19 GROPPERA RADIO AG AND OTHERS v. SWITZERLAND JUDGMENT 58. The Government disputed this contention. They did not deny that Groppera Radio AG was a broadcasting enterprise but they included in that category community-antenna companies which received programmes over the air and retransmitted them by cable. Furthermore, they distinguished between two national licensing systems: the Italian one, applicable to Groppera Radio AG, and the Swiss one, applicable to the co-operative. They considered that they had made legitimate use of the second system in refusing to endorse the application for a licence, as to have done so would have breached Switzerland’s international undertakings - especially as Sound Radio used VHF, a frequency intended purely for national broadcasting - and would have been to disregard the conditions attaching to the licences granted to cable companies. 59. The Court agrees with the Government that the third sentence of Article 10 § 1 (art. 10-1) is applicable in the present case. What has to be determined is the scope of its application. 60. The insertion of the sentence in issue, at an advanced stage of the preparatory work on the Convention, was clearly due to technical or practical considerations such as the limited number of available frequencies and the major capital investment required for building transmitters. It also reflected a political concern on the part of several States, namely that broadcasting should be the preserve of the State. Since then, changed views and technical progress, particularly the appearance of cable transmission, have resulted in the abolition of State monopolies in many European countries and the establishment of private radio stations - often local ones in addition to the public services. Furthermore, national licensing systems are required not only for the orderly regulation of broadcasting enterprises at the national level but also in large part to give effect to international rules, including in particular number 2020 of the Radio Regulations (see paragraph 35 above). 61. The object and purpose of the third sentence of Article 10 § 1 (art. 10-1) and the scope of its application must however be considered in the context of the Article as a whole and in particular in relation to the requirements of paragraph 2 (art. 10-2). There is no equivalent of the sentence under consideration in the first paragraph of Articles 8, 9 and 11 (art. 8, art. 9, art. 11), although their structure is in general very similar to that of Article 10 (art. 10). Its wording is not unlike that of the last sentence of Article 11 § 2 (art. 11-2). In this respect, however, the two Articles (art. 10, art. 11) differ in their structure. Article 10 (art. 10) sets out some of the permitted restrictions even in paragraph 1 (art. 10-1). Article 11 (art. 11), on the other hand, provides only in paragraph 2 (art. 11-2) for the possibility of special restrictions on the exercise of the freedom of association by members of the armed forces, the police and the administration of the State, and it could be inferred from this that those restrictions are not covered by the requirements in the first

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