with private shareholders;

in the eventuality that not all member states are ready or willing to support this initiative, we ask the European Parliament to invite the Commission to frame the initiative as a form of Enhanced Cooperation on the basis of Article 20 of the Treaty;

we ask the European Parliament itself, in the eventuality that the Commission rejects the proposal, to take the initiative of establishing a European television network.

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