Maciej Wróbel, the head of a parliamentary subcommittee examining the issue, has said that “abolishing the TV license was a modern requirement,” as the current model is less effective today than when it was introduced in 1992.
Despite a fine for not having a TV license stretching to 30 times the unpaid sum, a 2023 report by the body overseeing public media, the National TV and Radio Board (KRRiT), found that in 2022 only 828,000 out of 13.9 million Polish households actually paid the fee.
The money goes towards the cost of public broadcasters Telewizja Polska (which runs TVP World) and Polish Radio, and state news agency PAP.
The reasons for the shift reflect the changing media appetites of people in Poland, who are switching to streaming and internet-delivered content, much like their counterparts in other parts of Europe.
This has led to a decreased willingness to pay for what younger generations describe as legacy media, despite a rise in the amount of streaming and podcast content put out online by public providers.
Observers also point to the difficulty of collecting arrears for TV licenses. This is the responsibility of post office staff, who have no powers to inspect private premises to locate radios and TVs.
A survey by Nielsen Media, a company that monitors TV audience sizes, found that in the first quarter of 2024, the average time watching TV fell by 3 minutes compared to the same period in 2023 to 4 hours and 8 minutes a day.
Polish Deputy Culture Minister Sławomir Rogowski said in September that the model most likely to be adopted to fund public media is a straight government subsidy, which would be calculated as a percentage of the country’s annual GDP.
The figure being considered, according to media reports, is 0.09% of GDP, which would be the equivalent of 3.5 billion złotys, or €820 million.
The subsidy model is preferable to the idea of a 100-złoty annual (€22) multimedia fee collected via the income tax system, which had also been considered, Wróbel told commercial radio station RMF.
The full details on the media financing plan should be completed in mid-2025, in time for the legislation to be introduced in 2026. The issue of whether unpaid license fees will still be chased after the abolition of the charge is still to be determined.
