Germany's media regulator has announced that RFI, France's public radio abroad, will keep its FM frequency in Berlin for another 7 years. The subject was a cause for concern in the context of the abolition of the licence fee.
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RFI was "welcomed" by this decision, stressing that "it allowed it to continue broadcasting its programmes to Berlin listeners, faithful to its free, independent, balanced and pluralistic information". "The media council of the MABB (Media Regulatory Authority of the Berlin-Brandenburg Region, editor's note) has decided to reassign the FM frequency 96.7 to the RFI Monde - Radio France Internationale Program," MABB said on its website. The term of this license ends on June 30, 2030. RFI's licence to broadcast in Berlin was due to expire at the end of June this year, but it was finally tolerated until the end of 2023 due to the somewhat longer decision-making process than initially planned.
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Almost 30 years of presence
RFI contributes to "the diversity of the media in Berlin," MABB said, justifying the extension. Last April, the head of France Médias Monde, a public group bringing together the continuous news channel France 24 and RFI radio, Marie-Christine Saragosse, warned of a possible loss of RFI's FM frequency in Berlin due to the transformation of its financing following the abolition of the audiovisual licence fee in France. "The nature of the funding" of public broadcasting "is not neutral internationally," said Marie-Christine Saragosse during a hearing before the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee. "We see the direct consequence of this when the MABB writes to us (...) believing that we are going to be budgeted out of the state budget (and) telling us that we will no longer have our FM frequency in Berlin," she said.
Emmanuel Macron's campaign promise to abolish the audiovisual licence fee, which brought some €3.2 billion to public broadcasting each year, was voted in 2022, without any provision for a new sustainable and independent funding mechanism. Until the end of 2024, this resource was to be compensated by the levying of part of the VAT, before the establishment of a new financing mechanism. RFI Monde has been broadcasting a 24-hour news programme in French in Berlin since 24, when the French armed forces left the city following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country.