Council of States also rejects "fee monster" petition
TV and radio fees are not to be reduced to CHF 200. After the National Council, the Council of States has also refused to take up this request from a citizens' committee. It tacitly rejected the petition "Radio and television fees: 200 francs is enough".
The politicians justified their "no" to the petition signed by over 140,000 people with political considerations. It would be expensive to implement the SRG broadcasters' constitutional mandate. The amount of the fees corresponds to a large extent to a solidarity contribution to Switzerland's multilingualism, according to the written justification of the preliminary consultation committee. The fees would promote the cohesion of the country. With such a drastic reduction in TV and radio fees, the diversity and quality of Swiss television and radio programming could no longer be guaranteed.
The parliamentarians doubt that the population would be prepared to do without cost-intensive in-house productions by Swiss television and sports broadcasts. If the SRG offering is significantly reduced, this will not primarily benefit private Swiss broadcasters. This would only open the door for foreign broadcasters.
In addition to the reduction in fees, the petition demands the reimbursement of saved and unpaid fees to the fee payers. In addition, the petitioners want to put a stop to the Federal Council's planned device-independent fee obligation: they demand an individual opt-out option from the fee obligation.
The petition was initiated by a group led by SVP National Councillor Natalie Rickli. The Zurich resident, who works as a member of management at the Goldbach Group, which markets the Swiss advertising windows of German private broadcasters among other things, was supported by people from the Facebook group "Bye Bye Billag". This group had called on Facebook for the collection agency for TV and radio fees to be stripped of its fee administration. (SDA)
