The Greek Parliament approved at 1.20 am yesterday the law for re-establishing the public broadcaster ERT, that had been shut down in June 2013 by the leading conservative party at that time. The decision was applaused by a number of former employess of ERT who were watching the parliamentary discussion.

As ERT was shut down in 2013

The decision of the conservative-socialdemocratic government to shut down ERT in June 2013 had cause a majour wave of protests all around Greece. This contradicted heavily the public approval of the government and as a result one political party left the governmental coalition.

Meanwhile 2,600 employees were sacked. The employees through their unions decided to stay in the TV and radio premises and proceed with broadcasting with no salary or funding for 2 years, in an effort which is considered the longest workers' struggle of the media industry ever. Many of the employees also filed legal appeals against their layoffs. Meanwhile a new low-capacity broadcaster with limited resources and majourly outsourced content was launched by the government, which nevertheless faced a lot of legal and organisational problems and failed to gain significant audience.

The provisions of the new law

Re-establishing ERT was a promise of the left SYRIZA Party already since 2013, as a response to the protests for the undemocratic move of the governent. Now that the SYRIZA got the governemnt, they proceeded with fulfilling their promise. Following the re-establishment, all sacked permanent employees are welcome to return to the public broadcaster, whereas all regional radio services are expected to resume operations. The employees of the interim broadcaster will also remain in duty. The operation is not expected to deteriorate the finances of the Greek government as it will be still funded by a special fee on the electricity bill and it has to retain a balanced budget.

The new law includes several additions, such as:

• the oblication of the new broadcaster to contribution with 1,5% of the budget to the production of Greek movies and books.
• a strict control of the amount of programs that are being subcontracted
• the possibility of the public broadcaster to operate as a DVB-T carrier and instantiate other companies for this purpose (as an effort to contest the monopoly of the private DVT-T consortium)
• limits on the salaries of the executives
• the Administration Board of the broadcaster has to negotiate with representatives of the employees' unions before establishing new regulations
• the obligation to broadcast programs for people with disabilities
• the creation of "Audience Consultation Councils" where members of the audience will be allowed to judge the quality and content of the broadcaster's program.

The law faced strong criticism from the employees, who had demanded more power for the non-hierarchical structures that had developed during the two-years guerilla operation.