Merošina has announced a media competition for 2026, with applications for the committees not yet available.

As stated in the text of the competition, the allocated funds for this purpose amount to one million dinars, with the minimum amount of funds that can be awarded per project being 100,000 dinars and the maximum being 500,000 dinars.

We remind you that applications for the project evaluation committees are not possible until the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications publishes the final list of candidates for the committees in 2026. Currently, a preliminary list has been published, along with an appeal from the Ministry not to announce competitions until the list is final.

"We also remind you that all bodies of local self-government units and provinces that conduct public competitions in the field of public information are obliged to wait for the publication of the final ranking list of candidates for members of the competition committees in the field of public information, which is published by the Ministry, and that until the final ranking list of candidates for committee members in the field of public information is published, they cannot form their own project evaluation committees in this area. After the final ranking list is formed, candidates will have the opportunity to apply for membership in the competition committees in the field of public information conducted by local self-government units, provinces, and the Ministry," the Ministry stated at that time.

However, Merošina is not the first local self-government to announce a media competition for this year. The municipality of Žagubica announced the competition as early as the end of December, and the deadlines for project applications and the committee expired on January 19, while the committee was appointed after the Ministry's appeal to wait for the final list of candidates for the committees.

Moreover, two out of three members of the appointed committee in Žagubica did not apply at all for project evaluation this year.

Journalistic and media associations have requested from the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications to immediately publish the biographies of all candidates for committee members in media competitions listed on the published preliminary list, in order to initiate a more transparent process of project co-funding of media content and distribution of a budget exceeding 15 million euros in 2026.

The associations (Association of Independent Electronic Media – ANEM, Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia – NUNS, Journalists' Association of Serbia – UNS, Media Association, and Local Press) pointed out that it is problematic that only the candidates themselves can submit objections to the preliminary scoring list, and only if they notice that they have not been adequately scored by the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications based on the documentation they submitted.

No response has been received from the Ministry, nor have the biographies of potential committee member candidates been published.

Source: ANEM

The project of the Association of Independent Electronic Media "Participatory Monitoring of the Implementation of the Co-Funding Process for Projects" is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the MATRA program. ANEM is solely responsible for the content and it does not necessarily reflect the official views of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.