Students and lecturers of Dutch gain access to VRTNU
To watch programmes on VRT TV's online platform, VRTNU, viewers usually have to be in the European Union, but for a short while now students and lecturers of Dutch outside the European Union have been able to request access to this platform even outside the EU.
VRTNU's Jonas Boets: "All students and lecturers of Dutch have to do to gain access is send an email to vrtnu@vrt.be requesting access and stating that they are a student or lecturer of Dutch. Then they will receive a code that grants them access to all the programmes to which the Flemish public broadcaster owns the rights."
Until now rights issues had prevented the VRT from providing access to this platform outside the EU. Flemish culture minister Sven Gatz (Flemish liberal) recently informed lawmakers on the Flemish Parliament's media select committee that in future the VRT would be providing access to students and lecturers on an individual basis.
Flemish MP Wilfried Vandaele (Flemish nationalist), who has championed this issue in the past said: "For 14,000 students and 6,000 lecturers of Dutch abroad VRT programmes can form an important tool to support their studies”.
Mr Vandaele would like to see a similar opening at the Dutch public broadcaster: "I've asked Mr Gatz to raise the matter within the framework of the Dutch Language Union between Flanders, the Netherlands and Suriname. We'd like to see the Dutch too providing access to their public broadcasts for students and lecturers abroad!"