The AER supports policies that promote investment in robust and future-proof digital infrastructure, enabling European citizens to access high-quality radio content and information services across platforms. The Digital Networks Act (DNA) has the potential to contribute to this objective by strengthening connectivity, fostering innovation, and enhancing network resilience across the European Union.
Radio is a communication service but also a cultural medium that constitutes a core pillar of media pluralism, social cohesion, linguistic diversity, and provides trusted information, including in times of crisis and emergencies. We welcome that the proposal acknowledges certain elements relevant to the radio sector, including interoperability of radio equipment and the role of spectrum. While we welcome the European Commission’s recognition of radio as an integral part of Europe’s communications landscape and its contribution to the internal market, we believe that the broader cultural and societal role of radio, long acknowledged under the European Electronic Communication Code (EECC), deserves stronger emphasis in the DNA.
In particular, the DNA must safeguard universal access to free-to-air licensed radio broadcasters’ services, and support radio’s critical contribution to the resilience of communication systems, media pluralism and fair competition. As currently drafted, elements of the proposal risk weakening these principles in the specific context of radio.
Without clear and future-proof regulatory safeguards, there is a real risk that free-to-air broadcast radio will no longer be universally available in cars, undermining its role as a trusted, resilient, and universally accessible medium.
This is particularly concerning given that vehicles remain one of the main environments for radio listening (radio listening in vehicles accounts for around 30% of total listening in the majority of EU member states and is as high as 70% of total listening in Italy). Two parallel developments are putting pressure on radio’s position in cars. On the one hand, a growing number of new vehicles are being sold without radio receivers. On the other hand, car manufacturers operating at a global scale are increasingly prioritising partnerships with global digital platforms over direct and unfettered access to licensed radio broadcasting services. Taken together, these trends risk progressively marginalising radio’s presence in vehicles and limiting its ability to reach listeners in one of the very places where radio is listened to the most.
Summary of AER recommendations:
- Guarantee the presence of broadcast radio receivers (FM and DAB+) in all relevant new vehicles put on the EU market; This will deliver universal and unfettered access to radio to EU citizens whilst they are on the move;
- Protect long-term access to UHF spectrum for broadcasting;
- Preserve subsidiarity and avoid excessive EU-level centralisation with regards to spectrum;
- Reject direct or indirect network fees on media services.
Read the full position paper here.
For more information, please contact the AER office in Brussels at aer(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)aereurope.org.