Undermining media diversity: inaction on media concentrations and pluralism in the EU

In the context of European media and cultural policy-making, the impetus to protect diversity is at least partly a reflection of recurrent concerns about concentrations of media and cross-media ownership across Europe. Such concerns have regularly spurred the European Parliament into calling on the Commission to take action. For example, in Parliament's recent response to the UNESCO initiative on Cultural Diversity, it again urged the Commission to take steps to counter concentrations of media ownership that may pose a threat to pluralism (EP, 2003). But a range of serious practical and political obstacles stand in the way of any possible harmonising initiative in this area. This article examines the European Union's efforts to work towards a pan-European policy on media ownership and the many difficulties and conflicts that have accompanied this process. It concludes that the Commission's long-standing record of inaction on the question of media concentrations and pluralism is unlikely to change any time soon