After years of failed attempts to reform the media laws, Slovenia has finally got the act transposing the AVMS Directive into the national law. The adoption of the Act on Audiovisual Media Services, which entered into force on 17 November 2011, was crucial due to the infringement procedure against Slovenia, started earlier this year by the European Commission. Despite the recent notification of the complete transposition of the Directive, the infringement procedure remains however pending, as the Commission needs to analyse the notified measures and check whether the Slovenian law correctly implemented all aspects of the rules on AVMS.
The national regulatory authority APEK, who was entrusted with the overall responsibility for implementing the new Act, is now in the process of drafting several statutory instruments that are needed for practical implementation of the Directive. By the new law the APEK has got larger collection information powers, possibility of imposing financial sanctions and a new source of funding from the fees of all AVMS providers, linear and non-linear. The new law has brought also the reduction of the amount of advertising, permitted in public service television channels, to 10 minutes of ads per hour during the day, while between 6 pm and 11 pm to 7 minutes per hour.
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