Colombia. The Constitutional Court of Colombia declared as unconstitutional the Colombian government's measure to lower the national screen quota in prime time during the time of pandemic generated by Covid 19.
According to the Court, this measure, which had been established in Article 1 of Legislative Decree 516 of April 4, 2020, ignores the judgments of purpose, connection, sufficient motivation, factual necessity, and proportionality.
In the Court's view, the measure is not directly and specifically aimed at averting the causes of the disturbance and at preventing the extension or aggravation of its effects since it did not demonstrate the link between the emergency measure and the reasons that gave rise to the declaration of the State of Emergency.
The Legislative Decree allowed television channels to broadcast programs other than those of national production, given the impossibility of producing new content. Faced with this, the Constitutional Court considered that the Government did not sufficiently explain the reasons that led it to adopt the percentage established in the Decree. In addition, the Court concluded that the measure was not necessary as long as there were other obvious and less burdensome options regarding the rights to culture and national identity, to achieve compliance with the national screen quota.
In the same decision, the High Court declared in accordance with the Constitution the authorization for regional television channels to "allocate for operation up to 20% of the strengthening resources remitted to public operators of the television service", during the pandemic, established in Legislative Decree 516 of 2020 "by which measures are adopted for the provision of the broadcast open television service, within the framework of the State of Economic, Social and Ecological Emergency".
For the Court, the crisis generated by the pandemic economically affects regional television channels, which made it necessary to enable the increase in resources to guarantee their operation.
