Article 3
1.Member States shall ensure freedom of reception and shall not restrict retransmissions on their territory of audiovisual media services from other Member States for reasons which fall within the fields coordinated by this Directive.
2.In respect of television broadcasting, Member States may provisionally derogate from paragraph 1 if the following conditions are fulfilled:
(a)a television broadcast coming from another Member State manifestly, seriously and gravely infringes Article 27(1) or (2) and/or Article 6;
(b)during the previous 12 months, the broadcaster has infringed the provision(s) referred to in point (a) on at least two prior occasions;
(c)the Member State concerned has notified the broadcaster and the Commission in writing of the alleged infringements and of the measures it intends to take should any such infringement occur again;
(d)consultations with the transmitting Member State and the Commission have not produced an amicable settlement within 15 days of the notification provided for in point (c), and the alleged infringement persists.
The Commission shall, within 2 months following notification of the measures taken by the Member State, take a decision on whether the measures are compatible with Union law. If it decides that they are not, the Member State will be required to put an end to the measures in question as a matter of urgency.
3.Paragraph 2 shall be without prejudice to the application of any procedure, remedy or sanction to the infringements in question in the Member State which has jurisdiction over the broadcaster concerned.
4.In respect of on-demand audiovisual media services, Member States may take measures to derogate from paragraph 1 in respect of a given service if the following conditions are fulfilled:
(a)the measures are:
necessary for one of the following reasons:
public policy, in particular the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences, including the protection of minors and the fight against any incitement to hatred on grounds of race, sex, religion or nationality, and violations of human dignity concerning individual persons,
the protection of public health,
public security, including the safeguarding of national security and defence,
the protection of consumers, including investors;
taken against an on-demand audiovisual media service which prejudices the objectives referred to in point (i) or which presents a serious and grave risk of prejudice to those objectives;
proportionate to those objectives;
(b)before taking the measures in question and without prejudice to court proceedings, including preliminary proceedings and acts carried out in the framework of a criminal investigation, the Member State has:
asked the Member State under whose jurisdiction the media service provider falls to take measures and the latter did not take such measures, or they were inadequate;
notified the Commission and the Member State under whose jurisdiction the media service provider falls of its intention to take such measures.
5.Member States may, in urgent cases, derogate from the conditions laid down in point (b) of paragraph 4. Where this is the case, the measures shall be notified in the shortest possible time to the Commission and to the Member State under whose jurisdiction the media service provider falls, indicating the reasons for which the Member State considers that there is urgency.
6.Without prejudice to the Member State’s possibility of proceeding with the measures referred to in paragraphs 4 and 5, the Commission shall examine the compatibility of the notified measures with Union law in the shortest possible time. Where it comes to the conclusion that the measures are incompatible with Union law, the Commission shall ask the Member State in question to refrain from taking any proposed measures or urgently to put an end to the measures in question.