Rash And Damaging Amendments

Belgrade, August 23, 2005 - The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) wishes to draw the attention of members of the Serbian Parliament to the potentially serious consequences of adopting amendments to the Broadcast Act which have been drafted in haste and are now proposed by the Government with the support of the Broadcast Agency Council.

At a yesterday's meeting of the Parliament's Information and Culture Committee the draft amendments were adopted without giving representatives of ANEM a chance to explain their objections. Instead they were told that the committee members were obliged to be in the parliament to vote on the repeal of the Serbian Oil Industry Act.

The Committee meeting turned into a song of praise for Radio Television Serbia and accusations that the commercial media are conspiring against the state television, without any response being made to the key issues which ANEM has repeatedly raised in public. There are no guarantees that Radio Television Serbia, which is still a state media company under the direct control of the Government, will really be transformed into a public company once it has been given the authority to collect obligatory subscriptions. This transformation has not happened in the three years since the Act requiring it came into force and there is no clear line of responsibility if the new deadlines are ignored.

There has also been no response on the issue of guarantees of the independence of the Broadcast Agency Council after the length of members' terms was changed after their appointment and after decisions taken on personnel. Nor has there been a response to objections to the principle of rotating Council members and the unacceptable provision for the entire membership to be changed within the term of one parliament.

The amendments also propose revoking the power of veto for the Vojvodina representative on the Council in issues concerning the province. No kind of alternative has been proposed for protecting the special needs of Vojvodina as a multiethnic environment. The Government has also failed to explain why it is extending the deadline for privatisation of local government media contrary to the recommendations of its own Privatisation Agency which sees this deadline as inappropriate.

ANEM notes that there are no obstacles to beginning the transformation of Radio Television Serbia and preparing to call public bids for the issue of broadcasting licences under the present Broadcast Act. Amendments to the Act can only slow down these processes and thus themselves testify to the lack of political will for reform and to the reluctance of the authorities to relinquish the mechanisms of pressure on the media which they have inherited.

ANEM warns members of the parliament that by voting for the proposed amendments they will not save Radio Television Serbia from financial disaster. Instead they will help retain direct government influence on the media of Serbia and further delay, fatally, the reforms which are so urgently needed.

Slobodan Stojsic,
Chairman of the ANEM Managing Board