34. Are there provisions for free or subsidized access to media for candidates?
Malta
'Similarly, in Malta, the Broadcasting Authority organises schemes of political broadcasts during electoral campaigns and grants access to these schemes to all political parties and independent candidates contesting the general elections. A judgement of the Constitutional Court of the 31 July 1996 has held that this provision would be incompatible with the Constitution if it were to be interpreted in a manner that completely excludes access to these political broadcasts to parties not represented in Parliament. A 1971 Court of Appeal decision affirmed that in apportioning participation in such schemes of electoral broadcasts between political parties the Broadcasting Authority had an obligation to take account of the size of the parties.' (p. 2) (Source: EPRA (2000) Political Communication on Television Matters for debate, EPRA, Paris. Available at http://www.epra.org/content/english/press/back.html)
'Another activity from which political parties indirectly benefit is theholding of political debates and political spots on national television or private television stations.Article 13(4) of the Broadcasting Act (chapter 350 of the Laws of Malta) stipulates that it is a dutyof the broadcasting authority to organise from time to time schemes of political broadcasts(including political spots) which fairly apportion facilities and time between the different politicalparties represented in Parliament. In order to fulfil its duty, the authority has the right to order anyperson providing broadcasting services in Malta for reception in Malta to provide, free of charge,the recording and other facilities necessary for the production of the programmes for radio andtelevision, as well as to transmit, free of charge, on days and at times to be decided by theauthority, the same programmes provided that this exercise is reasonably justifiable in ademocratic society. The parties are also able to broadcast via their own terrestrial channels,meaning that they do not need to rely on purchasing broadcasting time from other providers' (p. 7) (Source: GRECO (2009) Evaluation Report on Malta on Transparency of Party Funding (Theme II))
Independent candidates only
