Introduction

Against a background of dramatic structural and organisational changes in media markets, most European countries are struggling with reforming their media policies and regulatory regimes to accommodate and comply with those changes, in accordance with stated policy and regulatory objectives. One interesting issue that has come up in this debate is the relationship between competition policy regulation of media markets on the one hand and sector-specific media regulation in general, and sector-specific ownership regulation in particular, on the other. Is it an appropriate and workable policy option to gradually replace sector-specific media regulation by general competition policy regulation or to ‘roll back’ sector-specific regulation to competition regulation of media markets – to use the expression, and stated intention, of the EU Commission in its proposal for regulatory reform of electronic communications services? There seems to be a general consensus among writers and researchers on media regulation that such a policy proposition is neither workable nor acceptable because of special characteristics of media markets in economic terms and stated public policy objectives of media regulatory policy. At the same time, however, there seems to be a general concern that the regulation of media markets is not working properly in practice; in fact, scepticism and even frustration often come to the surface, both from media regulators and from actors in media markets being exposed to regulation.

There are two aspects, or levels of debate, about the relationship between competition policy and sector-specific media regulation.