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Selected members of the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) Rodoljub Šabić, Mileva Malešić, Ira Prodanov Krajišnik, and Dubravka Valić Nedeljković announced today that they will officially resign on Friday at 12 PM if the National Assembly of Serbia does not repeat the voting and conduct an election between the two legally established candidates for the Council of National Minorities by then.

The Assembly Committee of Serbia for Culture and Information has established a list of two candidates for the member of the Council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) proposed by the national councils of national minorities – Sreten Jovanović and Ištvan Bodžoni.

The Committee of the Assembly of Serbia for Culture and Information did not adopt the list of candidates for the election of a member of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) from the ranks of national minorities. However, the proposal by Committee member Nebojša Bakarec from the Serbian Progressive Party was accepted, requesting the nominator to supplement the documentation for candidate Sreten Jovanović within the next seven days. The other candidate for the national councils' member of the REM Council is Ištvan Bodžoni.

In the program "Important Matters", there was no misuse of minors for political purposes, and the nature of that program content and its participation was adapted to the age, maturity, and reason for participation, in accordance with the Law on Electronic Media, concluded the opinion of the Monitoring and Program Analysis Service of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) following a report from the President of the RTS Management Board.

The authorities in Serbia selectively apply the law in the selection of the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), reducing the independent regulatory institution to an empty shell that, as interlocutors of FoNet believe, aims to maintain continuity of control over the media space.

The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) requests that, due to the scenes of violence broadcast on Pink television in recent evenings, the expert services of the Regulatory Authority determine violations of the Law on Electronic Media and that the Council of REM be urgently constituted in order to impose appropriate measures.

The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) platform today once again expresses concern over the undemocratic process by which the National Assembly conducted the latest election of members to the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), a key media regulator in Serbia.

"From this perspective, it is completely clear that we will not have a new composition of the REM Council in the foreseeable future," stated Saša Mirković, a representative of ANEM and a previous candidate for a member of the REM Council in the first process, to Mašina.

Four out of eight members of the REM Council, who were elected this week in the Assembly of Serbia, have submitted their resignations. We are publishing the statement in its entirety: