BERLIN (Reuters) – Vodafone Germany has had to stop distributing Chinese state-owned CGTN television on its cable services due to a media fight between Britain and China.
The unit of the British telecom group Vodafone said on Friday it hopes to restore CGTN to its services, but does not currently have a valid license for this.
Great Britain last week revoked a license allowing CGTN to be distributed in Great Britain. This provoked protests from China, which on Friday banned the BBC from its television networks and limited its reach in Hong Kong.
A spokesman for regulators in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, one of the regions where CGTN has been available so far, said CGTN is distributed in Germany under British license.
Under the terms of a 1989 agreement on ‘cross-border television’ negotiated under the auspices of the Council of Europe, of which Great Britain remains a member, a single European country distribution license applies to most of the continent – which means means that CGTN may now need to go out of the blue across the region.
The agreement has been signed by all countries of the European Union and many non-EU countries, including most of the Balkan countries and Ukraine. In principle, a license in any of them could allow the resumption of distribution.
“We are currently in talks about the license revocation with both the regional media authorities and the broadcaster’s representatives to clarify the legal situation,” said Vodafone.
CGTN did not immediately respond to a request for comment by email outside normal business hours on Friday, a public holiday in China.
(Report by Nadine Schimroszik in Berlin and Matthias Inverardi in Düsseldorf. Additional reporting by Tom Daly. Written by Thomas Escritt. Edited by Kirsti Knolle and Mark Potter)