1. Our proposal: a conference on the future of the mission, offer, funding and rules of public service media in the new digital cross-media environment

The meeting organized in Turin by Infocivica in the context of Prix Italia in September 2009 on the theme of building a public communications service with a European dimension, saw the participation of seven of the leading European experts in the field from various European universities (the so-called “Turin Workgroup”) and it obtained a great deal of consensus among those present.

Following the interest generated and the quality of the interventions, Infocivica proposed to the speakers and rapporteurs present at the seminar that they become directly involved in preparing a Green_Paper on_public service_media in the society of information and knowledge , the basic documents of which will be discussed at a European Conference to be held in Turin in November 2012, once again in connection with the Prix Italia.

Two bodies - Infocivica and a network of experts from European universities constituting the Turin Workgroup - will be the promoters of the Conference. They will also make the most of a close collaboration with the European Commission - Representation in Italy, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.

The reports prepared by the European Group of Turin are intended to constitute the basis of a Green Paper on public service media in the society of information and knowledge that seeks to reaffirm, on the one hand the non-substitutable nature of public services in the society of information and, on the other hand, the need to redefine their mission within a document with a constitutional value, leading to a radical transformation of the guaranteed service and safeguarded standards, the organizational structure, the modalities of funding and the institutional contacts of service media.

As emerged in the first seminar of Infocivica in September 2009, it is useful to clarify that emphasizing the indispensability of the role and the mission of institutions in the service of the public does not necessarily mean the defence of the existing institutions and the exclusivity or unity of their organizational structures, or the safeguarding of the interested groups that represent them or have protected them over time. On the contrary, radically redefining their mission and remit, their positioning within the market of media contents, their organizational structure, as well as their funding and governance means calling into question any income arising from a dominant role or position in technological areas, or contexts of supply and demand that do not comply with or adhere to the obligations deriving from their mission as a public service.

In compliance with the rules and principles of competition within the European Union, the document that could be presented at the European Conference in November 2012 aims to assure an evolution able to overcome the compromise adopted in 1997 with the Protocol annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam, which left it up to the individual nation states to determine what public service programmes should be funded by the licence fee as well as in what way and to what extent they could be distinguished from those financed by market resources.

The awareness is becoming more widespread that within the programming schedules of the public service it is undesirable to have activities aimed at commercial exploitation, which should instead be conducted within a new “public service market”, which is carefully defined and circumscribed. Nor is a private use of the public service to be permitted. At the same time it is no longer tolerable to draw on public resources for activities aimed at making profits . These should be conducted solely by profit-oriented companies which, as such, should be funded with resources collected within the market alone.

As pointed out by Infocivica in Turin, the new cross-media scenario requires us to go beyond the compromise at the basis of the Protocol on radio and television broadcasting services annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam. The construction of this agreement should be thoroughly reviewed with the awareness that it would be totally inadequate to extend the traditional remits carried out by national broadcasters inside the framework that has been created in recent years due to trends towards cross-media convergence, globalization and requests for heightened safeguarding within local areas. The new public service of communications is not called upon to do “anything and everything” (as expressed in Rai's slogan “di tutto e di più”) but to do it “better and in a more precise and restricted way”.

On the internal Italian level Infocivica believes that it is not possible to renew the twenty-year agreement between the State and Rai according to the same conditions adopted in the past. Infocivica 's proposal over the five year period of 2011-2015 is to introduce a new method of collaboration and consultation between civil society, interest groups, business concerns as well as local, regional and national European and global institutions, challenging them to engage in a discussion without preconditions that can favour, with procedures of maieutic dialogue, a reforming movement of civil society and a new practice of democracy, starting from the considerations contained in the Green Paper which will be presented in Turin. For the Italian government the objective of the conference could be to define the guidelines of a new convention with a ten-year validity (rather than of twenty years) that can identify the new parties in this agreement upon the basis of the new concept of statehood deriving from Article V of the Italian Constitution, as well as upon the need to ensure the principles of subsidiarity, but also to agree on a minimum set of European rules that are able to govern the processes of communication in the era of globalization.