by Nick Higham BBC media correspondent

A lobbyist's labours are never over.

The Communications Bill has finally reached the end of its interminable progress through both Houses of Parliament with Royal Assent due on Thursday.

But all those clever boys and girls employed to brief, bully or cajole legislators on behalf of the communications industry have plenty of other games to play.

Lord Puttnam had Communications Bill concerns

Several are in Europe.

The European Union is reviewing its Television without Frontiers directive, which was first passed in 1989, in the early days of satellite television.

It was meant to ensure the free flow of television programmes across borders in the interests of a European single market.

In fact cultural and language differences, combined with the fact that the rights to television programmes are almost always sold on a country-by-country basis, mean the expected pan-European television market has never developed.

Significant cases

But there are some pan-European channels, like Sky News, Euronews and Time Warner's CNN, TNT and Cartoon Network, for instance.

And there are some significant cases of transmissions from one country spilling over into another:

Europe is concerned about media ownership

BSkyB has 270,000 subscribers in Ireland, for instance, where the government would like to regulate it but can't because the directive (intent on eliminating national barriers to the single market) lays down that television channels should be regulated in their country of origin.

European regulation has made a difference to British broadcasting, notably in the banning of tobacco advertising.

But the original directive was written so as not to interfere with the UK's existing rules for what was then one of the most developed television markets in the whole continent.

And where regulation did threaten the status quo - by requiring 50% of programmes broadcast on European channels to be European in origin - British negotiators inserted the phrase "where practicable".

This allowed the likes of Sky's movie channels and Time Warner's Cartoon Network to survive and flourish.

Beneficiary

Indeed, you could argue that the only real beneficiary of Europe's single market for television programming has been Hollywood.

At the start of this year the European Commission invited views on updating the directive, which was last modified in 1997.

It wants to know, for instance, whether the rules designed to promote "cultural diversity" and the competitiveness of the European programming industry need updating.

This is important to the French, for whom preserving cultural diversity often seems to mean preserving French culture in the face of an onslaught from the Anglo-Saxon world.

It wants views on updating rules on advertising and sponsorship, partly because technological advances have made interactive TV advertising possible.

Listed events

It wants views on how the rules protecting listed events work in different countries (in fact most European states don't seem to have such rules).

And it is canvassing opinion on how the present rules regulating content - aimed at protecting children from harmful programming - are working.

Last month the European Parliament chipped in. Its committee on culture, youth, education, the media and sport (which makes the full title of our own Ministry of Fun seem meagre) issued its own report on the directive.

The parliament's suggestions for improving the European "audiovisual landscape" (as they say in Brussels) include a pan-European children's network, broadcasting European children's programmes, wider distribution for pan-European channels like Arte and Euronews and the introduction of a Europe-wide list of listed events.

These would include the Olympics, the World Cup and the European Nations Championship.

Potentially most controversial, the parliament also calls for limits on media ownership, on the grounds that too much concentration of ownership "may subvert pluralism and democracy".

This echoes the concerns expressed by Lord Puttnam in the debates on the Communications Bill.

There is clearly plenty for the lobbyists to get their teeth into. The deadline for the submission of written comments is this month, but the signs are that Europe is in no particular hurry.

The process of reviewing the directive is already running late.