The government is in the process of renegotiating an agreement with CLT-UFA and RTL Group for the media company to fulfil a public broadcaster role in Luxembourg and deliver broadcast programming in Luxembourgish.

The current agreement expires in 2023 but is up for renegotiation this year. The government wants the next edition to be valid until 2030, covering a longer period than before to allow greater foresight, Bettel (DP) told lawmakers in a meeting on 11 May.

The agreement should also set up ethics rules on quality, accessibility and media pluralism as well as giving the media group a culture incubator function, emphasising media education and foreseeing a collaboration with the University of Luxembourg.

The government up until now has paid €10m annually to RTL for it to take on a public broadcaster function and to make up for financial losses the Luxembourgish programming incurs for the commercial operator.

Bettel said he doesn’t yet know how much the state would pay under the new agreement but said the price is likely to increase, according to a statement published by the Chamber of Deputies.

The seven-year agreement could therefore require parliament to vote on providing funds, a step that is necessary for any projects worth more than €40m.

RTL’s Luxembourg-language radio programme reaches nearly 30% of the population, according to the latest results of a media habits study based on a survey of 4,000 residents aged 15 or over. Around one in five watch its RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg TV channel. The rtl.lu website was the most popular daily news website in the country between mid-February 2020 and the same time this year, reaching more than 217,000 people aged 15 or over.

The EU-funded Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom in a 2020 report had warned that audiovisual media in Luxembourg is heavily dominated by RTL, targeting the Luxembourgish-speaking population. It urged policymakers to review the role of public media in the country.

The legal framework of Radio 100,7--Luxembourg’s public radio station--is currently under review.

Lawmakers had pushed to be able to review the agreement between the government and CLT-UFA. A Luxembourg court in January ruled that members of parliament should be able to access to document although they would have to keep its content secret.

Pirate Party MP Sven Clement took the government to court in December 2019 to get access to the text, which the government tried to prevent citing issues of confidentiality.