Greek Broadcaster Fights Closure
ATHENS â€" The Greek government might come under pressure to reopen the state broadcaster, ERT, as one of the country’s highest courts weighs an appeal by a union representing more than 2,600 of the broadcaster’s employees.
The administrative court, the Council of State, is expected to rule on the appeal Monday.
A decision in favor of the workers, who have been operating underground broadcasts of Greek news through satellite streams since ERT was pulled off the air in a surprise government decision on Tuesday, could lead to ERT’s signal being restored temporarily, until the decision could be reviewed in a hearing by the Council of State that would be scheduled for September.
Meanwhile, a Greek prosecutor, acting at the behest of the country’s finance minister, has begun an investigation into ERT’s finances, looking for signs of mismanaged funds.
Whatever the court verdict on the workers’ appeal, Monday will be a critical day for the country’s conservative prime minister, Antonis Samaras. He is to meet in the afternoon with the leaders of the two junior partners in his increasingly fragile coalition, socialist Pasok and the moderate Democratic Left. They have vehemently opposed his decision to shut down ERT as part of a broader cost-cutting drive imposed by Greece’s international creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Although a court decision vindicating the laid-off ERT employees might be considered an embarrassment for Mr. Samaras, political analysis on Greek blogs and news Web sites on Friday suggested that such an outcome might less damaging to his image than if he were forced to reverse his decision under political pressure.
In a speech before members of his conservative New Democracy party’s youth arm on Friday, Mr. Samaras suggested a compomise in an apparent bid to head off a government crisis. His proposal â€" for the "immediate creation of a cross-party committee to hire a small number of staff so that public television can immediately resume broadcasting" â€" was rejected within minutes by Pasok, which said the proposal "does not constitute a response to what Pasok has said."
The political upheaval came amid reports from Brussels that the disbursement of the next tranche of rescue funding for Greece, a sum of about $4.4 billion, was expected to be released next week.
Earlier on Friday, a Greek Finance Ministry official said that European officials had approved the disbursement, subject to a final endorsement by euro zone finance ministers. That decision, the official said, had been largely influenced by the government’s decision to save money by closing ERT.
The state broadcaster, condemned by Mr. Samaras earlier this week as ‘'an emblem of lack of transparency and waste,'’ is to be the focus of a criminal investigation ordered on Thursday by the finance minister, Yannis Stournaras. Greece’s corruption prosecutor, Eleni Raikou, on Friday assigned two deputies to review all the employment and procurement contracts issued by ERT over the past decade for signs of mismanagement and waste.
The scale of suspected misuse of money within ERT over the years remains unclear. But, addressing Parliament on Friday, Mr Stournaras said the broadcaster’s ‘‘finances and viewing figures were very poor.’’
‘'I don’t want to raise tensions in the current climate,'’ he said, ‘'but when the time comes I will present the statistics.'’
Dismissed ERT workers, who have occupied the broadcaster’s headquarters in a suburb of Athens since ERT’s signal was cut on Tuesday night, continued to operate underground broadcasts of Greek news on Friday. Those streams were picked up Thursday evening by the the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public service media organizations in 56 countries, and re-transmitted via satellite link to Greece. The move had symbolic, rather than practical, value as only a few hundred thousand out of some 11 million Greeks have satellite connections; most have been following ERT’s pirate broadcast via online news Web sites.
The head of the European Broadcasting Union, Jean-Paul Philippot, who was in Athens on Friday, said he would ask the Greek government to restore the ERT signal. ‘'The reason we are here is because this has never happened before,'’ he told a media conference in the old headquarters of ERT. ‘'No European country has ever cut its broadcaster’s signal.'’
Mr. Stournaras had warned Thursday that any other television channel retransmitting the pirate broadcast of former ERT employees would be prosecuted. The announcement was apparently aimed at the Communist Party’s channel, called 902 TV, which had been carrying the underground broadcast but reverted to normal programming after the ministry’s warning. ‘'This is not a country where everyone does whatever they want,'’ Mr. Stournaras said.
