EU 집행위원회의 공영방송 재원 규제: EU 국가보조 금지 법규와 공영방송 = European Commission Control of State Aid to Public Service Broadcasting

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) board of directors in June 2021 voted on a plan to increase the license fee of its public service broadcaster. Discussions at the National Assembly on the increase plan, which passed through the Korea Communications Commission to the legislature according to the law, have stalled as of June 2022, a year later. The support of the citizens currently is not higher than that of the past three failed attempts to raise the fee. Also, the Korean formula "the government and the ruling party support the increase, while the opposition party objects to it" seems to have broken. One can interpret this as proof that unlike the past, the adhesion between the regime and KBS has weakened. On the other hand, it may be a sign that even the government and the ruling party are opposed to or lukewarm about the increase in license fees. However, one can conclude that they are not interested in financial stability of public service broadcasting (PSB).
In fact, KBS is in a difficult state to predict the future. In the past 10 years before the COVID-19 pandemic, the public broadcaster suffered operating losses almost every year. With revenue fixed at less than 1.5 trillion Korean won, if KBS has ever seen a surplus in a year, it is because it has reduced production spending or sold assets such as real estate. As a result, so-called “emergency management,” which reduces the size of expenditure, has become a routine. Considering the increase in GDP of South Korea so far, KBS's real revenue and production expenditure can be interpreted that it actually dropped more than 40%. Fortunately, the decline was able to stop at this level because the program sales revenue supplemented the decreasing advertising sales. One-person households, which increased with changes in the social structure of Korea, also helped increase the license fees revenue charged by each household. If the attempt to raise the license fee fails again and the increase in one-person households stagnates, KBS will fall into a vicious circle where its financial status becomes more worse and it gets away from viewers' attention as its performance weakens, and it is difficult to obtain consent from citizens for raising license fees.
One more thing to consider here is KBS's online media activities. Currently, there are few regulations that prevent KBS from expanding into any new service areas such as YouTube or news web pages, regardless of whether it uses any financial resources such as license fees or advertising income. There has been strong advice from media experts to go further in advancing new media, but KBS is criticized for being trapped in a paradigm centered on terrestrial broadcasting. This is in stark contrast to its Western counterparts, which is having difficulty entering the new media area due to various restrictions. Major Western public broadcasters have struggled to transform to public service media (PSM) due to opposition from commercial broadcasters and commercial online media competitors. In particular, the position of the European Commission (EC), which should seek fairness in trade according to regional integration, has become an important restriction.
Assuming the possibility of the evolution of PSB in Korea, it is necessary to re-examine the identity of this social institution and the meaning of license fees in advance in consideration of the EU case. Although the use of license fees in the new media sector is not yet on the agenda in Korea, if PSB expands its influence in the new media market with higher license fees, commercial competitors may start to raise the issue as in Europe. It may be crucial to check this matter in advance and establish a framework for understanding the use of public funds and its conditions.
For this reason, this article examines the European Commission’s policy on the application of State aid rules to PSB. Related provisions in the EU treaties and guidelines set out by the Commission are rev...

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