National Council: No funding for headline newspapers

The Council of States wants the Federal Council to regulate which newspapers are delivered at a discount. The National Council, on the other hand, wants to write a criterion into the law: It wants only those newspapers to benefit that are not part of a newspaper association with a total circulation of over 100,000 copies. On Tuesday, the National Council decided to stick to this position by 98 votes to 79 with one abstention. The SP and CVP thus prevailed. Representatives of both parliamentary groups argued that the exclusion of broadsheets would ensure that small newspapers were promoted. The opponents of this regulation doubted this.
Post and Media Minister Doris Leuthard was also skeptical. She also pointed out that Parliament would be holding a fundamental debate on press funding next year anyway, in connection with parliamentary initiatives. Her department is currently writing a report on media diversity. The councillors agree on the amount. On Tuesday, the National Council maintained its decision to support the delivery of newspapers by Swiss Post with 50 million a year. 30 million is to go to the regional and local press, 20 million to the membership and foundation press.

Fixed book prices also for online retail
In addition, the National Council decided on Monday that all book prices should be regulated again. The Book Price Fixing Act should also apply to online trade, meaning that consumers would also have to pay Swiss prices when ordering from Amazon and other foreign providers. The Council of States had proposed excluding domestic and cross-border online trade from the law as an exception.
The Comedia trade union (from January 1, 2011 Syndicom) is delighted with the approval from the National Council. If online retail were to be excluded from the Book Price Fixing Act, the existence of the brick-and-mortar book trade would be under threat, the union said in a communiqué. The fear: books would be looked at in bookshops but later bought online. Exlibris, Amazon and other providers would therefore benefit. Ex Libris has a different opinion. "For us, any legal price control is unacceptable," CEO Daniel Röthlin told 20 Minuten. Ex Libris does not want to bow to price dictates. For the time being, the Migros subsidiary is working towards at least exempting foreign online retailers. In this case, the company is considering selling from abroad.