Her Excellency Madame Catherine Tasca
Minister of Culture and Communications
Ministry of Culture
3, rue de Valois
75001 Paris
France

Fax: (+331) 42 61 35 77

Vienna, 20 March 2002

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, is deeply concerned about attempts to prevent the distribution in France of free daily newspapers.

According to information before IPI, copies of 20 Minutes were stolen and dumped in the street on 15 March by French print union members in a growing dispute over what the CGT-Filpac trade union sees as a threat to France’s media landscape. Consequently, some 20 per cent of the launch edition was not distributed. 20 Minutes is jointly owned by the Norwegian media group Schibsted, the French group Spir Communication and its main shareholder Sofiouest.

We are also informed that union activists halted distribution trucks on 18 and 19 March and again seized copies of the newspaper, while police, who allegedly have explicit orders to intervene only in cases of physical violence, looked on.

Last month, CGT-Filpac members tried to disrupt the launch of another free paper, the Swedish-owned Metro, raiding a printing plant near Marseille and leaving 50,000 copies of the daily out in the overnight rain. Moreover, Metro street distributors in both Paris and Marseille have been reportedly physically assaulted by union activists armed with knives and guns. On 14 March, thousands of copies of Metro were seized from distributors and dumped in the street outside the company’s office in central Paris in a renewed protest against the free daily.

While not wanting to delve into the debate over the impact of free papers, IPI is obliged to condemn all actions that prevent the right to distribute news and information. We urge Your Excellency to do everything in your power to ensure that the principles pertaining to an unfettered flow of information are upheld and that the publishers of 20 Minutes and Metro are allowed to distribute their papers without fear of harassment or intimidation. We further urge you to bring together all parties involved in order to address trade union concerns and to seek an amicable solution to this dispute.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director