Press release regarding work on the new law on public information and media

Media Association, Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), Association of Online Media (AOM), Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina (IJAV), Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS), the Business Association of Local and Independent Media “Local Press”, Transparency Serbia and Journalists’ Association of Serbia (JAS), announced today that they sent letters to the Government of the Republic of Serbia and Ministry of Culture and Information to express their concern by to-date work of the Working Group of Ministry of Culture and Information in drawing up the Draft Law amending the Law on Public Information and Media.

Media Association, ANEM, AOM, IJAV, IJAS, Local Press, Transparency Serbia and JAS have accepted the goals defined in the Strategy for the Development of Public Information System, adopted by the Government of Republic of Serbia in January 2020, including the activities related to its implementation from the Action Plan for implementing Strategy from December last year, firmly believing that the baseline for drawing up the Draft will be precisely the one defined in the Strategy and Action Plan. Motivated by this belief, they have accepted the nominations of their representatives for the Working Group in charge of drawing up the Draft. Still, now the same representatives are witnessing the attempts of introducing the amendments into the Draft law amending the Law on Public Information and Media as an alternative or even as an only solution, leaving the direction of realising the goals defined in the Strategy, as such amendments were not at all listed in the activities on implementation of Strategy in the adopted Action Plan.

Some of the examples considered by the Working Group derogate not only the Media Strategy, but also the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, in particular the rights of freedom of expression, or even collide with applicable international standards in this area, such as follows:

In the letters sent to the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Culture and Information, it has been indicated that alternative solutions in the Draft of such a critical law are not and cannot be an acceptable practice in the legislative work. It has been requested from the Ministry of Culture and Information to prevent the attempts of discussing solutions rejected as unacceptable even in the phase of drawing up the Strategy and Action Plan, and, in particular, it has been requested to prevent allowing such solutions to be introduced into the Law through the back door. This would upset the creation of a legal framework that should guarantee freedom of expression, media freedom, journalists’ safety, media pluralism, and development of media market, empowerment of journalist profession, educated citizens and institutions capable of applying the regulations, which the Government of the Republic of Serbia has supported by adopting the Strategy.

In their letter, the organisations had, first of all, indicated that their primary goal was to ascertain full respect of deadlines provided for in the Action Plan, and in particular, in the context of the expected calling of the elections, to avoid any further delay in realisation of the Strategy goals. In that respect, from the President of the Working Group, Slavica Trifunovic, Assistant Minister of Culture and Information, it has been requested to entirely remove from the agenda of the Working Group the proposals contradicting the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and in particular, the right of freedom of expression, and/or the proposals conflicting the applicable international standards in this area and the adopted Media Strategy.

In the letter, it has been further noted that in the event of the Ministry of Culture and Information and the President of the Working group ignoring these requests, the representatives of the Working Group from Media Association, ANEM, AOM, IJAV, IJAS, Local Press, Transparency Serbia and JAS, will refuse, by their signature and reputation, to stand behind the amended solutions and proposals that in any way whatsoever deviate from the goals of the Strategy and the measures, and/or the activities and its implementation provided for in the Action Plan.