Following the presentation to last Autumn's Legal and Public Affairs Assembly in Athens, that took place in the immediate aftermath of last year's closure of ERT, Mr George Prokopakis, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of NERIT, opened the seventh Assembly at the EBU's Geneva headquarters yesterday, saying that the new Greek public broadcaster NERIT will be up and running at the end of month.

Mr Prokopakis was invited to update EBU Members on the challenges NERIT is facing as it prepares to launch. Apart from a restricted budget, these challenges include establishing a viable management structure, determining asset ownership and hiring new staff.

Remembering 11 June 2013, when the Greek government summarily shut down national broadcaster ERT, Mr Prokopakis asserted that “closing a broadcaster should be an absolute last resort when all alternatives have failed”.

Questioned about the independence of NERIT, Mr Prokopakis assured his audience that the broadcaster benefited from a “guaranteed revenue stream” in the form of a €3 per month licence fee levied through energy bills. He expressed confidence that the new Greek public service broadcaster's existence is not threatened by political meddling and cronyism.

Following the unprecedented closure of an EBU Member organisation, the EBU commissioned a study from two legal experts in human rights, Professor Walter Berka of Salzburg University and Professor Hannes Tretter of Vienna University, to examine the case through the lens of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The study is available to download here.

Other topics discussed at the Assembly included the legal and policy aspects of key strategic topics such as net neutrality (Members welcomed the successful vote in the European Parliament on 3 April 2014), copyright, signal integrity and spectrum.