License fees for the public broadcasting will be scrapped. The change was approved by Parliament in Thursday's vote. The main income of the Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS) will now be a claimable contribution from the state budget.
When presenting agreement on the next year's state budget earlier this week, acting Premier Eduard Heger and SaS leader Richard Sulik said that scrapping of viewer license fees for the public service provided by public broadcaster RTVS should be one of the measures to be taken as part of the budget. Fees should be fully replaced by allocation from the state budget. A sum amounting to 0.14-0.15 percent of GDP is being mentioned in this connection.
The Republic Union of Employers welcomes the political decision on scraping of license fees, Union vice-president Jozef Spirko declared on Wednesday. "They were just another form of tacit taxing of employers, not to mention they were administratively complex and inefficient," said Spirko.
According to ex-minister of culture and MP Lubica Lassakova (Independent, affiliated with Hlas-SD) scrapping the fees destroys the public-service character of RTVS. "Linking RTVS's funding to the state budget makes it a servant to those in power who will decide how much money they give to it. They are buying its loyalty and independence in this way," stated Lassakova. She stressed that such a serious issue should be the subject of professional discussions and not political squabbling. (TASR)
