Expired legal deadlines regarding public services.

Written by: Rade Veljanovski

On September 25, the 90-day deadline set by law for the National Assembly of Serbia and the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina to adopt the act "regulating the rules for conducting a public competition for the selection of candidates for members of the Programming Council" expired. The law was adopted on June 16 of this year at the XIV session of the National Assembly, the president signed it the following day, and it came into force on June 25. This was specified by the special Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Public Media Services, whose independent articles, as well as transitional and final provisions, are an integral part of the law on public services.

During the three-month period, nothing happened; there are no conditions for the competition to select members of the Programming Councils in both public services, and according to the law, the mandate of the current members will expire after six months. The new law acknowledged the reasonable objection of media experts that the programming councils, as representatives of the audience, i.e., citizens, cannot be elected within public services by the boards of directors, as was the case under the old law, but that their external election is necessary. This should henceforth be the responsibility of the parliamentary committees dealing with public information.

Although it has an advisory role, the Programming Council is an important body because it should contribute to a more consistent fulfillment of the legal, primarily programming, obligations of public services and enable public oversight, which has so far been one of the greatest regulatory and practical shortcomings. For this reason, the law stipulates that, unlike other individuals appointed or elected to various positions in public services, who remain in their positions until the end of their mandates, the mandate of the members of the Programming Councils expires within six months from the entry into force of the law, regardless of when they were elected.

The missed deadline jeopardizes the timely selection of the Programming Councils, but the problem is greater because the new law introduced the institution of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Listeners, Viewers, and Readers, and these independent bodies should be elected precisely by the Programming Councils. If there are no councils, there is no commissioner, and thus the practice of very poor, almost non-existent communication with listeners and viewers continues, who have the right to ask questions, make suggestions, and request answers and explanations on a daily basis, thereby exercising public oversight over the programs of public services, which is guaranteed by law and is one of the important standards in democratic media systems.

Another important obligation has been missed. The Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) was mandated by law to also adopt an "act regulating the procedure for appointing members of the Boards of Directors of public media services" within 90 days, as the criteria for selecting members of these bodies have been changed in accordance with the requirements of the Media Strategy. At this moment, and it is unclear for how much longer, REM does not have a Council that makes decisions, and thus the legal confusion regarding both the Regulator and the public services will continue. The law also obliges public services RTS and RTV to align their acts with the provisions of the new law within six months, for which there is still time, but so far there are no indications that any progress is being made.

The undemocratic nature, inconsistency, and actually hybrid nature of the current regime is confirmed daily. Years of complaints, appeals, and research testify to a media transition that is going in the opposite direction; all this has resulted in the Media Strategy, which anticipated changes to all three media laws. The authorities could not deny that much is wrong in the media sphere, so they agreed to amend the media laws, but then delayed their preparation and adoption, attempting to incorporate as few reform solutions and standards from the democratic world as possible. Thus, in the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media were only adopted at the end of 2023, and then they received criticism from Brussels, prompting hurried amendments and supplements at the beginning of this year, without public discussion. The Law on Public Media Services only received a new form at the end of last year, with discussions held in January and adopted, along with the other two, in June.

This sequence of events demonstrates that even when the regime agrees to include some quality reform provisions in the laws, it then avoids their implementation unscrupulously, by missing deadlines it itself has set. The current year is rife with such examples, from drastic delays, and in fact systemic procrastination, regarding the selection of members of the REM Council to the implementation of the Law on Public Media Services.

Not to mention the toleration of excessive media concentration, the jeopardizing of media pluralism, and the existence of media monopoly. It would be naive to think that this reflects a lack of care from the authorities towards the media system and public communication. On the contrary, it is a calculated approach to seize as much media space as possible for themselves in chaotic relations, finding ad hoc, voluntaristic solutions that are publicly uncontrolled and without regulatory oversight.

The author is a member of the working group for the preparation of the Law on Public Media Services.

Source: Danas