Polityka audiowizualna Unii Europejskiej
The Audiovisual Policy of the European Union

Summary/Abstract: The article provides a provisional systematization of EU policy on mass media. The approach of the European Communities to the issue of mass media in the last decades can be divided into several stages. In the initial period, relatively the longest one, EC organs were denied competences to interfere in this area. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized by an attempt on the part of the EU to work out adequate and distinct strategies regarding mass media. The moment the EC organs ‘‘gained’’ the competences to regulate the principles underlying the functioning of the media, a boisterous development of the EU medial law started and became especially conspicuous with the emergence of global media. Regulations on mass media initially pertained to television but then expanded onto audiovisual media services followed by a growing significance of the so-called ‘‘new media’’. EU policy deals with the media in three different contexts: firstly, in the aspect of competition policy and principles governing the functioning of the internal market; secondly as an element of democratic and cultural infrastructure; and thirdly, on the plane of building the so-called information society. A hypothesis is put forward that the EU audiovisual policy is dominated by a two tracks strategy of regulating the functioning of the media.

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