The ruling coalition in the Czech Republic announced today that it will submit a bill to the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday 24 March 2026 that would partially abolish licence fees for public media. The proposal was presented by the leaders of the ruling ANO, SPD and Motorists parties after today's meeting of the coalition council, said Tomio Okamura, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and SPD leader.
According to Okamura, the proposal should focus on removing charges for specific groups of residents and businesses, which include Seniors, businesses, dependent young people up to 26 years of age and people with disabilities. It further stated that the fee income was to be revert to the 2024 status, i.e. as they were before part of the changes effective last year.
According to available reports, for example, they could be for some seniors over a certain age abolish fee payments altogether, which would provide relief to thousands of households.
Concession fees in the Czech Republic operate under the current law in such a way that anyone who owns equipment capable of receiving television or radio broadcasts is required to pay a monthly fee. He is now 150 CZK for TV and 55 CZK for radio, and pandemic and digital trends in recent years have led to the extension of the obligation to devices with internet access.
Coalition officials said earlier in January that complete abolition of these fees is not planned until 2027, where the public media - Czech Television and Czech Radio - should be financed directly from the state budget instead of through licence fees.
Public and professional reactions to today's move are conflicting. Some political comments on social media and in the public debate point to the fact that the issue of fees is sensitive, because it is a source of funding to ensure the functioning of public service media without direct government intervention.
Other debates concerning public service media have come up frequently recently - for example, there has been speculation about the effect that funding changes might have on the independence of broadcasting and whether changes in editorial autonomy could have been more pronounced.
But the ruling parties in the coalition have repeatedly stressed today that the proposal is only the first step towards a long-term reform of public media funding and that the current steps are intended to bring immediate relief for selected groups and businesses.
gnews.cz - GH
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