“AI assume the commitment to publish the order in the same economic year” as the aid, said Adão e Silva in a hearing at the parliamentary Committee on Culture, Communication, Youth and Sport.
The official was being heard today in the context of a request by the PSD on the delay in the publication of the order that determines the amounts to be attributed to the candidacies, presented in 2022, to the State Incentive Regime for Regional and Local Social Communication, considering the social -democrats that the delay “harms many media outlets across the country, regional newspapers and local radio stations, compromising the effectiveness and sustainability of the sector”.
This delay even led to a joint position by the associations of Press of Christian Inspiration (AIC), Portuguese Press (API), Portuguese Broadcasting (APR) and Christian Inspiration Radios (ARIC), which accused the Government of “disrespect” .
However, after the minister’s hearing was approved, the order was published (on March 24). On March 1, applications for the year 2023 were opened.
Today, the government official justified the delay in publishing the dispatch with the “uniqueness” that, in this system, there are first the candidacies and only later is the dispatch published with the budget appropriation, which he said is justified by the desire to “align with the endowment with candidacies”.
According to Adão e Silva, the value entered in the State Budget for the media incentive system was four million euros but the volume of applications exceeded it, so that in 2022 €4.629 million were allocated.
In addition, he said, in 2022 expenses have been paid since 2016 and not just applications from the previous year (which represented only 36% of the allocation).
“The planned allocation has run out (in view of the set of applications submitted), we have made a budget increase, which led to the actual expenditure in 2022 being 4.6 million euros”, he said.
As of this year, he said, the Government will comply with the recommendation of the Assembly of the Republic to make the “publication of the dispatch in the same financial year” to which the aid refers.
Still at today’s hearing, Adão e Silva considered that there are “anachronisms in the regulatory mechanisms” of the media, be it the press, television or radio, not least because “a large part of the regulation and legislative framework for the media does not provide for what is today the role of non-linear and online channels.
However, he said that it is not useful for the Government to identify anachronisms, but that it is a “task that parliament should assume”.
On the problems of sustainability of the media and the role that the State can have, considered Adão e Silva who has doubts about whether the “solution involves the State reinforcing its role” as there are “risks of political tutelage”.
“I believe that we must be very cautious in this relationship between guardianship and the space of autonomy and pluralism for the media”, stated the Minister of Culture.
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