Brussels Greenlights Contentious Media Sale in Central Europe

The European Commission on Wednesday approved the sale of Central European Media Enterprises, CME, to the PPF Group conglomerate, whose owner, the Czech Republic’s richest businessman, Peter Kellner, has been accused of acting as a proxy for China.

The CME, majority owned by AT&T, operates 30 television channels in five Central and East European markets.

Civil society groups earlier warned that the sale could boost China’s influence on the TV sector in Central and Eastern European countries where both groups are present. Concerns have also been raised over potential market concentration.

The EU executive body dismissed these objections, however. “Based on its market investigation, the Commission found that the transaction, as notified, would not impact the companies’ position in these markets,” a statement on its website said. 

“PPF and CME are both active in the acquisition of sports broadcasting rights in Czechia and Slovakia and in the sale of advertising space in Czechia,” the statement added. “In parallel, the two companies are active at different levels of the TV value chain,” it continued.

“CME is mainly active as a wholesale supplier of TV channels in a number of Member States, while PPF offers retail audio-visual and telecommunications services in Bulgaria, Czechia and Slovakia,” it asserted.

These elements pose no real risk to fair competition, the Commission went on, as “the companies generally do not compete for the acquisition of the same sports rights and the transaction would only lead to a limited increase in PPF’s existing share of the market.

“Similarly, PPF’s activities represent a negligible share and would not add significantly to CME’s position in the market for the sale of advertising space in Czechia.”

The sale will give Kellner’s group control over leading private television stations now owned by CME in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. CME’s main channel in Slovakia, Markiza TV, is widely considered a rare independent television station in the country.

PPF has already interests in the audiovisual and telecommunications sectors in some of these countries.

The deal was signed in October last year. A PPF representative said on Wednesday that the group expected the purchase to be finalised on October 13.

Last February, US Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a known China hawk, urged the US authorities to launch “a full review of the national security implications” of the sale.

Rubio insisted that the deal would advance “the Chinese Communist Party’s political interference” in the countries where CME operates.

If the sale to PPF went ahead, Rubio observed, Kellner’s group would control of channels with a massive audience of 97 million people only in Romania and Bulgaria, where CME owns rating market leaders Pro TV and b1.

China in July announced retaliatory sanctions on Rubio, fellow Republican Senator Ted Cruz and other US officials for their harsh criticism of its policies.

Kellner has often been accused of serving China’s interests in Czechia, where his PPF group has its base. These services are said to include whitewashing Beijing’s record through a paid propaganda campaign in the Czech media.

Contact Tracing: Europe’s Coronavirus Tech Tangle

As countries across Europe gingerly ease restrictions imposed to fight the spread of COVID-19, governments are looking for tech-based solutions to avoid a resurgence in infections.

Experts agree that one of the most effective ways to do this is to introduce some kind of social-tracing system to let people know if they have come into contact with anyone later reported infected. Once alerted, they can self-isolate before further spreading the virus.

European countries are at different stages in developing COVID-19 social-tracing apps that governments can encourage — not require — people to install on their smartphones.

Since privacy watchdogs have decried the use of location data, most nations have chosen Bluetooth-based technology as the best way of registering potential contact with those who have been infected.

While most states in Western and Southern Europe are still tinkering with the technology, some countries in Central Europe have had tech-based solutions for social tracing up and running for weeks. The Czech Republic and Poland are leading the way.

Playing their own game

An Apple iPhone running a test version of the ‘Next Step’ smart phone app using Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) to trace COVID-19 infections, in Darmstadt, Germany, 26 April 2020. Germany has changed its course in the debate over a coronavirus tracing app, favoring decentralised data storage over a centrally managed server. Photo: EPA-EFE/BEN WENZ

In Poland, people returning from abroad are required to stay at home for two weeks of quarantine. The government asks them to download an app to verify they are complying with the rules. At random times, users are requested to take selfies and upload them to prove they have not left the house. 

The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs is also grappling with a Bluetooth-based social-tracing app intended for wider use.

“We’re still working on the application,” Joanna Debek, a communications officer at the ministry, said in a phone interview. “It will be released very soon,” 

But it is the Czech Republic that leads the pack when it comes to “fast-track” COVID-19 measures. 

The country was one of the first EU member states to declare a state of emergency, on March 12. And only a week later, it became the first EU country to make it mandatory for everyone to wear face masks in public. 

The Czech tech sector was also quick to act. In mid-March, the country’s largest search engine, Seznam, introduced a coronavirus tracing feature on its geolocation app, Maps.cz. With a user’s permission, it draws on location data to inform people if they have crossed paths with anyone who has tested positive. 

A month later, the Czech Health Ministry released a Bluetooth-based social tracing app known as eRouska (eMask). The app anonymously detects pairings among different devices on which the app has been installed. Similar technology is now being developed all across Europe.

The app is integrated into a more complex solution called the Smart Quarantine, which combines data from cell phones and payment cards. With a user’s permission, local hygiene stations can use this data to isolate individuals who have come into contact with infected people. 

Jan Kulveit, a senior researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, is one of the two main strategists for the system developed by Covid19.cz, a group of Czech tech companies and IT enthusiasts working on tech-based solutions out of the current crisis. He said developing an app is the easy part.

“The tricky part is to ensure that these technical solutions are somehow integrated into a system that local hygiene stations can obtain information from, and then act upon,” he said in a phone interview. 

“In this sense, the Czech Republic is a few weeks ahead of Germany and most other European countries. We’re actually currently in contact with several countries who expressed their interest in our model.” 

Coders without borders

A man uses a Swedish version of the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app on his smartphone in Stockholm, Sweden, 29 April 2020. Lund University developed the application to provide information about the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 in Sweden. Photo: EPA-EFE/Fredrik Sandberg

A key question is how to turn a patchwork of national systems into something that is “interoperable across the EU so that citizens are protected even when they cross borders”, as the European Commission said in a recent news release.

One initiative that sprang up to address the problem is Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT).

Headed by Hans-Christian Boos, a Swiss tech entrepreneur who sits on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s digital expert council, PEPP-PT is an attempt to create a European-wide solution to the “coronavirus tracing problem”. 

“We’re now in contact with 40 countries worldwide,” Boos told BIRN in a phone interview. “We started as a European project, but maybe we’ll have to rename it now; there are countries from all around the world contacting us.” 

We started as a European project, but maybe we’ll have to rename it now; there are countries from all around the world contacting us.

Hans-Christian Boos, tech entrepreneur

Boos and his team of scientists from across Europe have been developing a set of standards, mechanisms and technologies that could serve as a backbone for various interoperable apps.

Many Western and Southern European governments including France, Belgium, Italy and Spain have pledged to develop their national apps using the standards put together by PEPP-PT, Boos told a news conference last month. 

But no Central or Eastern European country has publicly expressed interest in the initiative. 

“I know that there are countries among those 40 from Eastern Europe,” Boos told BIRN. “They’re interested. I mean why shouldn’t they be?” 

However, since BIRN’s interview with Boos in mid-April, PEPP-PT has had a downhill ride. 

On April 19, more than 300 scientists and researchers published an open letter urging governments not to introduce systems that could “allow unprecedented surveillance on society at large.” 

Although the open letter does not name any specific initiative, the criticism is widely seen as directed at the PEPP-PT social-tracing approach, until then favoured by key EU member states Germany and France. 

Many researchers say the PEPP-PT strategy is too centralised and vulnerable to governmental “mission creep”. This is due to the fact that, under this scheme, user data would be stored on a central server. 

Since the open letter was published, a growing number of researchers have called for the use of a decentralised contact-tracing protocol called DP-3T, developed by Swiss researchers in collaboration with a technology partnership between Apple and Google. 

This has prompted several countries to ditch PEPP-PT for DP-3T. Switzerland, Austria and Estonia are backing the decentralised approach, according to Reuters.

But the biggest blow for Boos and his team came on April 24 when Germany announced it would also adopt a “decentralised” approach, leaving France and Britain alone in the “centralisation” camp. 

Officially, the Czech Health Ministry has left the door open for cooperation with PEPP-PT. 

“We’d like to work with them in the future on standardisation and interoperability of different national solutions,” a ministry spokesperson said in an email. 

But Kulveit from the Future of Humanity Institute expressed skepticism about the pan-European PEPP-PT solution.

“I think that, in the end, the interoperability of all the individual European apps will be based on the Google-Apple solution,” he said.

“In any case, countries shouldn’t be just waiting for one, pan-European solution before developing their own domestic social-tracing apps. You can always just update the protocol later to make them [the apps] talk to each other.” 

Continue reading “Contact Tracing: Europe’s Coronavirus Tech Tangle”

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