“Saving the printed media in Hungary is in the public interest”, the Government Communication Centre (GCC) said in a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI on Wednesday with relation to the fact that the Government has declared the acquisition of a controlling share of Opus Press, Echo TV, New Wave Media Group and Magyar Idők Publisher on the part of Central European Press and Media Foundation as being of national strategic significance.

The act on unfair market behaviour and the ban on competitive restrictions enables the Government to declare certain company mergers to be of national strategic significance out of public interest, the statement explains.

The Cabinet has made twenty-one similar decisions to date, so declaring the fusion involving the Central European Press and Media Foundation to be of national strategic significance is not a unique case, it states.

The highlighted justification for the government degree is that “saving the printed media in Hungary, and particularly in the interests of the long-term survival of county public media forums, is in the public interest”, the GCC writes. This is the goal set in the statutes of the Foundation, “in addition to which the fact that it is not doing this in the interests of realising profits but on a non-profit basis is also deserving of support”, the statement reads.

On Wednesday, the Government issued a decree declaring the merger realised via the acquisition of a controlling share of Echo Hungarian TV Television, Communication and Service Private Limited Company, Magyar Idők Publisher Limited Liability Company, New Wave Media Group Communications and Publishing Limited Liability Company and Opus Press Private Limited Company on the part of the Central European Press and Media Foundation as being of national strategic significance out of public interest.

(MTI/Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister)