The Legal Mandate of the Deutsche Welle

On 1 January 2005, the amended Deutsche Welle Act came into effect. It was preceded by a political discussion about the revision of the legal mandate and the funding of the federal public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. In this debate, not only the federal government, but also the Deutsche Welle itself made an effort to clarify and specify its mission and self-conception.

To support this process the Institute - on behalf of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media (Bundesbeauftragter für Kultur und Medien) - developed options for defining the legal mandate in the future. Considering the consequences which resulted from the constitutional status of the Deutsche Welle, it was discussed which goals would be appropriate for international broadcasters and which, in principle, are suitable for the Deutsche Welle in particular. More specifically, the researchers clarified which functions and aspects of the mandate could be defined by the legislator given the constitutional requirements and additionally they examined to what extent the legislator should make use of his powers. One of the main findings of the project is a procedure that preserves the autonomy of the Deutsche Welle, but also allows the interests of all relevant actors to be considered. The amended Deutsche Welle Act has already become effective and adopts the main ideas of the study.

With this project, the Institute built on research on inter-cultural communication and regulated self-regulation in public service broadcasting. After the study had been delivered to the sponsor, further consultations followed.