EBU: The Catalan broadcaster application to enter EBU was rejected
TV3’s request to become a member of EBU was rejected. The local broadcaster had applied for membership in order to be able to participate in the European Song Contest as an independent broadcaster.
In a letter from the CCMA (Catalonian Corporation of Visual Media) to EBU Vice President Núria Llorach i Boladeras, was declared:
“As you know, the Board of Directors of May 2018 (as decided by the EBU General Assembly in June 2018) concluded that the CCMA does not meet the requirements to become a member of the EBU, since it is not neither a member of the International Telecommunication Union nor a member of the Council of Europe as defined in Article 3.3 of the EBU. The CCMA is a local Spanish broadcaster, failing to comply with Article 3.4, in relation to the “national character and importance” of the EBU Statute “
In its request, the Catalan broadcaster cites several reasons to be taken into account, including references to other broadcasters, such as RTBF (the Belgian-speaking broadcaster) and S4C (the UK-based broadcaster), in which the EBU replied:
“When a country has two or more linguistic areas, the EBU Regulation on detailed eligibility criteria refers to each region separately. The ARD in Germany, the SRG SSR in Switzerland, the VRT and RTBF in Belgium and the S4C in Wales support the territorial characteristics of their respective countries and all comply with the principles stated by the EBU “
EBU also added a number of arguments for each of the members mentioned and provided additional information on the political structure of Spain. In essence, Spain’s administrative division, which is not structured as federations / confederations, blocks the entry of the CCMA into the EBU.
