Spain

01EMFA compliance since the 2025 report

Regulatory AuthorityAVMSD Art. 30

The principal developments concern the renewal of the National Commission for Markets and Competition’s (CNMC) leadership and the continuing delay in completing its EMFA-related legal framework¹. The documents and evidence reviewed do not establish a substantial improvement in effective regulatory independence compared with the 2025 assessment.

A significant institutional change occurred in July 2026. The CNMC records the appointment of Juan José Ganuza Fernández as president on 22 July², succeeding Cani Fernández. Its current Council also includes new members Carmen Balsa Pascual, Joan Capdevila i Esteve and Marina Echebarría Sáenz. Ganuza brings an academic background in economics, regulation and competition (he is a professor at Pompeu Fabra University). The appointments followed the expiry of the president’s and two councillors’ six-year mandates and filled an additional vacancy. They were conducted in line with the procedure set out in Article 15 of Law 3/2013: government nomination, parliamentary hearings and formal appointment by royal decree. The process nevertheless drew criticism over political independence. Press reports described Carmen Balsa, Joan Capdevila and Marina Echebarría as backed by PSOE, ERC and Sumar, respectively, while the Council had no members proposed by PP or Vox.³ The Popular Party (PP) complained that it had not been consulted, and both opposition parties questioned the candidates’ independence and unsuccessfully sought to block⁴ their appointments.⁵ Despite these objections, the parliamentary committee found all four candidates suitable for their roles and identified no conflicts of interest.

The legislative reforms anticipated in 2025 remain unfinished. At the cut-off date, Draft Law 121/000068 on democratic governance in digital services and media regulation remained at the amendments stage in the Congress of Deputies⁶, with the deadline for amendments continuously extended. The relevant development is therefore the continuation of the implementation delay, rather than the introduction of a new reform. The CNMC’s own EMFA information page states that exercising the additional competencies envisaged for national regulators requires enabling legislation that remains pending.

The CNMC’s 2026 Action Plan provides further evidence of this uncertainty. The plan (p. 11) explicitly makes organizational adaptation and additional actions under the DSA and EMFA conditional on legal authorization, whose timing remains uncertain. It documents institutional preparation but does not show that the new media regulation functions have become fully operational⁷.

Budgetary developments likewise indicate continuity. The CNMC’s transparency portal confirms that the absence of a new State Budget before January 2026 triggered the extension of the previous budget⁸. The CNMC has also published budget-execution information for the first two quarters of 2026. This supports financial transparency, although the continued reliance on an extended State Budget leaves uncertainty over the provision of the additional resources requested by the previous presidency.

The most immediate problem is the gap between European obligations and domestic enforcement capacity. The EMFA is directly applicable, but the pending national legislation leaves the CNMC’s additional responsibilities insufficiently operationalized. This prolongs uncertainty over the authority’s ability to provide the comprehensive oversight envisaged by the Regulation. It does not imply that existing audiovisual supervision has ceased or that EMFA obligations are suspended.

Financial and organizational autonomy also remain unresolved. As discussed in the 2025 report⁹, Article 34 of Law 3/2013¹⁰ maintains a budget with binding expenditure limits, processed through government ministries. The 2026 Action Plan itself reiterates that efficient management requires autonomy over budgets and human resources. The documents and sources reviewed for this update do not establish that the resource concerns identified in 2025 have been resolved.

The relevant benchmark is Article 7 of the EMFA, which extends the independence requirements of Article 30 AVMSD to EMFA functions and requires adequate financial, human and technical resources. Against that benchmark, the evidence supports retaining the previous distinction between formal safeguards and only partial effective independence. The priority remains to complete the allocation of enforceable responsibilities and demonstrate that the regulator can exercise them with sufficient resources and without political interference.¹¹

Public Service MediaEMFA Art. 5

There have been no changes to the regulation of RTVE. The procedure for appointing the members of the Board of Directors and the President remains unchanged. The mechanisms for external oversight and governance also remain in place. The main development lies in the progress made on drafting the RTVE Corporation’s Framework Mandate (mandato-marco), which has been extended since 2017, the year in which the first (and so far only) operational framework for the public service broadcaster expired.

The drafting of the new framework mandate now falls to the Joint Committee for Parliamentary Control of the RTVE Corporation and its Companies, which in turn has set up a specific sub-committee dedicated to this purpose¹². Since its creation in October 2025, this sub-committee has met on more than 20 occasions. The committee’s work has involved the participation of specialists, academics and RTVE staff to discuss models of funding, independence, pluralism and new indicators for evaluating the public service¹³.

However, the draft of the new framework mandate has not yet been made public, and it remains to be seen when it will finally be approved. It should be borne in mind that the Joint Committee for Parliamentary Control of RTVE (and therefore also the sub-committee responsible for drafting the proposed framework mandate for Corporación RTVE) is controlled by the PP and Vox (the two main opposition parties), which could slow down or even block this initiative.

Whilst there have been no regulatory or structural changes affecting RTVE’s independence, there have been some controversial developments. With regard to news coverage, the Consejo de Informativos (News Council) criticised the interview with the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, broadcast on the programme Mañaneros 360 on 9 September. The reason for the criticism is that the interview was carried out on an externally produced programme, rather than by RTVE’s News Services.¹⁴ The News Council’s complaint is based on the provisions of the current framework mandate, which sets a target of 100 % in-house production for news and institutional programmes.

This latest episode shows the tense relationship between the News Council and the news programmes outsourced by RTVE, primarily Mañaneros 360 and Malas Lenguas. In January 2026, the News Council drew up a report accusing these programmes of being biased and failing to comply with RTVE’s fundamental guidelines for news reporting.¹⁵

Furthermore, RTVE’s funding continues to come mainly from the General State Budget, which remains in force. The main development in this area is the reform of the Law on the Financing of Radiotelevisión Española in June 2026, under which the government writes off RTVE’s debt to the Treasury amounting to 940 million euros. In view of the numerous ongoing legal cases concerning the deductibility of certain tax liabilities borne by the public broadcaster, the government decided to amend the RTVE Financing Act by means of Royal Decree-Law 16/2026, which stipulates that “taxes that are not deductible by RTVE shall be considered part of the cost of the public service provided by the corporation”.¹⁶ Consequently, the State would compensate for non-deductible VAT from the 2015 financial year onwards as a public service cost, estimated at a total of 940 million euros.¹⁷

Misuse of State FundsEMFA Art. 25

The consolidated assessment as of September 2025 described a regulatory framework grounded in Law 29/2005, with no verifiable criteria for the allocation of institutional advertising, no breakdown by media outlet or platform in annual reports, and reactive oversight by the CNMC. This amounted to only partial compliance with Article 25 of the EMFA. The year that followed did not alter the regulatory framework in force, but it set in motion two parallel reform processes: one legislative and the other contractual.

Regarding developments in this area, on 24 February 2026 the Council of Ministers approved at first reading the Draft Law on Public Sector Advertising¹⁸, which is intended to repeal Law 29/2005 and transpose the EMFA. Its main provisions include: a cap of 35% of a media outlet’s or platform’s annual net turnover that may be derived from advertising from the three levels of government, with a safeguard for those whose turnover does not exceed €2 million and whose audience is concentrated in no more than three neighbouring autonomous communities; the inclusion of online platforms as regulated recipients; the requirement for certified audience measurement systems and tariff transparency; registration in a public register maintained by the CNMC; and an annual report, to be submitted to Parliament before 30 June, identifying the beneficial ownership of recipients. Monitoring responsibilities are assigned to the CNMC, which will also collect information from autonomous communities that lack an independent authority. At the institutional level, the Commission for Institutional Advertising and Communication is renamed the Commission for Advertising and Communication and is granted expanded powers covering commercial advertising by the State and price-setting, while the Secretary of State for Communication assumes technical assistance functions.

The CNMC report of 30 April 2026¹⁹ assesses the Draft Law favourably but draws attention to three issues: the asymmetry of the cap, which would allow media outlets operating within a specific geographical area to derive up to 100% of their turnover from public advertising; the desirability of explicitly stating the transitional nature of the autonomous communities’ supplementary regulatory provisions; and, once again, the inadequacy of organizational and staffing resources. This is compounded by the concurrent consideration of Draft Law 121/000068 on democratic governance in digital services and media regulation, which remains under consideration by the Committee on Economy, Trade and Digital Transformation under full legislative competence and for which hearings were held throughout the first half of 2026. Both initiatives envisage registers and transparency obligations concerning public funding, raising a potential issue of coordination between the two frameworks.

In parallel, Framework Agreement 50/2023 was extended by the Directorate-General for the Rationalization and Centralization of Procurement (DGRCC) until 18 December 2026, or until a new agreement enters into force.²⁰ The model currently under development would reverse the prevailing approach, under which economic criteria account for 100% of the weighting, by applying 70% technical criteria and 30% economic criteria²¹; replacing competition based on discounts (which reached as high as 99%) with remuneration through a fee; and reducing the weight assigned to social media in favour of media outlets subject to editorial responsibility.

From a political perspective, the resignation of José Manuel Nevado as Director of the Department of Institutional Communication²² on 7 July 2026 was due, according to El Español, citing government sources, to disagreements with the government about the future of the department that distributes institutional advertising.²³ He was succeeded by María Teresa Velilla de la Rocha, previously head of the SEC’s Institutional Advertising Unit.²⁴

The planned timetable (the tendering process in June and the award in September) was not met, while the extension expires in December. The conclusion is that one year on, convergence with Article 25 of the EMFA remains largely programmatic: the 2026 Institutional Advertising and Communication Plan²⁵ provides for 124 campaigns and €155.6 million in expenditure, which will still be implemented under the 2005 framework. The reform therefore comes after the spending cycle it is intended to regulate.

Media Pluralism and Political InfluenceEMFA Art. 6 & 22

The 2025 report identified two main shortcomings in relation to Articles 6 and 22 of the EMFA: a national ownership-transparency framework largely confined to the audiovisual sector, and the absence of a specific procedure for assessing media market concentrations from the perspective of media pluralism and editorial independence. As of September 2026, neither shortcoming has been fully addressed. The main legislative development is Draft Law 121/000068 on democratic governance in digital services and media regulation, introduced on 30 July 2025, which remains at the amendments stage before the Congress Committee on Economy, Trade and Digital Transformation.

In the area of transparency, the bill would extend the scope of Law 13/2022 to press media services and establish a public State Register of media service providers, administered by the CNMC and coordinated with the regional registers. State-level providers would be required to enter and keep up to date the information specified in Article 6(1) of the EMFA: the identity of direct or indirect owners capable of exercising influence, beneficial owners, the total annual amount of public funds allocated for state advertising, and advertising revenues received from third-country public authorities or entities. The register would be informational only and would not constitute an authorisation to operate. The bill would also classify as infringements failures to comply with these transparency obligations, to put in place proportionate measures safeguarding freedom in editorial decision-making, or to disclose conflicts of interest that could affect the provision of news and current affairs content. These provisions remain subject to adoption and, as regards the organisation and operation of the register, subsequent regulatory development.

In the area of media market concentrations, the bill would establish a specific procedure for assessing their effects on media pluralism and editorial independence, in addition to the general merger-control regime under competition law. The CNMC would assess operations with a national or multi-regional scope, together with the other cases specified in the bill, while regional authorities would assess concentrations confined to their respective territories. The assessment would have to apply the criteria set out in Article 22(2) of the EMFA and could result in a favourable assessment, the imposition of commitments or conditions, or an unfavourable assessment. Where significant negative repercussions on media pluralism and editorial independence were found to be very serious, the bill would allow the CNMC to prohibit the concentration or make it subject to specific commitments. The detailed procedure would require subsequent regulatory development.

The EMFA itself is already directly applicable. Article 6(3), concerning safeguards for the independence of editorial decisions and the disclosure of conflicts of interest, has applied since 8 February 2025; the Regulation has applied generally since 8 August 2025, including Articles 6(1) and 22. It is therefore not a directive awaiting transposition. What remains outstanding in Spain is the completion of the domestic rules, authorities, registers and procedures needed to give effect to those EMFA provisions that require national institutional arrangements, including the national media ownership database envisaged in Article 6(2) and the substantive and procedural rules for assessing concentrations required under Article 22.

Assessments published in 2026 show that the gap between directly applicable EU rules and their national implementation continues to have practical consequences. The European Commission’s 2026 Rule of Law Report notes that concerns persist regarding ownership transparency for media other than audiovisual media services, video-sharing platforms and influencers while the new legislation remains pending²⁶. The Media Pluralism Monitor 2026 continues to rate Spain at very high risk for the plurality of media providers²⁷. At the same time, the specific ownership-transparency indicator improves from very high risk in 2025 to medium-low risk in 2026; the Commission itself links this improvement to the legislative reforms envisaged, particularly the creation of the State Register and the new transparency requirements. Stakeholders consulted by the Commission consider that, until those reforms take effect, the current legal framework will remain insufficient to guarantee ownership transparency.

The Euromedia Ownership Monitor 2025²⁸ corroborates this diagnosis through its analysis of corporate ownership structures. Its study of Spain, published in December 2025 using information available up to 15 September of that year, identifies complex or highly complex ownership structures in 13 of the 24 media outlets analysed and notes that very few outlets directly disclose the identity of their beneficial owners. It also finds limited availability of financial information at the individual media-outlet level. Given its cut-off date, these findings should be treated as a baseline rather than as evidence of deterioration during 2026.

As of September 2026, progress is primarily legislative rather than operational. The bill directly addresses several of the shortcomings identified in 2025: it would extend ownership transparency beyond the audiovisual sector, establish a dedicated registration infrastructure, strengthen obligations linked to editorial independence, and create a concentration-assessment procedure expressly focused on media pluralism and editorial independence. These changes, however, are not yet part of the national framework in force. The main challenge is to complete their adoption and implementation and translate the obligations already established by the EMFA into effective, verifiable national mechanisms subject to adequate oversight.

02Has the situation improved?

03Outstanding problems

Media regulatorsAVMSD Art. 30

The CNMC’s additional EMFA competences still depend on Draft Law 121/000068, which remains before Congress. Its budget is still subject to binding expenditure limits processed through government ministries, and it has limited autonomy over its budget and staff just as it takes on DSA and EMFA tasks. The July 2026 renewal of its council left the appointment procedure unchanged.

Public service mediaEMFA Art. 5

The rules for RTVE’s governance and for appointing its board and president are unchanged since the 2025 report, which found effective independence lacking. The framework mandate, expired since 2017, is still being drafted, has not been made public and depends on an opposition-controlled committee, leaving RTVE’s funding without long-term criteria.

Misuse of state fundsEMFA Art. 25

Institutional advertising is still allocated under Law 29/2005, with no verifiable allocation criteria and no breakdown by outlet. The Draft Law on Public Sector Advertising has not been adopted, the CNMC has warned that its cap could let regional outlets depend entirely on public money, and the new framework agreement for media buying has missed its timetable, with the current one extended to December 2026.

Ownership transparency and pluralismEMFA Art. 6 & 22

Ownership transparency obligations still cover only audiovisual services, and there is no procedure for assessing media concentrations for their impact on pluralism and editorial independence. Draft Law 121/000068 would fill both gaps but has not been adopted. Complex ownership structures and scarce disclosure of beneficial owners remain common, and the Media Pluralism Monitor still rates Spain at very high risk for the plurality of media providers.