Arte has decided to suspend its contractual relations with the Polish public broadcaster TVP.

According to Le Blog TV News, this follows amendments to Poland’s broadcast legislation impacting on TVP that came into effect earlier this year.

It adds that no co-productions will be launched as Arte does not have the assurance that freedom of expression, editorial independence and pluralism of public TV are guaranteed in Poland.

Arte has worked with TVP since 2001 and says it deeply regrets to have now taken this decision.

It will launch programmes subtitled into Polish this autumn to complement those that have already been available on its site in English and Spanish, co-financed by the EU, since last year.