The European Parliament building in Brussels © dpa

Parliamentary Television complements the political reporting from Germany’s public and private broadcasting stations by enabling viewers to watch the German Bundestag’s deliberations live, without comment and at full length. This makes it possible for citizens to follow political topics they are particularly interested in and make up their own minds about what is happening in parliament. When the German Bundestag is not sitting, repeats of earlier programmes made by Parliamentary Television are shown. In consequence, Parliamentary Television, which started out as an in-house channel, offers profound insights into the multifaceted and often protracted work involved in parliamentary decision-making and the legislative process. Decisions are not just taken in the plenary chamber, but also by the various committees, commissions and other bodies. Provided these meetings are held in public, their deliberations too are broadcast live on Parliamentary Television or can subsequently be downloaded from the Media Library at the viewer’s convenience.

Parliamentary television across Europe

The European Parliament also broadcasts debates and committee meetings live on the Internet (www.europarl.eu.int).

The parliaments of some of the European Union’s Member States run their own dedicated television channels as well. The model for the 14 European parliamentary channels that are currently available is the American congressional and public affairs channel C-SPAN (www.c-span.org), which has been broadcasting debates and committee meetings live from the US Congress since 1979. The various parliamentary television channels in Europe are highly diverse, both organisationally and in terms of their legal structures. Essentially, there are three different basic forms of organisation:

• parliamentary television channels that are embedded in public television systems
• parliamentary television channels that are operated by national parliaments with the aid of external service providers
• parliamentary television channels that are operated by private enterprises

Parliamentary Television of the German Bundestag is operated in cooperation with an external provider, which deals with the technical aspects of the service.

Parliamentary reporting on Phoenix

In Germany, the current affairs and documentary channel Phoenix (www.phoenix.de), a joint venture between the two German public broadcasting networks ARD and ZDF, also broadcasts live debates and committee meetings from the German Bundestag. These sittings and meetings are introduced by journalists, commented on and sometimes edited. Furthermore, they are not always broadcast at full length, depending on what other events Phoenix is covering at the same time.

Parliamentary Television of the German Bundestag supplies its video output free of charge to Phoenix, just as it does for other TV corporations and parliamentary broadcasting services.