The Luxembourg government has an agreement with RTL parent company CLT-UFA to help fund the company’s programming in the grand duchy, a loss-making activity for the broadcaster.

Under a current deal, RTL receives €10m to support the country’s quasi-public broadcaster in Luxembourg. This was up for renegotiation next year, but the government anticipated sealing a new agreement with an election year on the horizon in 2023 and to give the company foresight to plan ahead.

Parliament for the first time had to agree on the deal with RTL as the funding sum exceeds €40m, the threshold up to which the government can unilaterally push a project through.

The budget won’t be adjusted for inflation and money not spent in any one year cannot be carried forward. The money spent each year will depend on the deficit incurred.

The law voted on Tuesday does not include an agreement between both parties that regulates RTL’s duties as a public service broadcaster in Luxembourg. This, for example, sets up ethics rules on quality, accessibility and gender representation.

The details of the agreement regulating the public broadcaster position of RTL in Luxembourg was not made public as part of the draft law. A Luxembourg court in January last year ruled that lawmakers should be able to access the document although they would have to keep its contents secret.

Pirate Party MP Sven Clement had taken the government to court in December 2019 to gain access to the text, which the government tried to precent citing confidentiality.

RTL’s Luxembourg-language radio programme reaches nearly 30% of the population, according to the latest results of the Plurimedia study based on a survey of around 3,700 residents aged 15 or over. Fewer than one in five (17.5%) watch its RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg TV channel. The rtl.lu website was the most popular daily news website in the country, reaching 203,000 people aged 15 or over.

The EU-funded Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom in a 2021 report had warned that audiovisual media in Luxembourg is . Reporters Without Borders in its latest , published on 3 May, also warned of media concentration around RTL group.

Despite these concerns, a majority of MPs supported the nearly €100m agreement, the president of the Chamber of Deputies said. The final vote tally was not available during the session as a computer glitch required a recount.