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Kremlin backs bill curbing foreign ownership of news aggregators

Moscow believes it will not be difficult for news aggregators to comply with the nation’s statutory requirements, if a law on restricting foreign participation is passed

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, October 23. /TASS/. The Russian presidential administration believes it will not be difficult for news aggregators to comply with the nation’s statutory requirements, if a law on restricting foreign participation is passed. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov affirmed this when asked by reporters whether the Kremlin considers this bill to be justified.

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"Yes, but, of course, experts will have to work on the issue," he noted.

"Of course, the aggregators, which cover a certain number of users, can, from the point of view of experts, be considered an equivalent to media outlets in one way or another," the Kremlin official stressed.

The press secretary recalled that restrictions on foreign stakes over 20% in Russia’s media had been in effect for several years now. "Implementing this law here did not cause any significant problems, with many companies bringing everything into line with the law within the established deadlines," he pointed out.

Peskov disagreed with the assertions that the mere emergence of the bill had sparked a drop in the value of Russia’s Internet giant Yandex. "This is unlikely to be linked to market volatility. "There were some statements by Yandex that it would not be difficult [for it] to bring everything into line with the law, if it is passed. There is no link whatsoever here," the spokesman emphasized.

Legislation to equate news aggregators to media

On Monday, a group of lawmakers submitted a bill to the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament), which limits the share of news aggregators’ foreign ownership to 20%. This initiative proposes extending the legal requirements already in place for mainstream media outlets to this mechanism for distributing content online.

According to the explanatory note to the bill, an aggregator cannot be owned by foreign countries, international organizations and organizations controlled by them; foreign legal entities, partially foreign-owned Russian legal entities, foreign citizens, stateless persons and Russian nationals holding foreign citizenship.

The draft law envisages a six-month period for bringing any company’s founding documents into line with the regulations. Should there be any failure to comply with these requirements, a court ruling could block the news aggregators.

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