Transparency of media ownership in Romania

Transparency of media ownership refers to the public availability of accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date information about media ownership structures to make possible for media authorities and the wider public to ascertain who effectively owns and controls the media. In Romania transparency of media ownership is addressed directly in the Constitution and is regulated by a media-specific law, namely the Audiovisual Law no. 504, and by national company law. As for constitutional provisions, even if Romania is among the few European countries that addresses the issue of media transparency directly in the Constitution, it should be said that the focus is on transparency of financial sources and not on ownership. Nonetheless, despite the constitutional provisions on the right to impose an obligation on the media to make public their sources of finance, the Parliament has never enacted the applicable legislation which is indeed absent. The Romanian media-specific law requiring the disclosure of media ownership information applies only to the broadcast sector and provides the disclosure to both a public authority, namely the National Audiovisual Council (CNA) and directly to the public. Finally, also the national company law contains provisions regulating transparency of media ownership. It applies to all media which are registered companies and foresees the obligation to publish all the most relevant information on companies' ownership in the Trade Register Company. Overall, even though the Romanian legislation in the field of media ownership transparency is fully aligned with the European standards, in practice sufficient information to assess who effectively owns and ultimately controls the media is not always available.

Romanian law on media ownership transparency only covers the broadcast sector and has no similar provision for print media, but, in practice, many Romanian newspapers make public their publishers and owners. The situation is more complicated for online media and blogs where anonymity is very common.

The relevant law, named Audiovisual Law no. 504, requires the disclosure of all the information necessary to identify the owners of media companies, e.g. name and contact details of the media organisation; name and contact detail of owners; country of domicile of company with an interest; citizenship / residence status of individual with an interest beyond a given threshold. However, the disclosure requirement does not apply to beneficial ownership, which refers to shares of a media company hold on behalf of another person. According to the law, the information must be reported to the National Audiovisual Council, a public regulatory authority under the control of the Parliament. The CNA is the guarantor of the public interest in the audiovisual field.

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Wikipedia