In the past two weeks, I've essayed two developments on the German TV tax. The basic background to this.....a serious amount of work had been done to upgrade the tax by 86 Euro cents per month (per house). The new price would have been 18.36 Euro. That failed, with the sixteen states voting and one state denying the public TV folks the upgrade.
Yesterday, the public TV folks (ARD, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio) went to court and urged emergency action at the Federal Constitutional Court (down in Karlsruhe). What they wanted was a ruling that would force the Constitution to be edited, and only a majority of states required....to get the tax upgraded.
Well....it failed.
The court basically said....where is the emergency?
They didn't say that it was thrown out....just that this wasn't really an emergency action and you could conduct the case in regular court (meaning this could be drawn out to a year or two, before the decision is made). The court even hinted....if this went in favor of public TV....they could always get financial compensation.
So where this goes?
If what the public TV folks say is true.....they are running the system with more money going out....rather than coming in (at least in 2021). The logical position, while in court....would be to limit expenses in 2021. You'd do that by not bidding on certain sports events, or lessening the number of movies made. The odds that they will do that? Unknown. They might go and procure some loan, getting themselves deeper into debt....just to continue services at the current level....anticipating that the court would resolve this mess by spring of 2022.
The bigger mess approaching? Well....the CDU Party is openly discussing the idea of forcing public TV to use more commercial activity, and going the private route to some degree.....meaning less taxation upon the public. The chatter is that this will be a top level campaign discussion thing for the 2021 national election (in the fall).
If the public TV folks didn't do any cuts, and just borrowed.....to continue operations at the same level....it's a fair amount of risk for the future. My humble guess is that some level of cuts are being planned out and fewer sports events will be covered.
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