28. 06. 2013

FINAL REMARKS ON THE DRAFT LAW ON PUBLIC INFORMATION AND MEDIA

After the public discussion on the Draft Law on Public Information and the Media, which ended in March 2013, the competent Ministry has considered the received comments and continued the consultations with state authorities and bodies, based on which it has amended the Draft and submitted it to the Working Group for opinion. As a representative in the Working Group of the Media Coalition (ANEM, UNS, NUNS, NDNV and Local Press), ANEM President Sasa Mirkovic provided the Ministry of Culture and Media with the comments of the Coalition on the final version of the Draft together with concrete proposals for amending certain articles of the Draft.

As some important suggestions of the Media Coalition have not been considered even in the final version of the Draft, the Coalition still insisted on the following:

1. In the chapter IV of the Draft, which refers to the co-financing of projects in the field of public information: prescribing minimum budget funds (2% of the total budget funds on an annual basis) to be earmarked for accomplishing public interest in the field of public information at all levels of the government (republic, province and local); clarification of the criterion "respect for the professional and ethical media standards" for project evaluation - acknowledging the competence of self-regulatory body and the system of independent verification of circulation (for print media) and compliance with the decisions of the RBA (for broadcasters); uniformly prescribing closer rules for co-financing of projects in the field of public information with a by-law of the competent ministry, which will be applied regardless of the level of government providing the funds; in the penal provisions - prescribing the liability of the responsible person in a public authority for acting contrary to the provisions of the law pertaining to co-financing of projects in the field of public information;

2. In the chapter V of the Draft - Media: clearer specifying the right in the legal transaction ("the right to publish specific media", instead of "programming and editorial concepts")

3. In the chapter VII of the Draft - The publicity of data on media and the Register: this chapter should be regulated in line with the suggestions of the Business Register Agency, with a slight modification concerning the precise definition of the purpose of the register;

4. In the chapter VIII - Protection of media pluralism: specifying the period of time for determining the merger; precise defining of competences of the relevant ministry and the regulatory authority (RBA) in this area;

5. In the chapter XXIII - Transitional and final provisions: prescribing the model of privatization of media, without giving the authority to the Privatization Agency to choose the model; specifying the date of the mandatory completion of the privatization of media (December 31, 2014), after which the media that have hot been privatized would be deleted from Register; legal prescribing of the prohibition of state funding of the media as of January 1, 2014, except in line with the provisions prescribing project financing, for which the non-privatized media media may also apply during 2014; in line with the strategic principle and legal solutions to prohibit direct or indirect ownership or participation of the state in ownership of media, clearly establishing the end of application of specific provisions of other laws that are in conflict with this law, including the provisions of the Law on Public Company Tanjug.

These remarks and suggestions on the Draft Law, like all previous ones, have also been prepared by ANEM legal team for the needs of the Media Coalition.

See the final remarks and suggestions of the Media Coalition on the Draft Law on Public Information and the Media here (in Serbian).