Press Release: Commission takes court action to prevent excessive spot-advertising on Spanish TV

The European Commission decided to bring Spain before the European Court of Justice for failing to comply with the rules on advertising in the EU's 'Television without Frontiers' Directive. This is the final stage of an infringement procedure started in July 2007. The main publicly funded and the commercial TV channels in Spain regularly fail to limit advertising and teleshopping spots to 12 minutes per hour, often by several minutes. While recognising the need to finance commercial programmes with advertising, the '12-minute-rule'was set up by the EU so that viewers would be protected from excessive spot-advertising on TV. The European Parliament and the Council of Ministers confirmed the '12-minute-rule' during the recent modernisation of the Directive.