Economic directors clearly reject No Billag initiative
The Conference of Cantonal Directors of Economic Affairs (VDK) clearly rejects the No Billag initiative. The cantons are convinced that a Yes vote would not only cause major damage to the national media landscape, but would also restrict Switzerland's linguistic and cultural diversity.
At their annual meeting, the Directors of Economic Affairs therefore voted against the initiative to abolish reception fees and finance the public media service solely through advertising. From the VDK's point of view, those regions that could not finance themselves solely through free advertising money for economic reasons would be particularly negatively affected. Many of the 34 radio and television broadcasters, as well as the SRG as a national radio and television company, would be threatened in their current form, the conference wrote in its press release on Thursday. French-, Italian- and Romansh-speaking Switzerland would be particularly affected by such a development. This would also have a negative impact on multilingualism in Switzerland. The No Billag initiative will be put to the people on March 4, 2018.
