The news was published on TVNET
On Thursday, June 17, from 12:00 to 13:30, a live online seminar titled “Digital Tax – A Source of Additional Funding for Local Media and Culture?” will take place. The speakers will be Member of the European Parliament Dace Melbārde and Maija Celmiņa, Adviser to the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis. The seminar will be moderated by Armands Gūtmanis, Director of Meta Advisory Latvia. The livestream will be available on the TVNET portal.
The seminar’s speakers and experts will discuss when the “digital tax” will be introduced and to what extent it will provide funding for national culture and media in EU Member States. They will also examine how much support the European Commission or the European Parliament plans to offer to Member States’ media sectors, including through the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
The past few years have shown that media independence and the ability to produce high‑quality, original content are vitally important. The fight against disinformation and misleading attacks from certain unfriendly states highlights the need to improve the working conditions of local media as a priority.
The seminar’s experts — Andris Ķēniņš (Latvian Association of Broadcasting Organizations), Guntars Līcis (Latvian Association of Press Publishers), Baiba Liepiņa (Latvian Advertising Association), Zane Bārtniece (TVNET Media Group), and Mindaugs Rakausks (TV3 Group Latvia) — will examine the extent to which the Latvian Media Support Fund strengthens the national media landscape and what changes are needed in the Fund’s operations until the “digital tax” is introduced. In recent years, the Media Support Fund has played an important role in supporting local media by regularly allocating funding for content creation through competitive calls. However, the amounts granted have been insufficient. The Fund’s resources have been administered by several state institutions, and it would be advisable to periodically assess how the administration process and procedures could be improved.
In recent years, Latvia’s media sector has already held discussions on whether a “digital tax” should be introduced. The Latvian advertising market amounts to approximately 60–70 million euros per year. The situation is particularly critical for national media, as the overall volume of advertising revenue in Latvia is not increasing — in fact, it is declining. Latvian companies are allocating increasingly larger portions of their advertising budgets to Facebook, Google, and other global platforms. Over the past 2–4 years, these investments have grown exponentially, exceeding 200 million euros annually. Previously, at least part of this funding remained within the Latvian media sector.
Given that Europe will introduce the “digital tax” only after several years, it is important to clearly understand what support instruments Latvian media — and, more broadly, the entire national cultural space — could receive during this interim period.
The state should encourage initiatives and ensure that part of the funding from the European Recovery and Resilience Facility is allocated directly to the media sector. Media companies could receive investments from European funds, for example, to improve digital skills and for similar development purposes.
