Deputies of the Socialist People's Party (SNP), Social Democratic Party (SDP), Democratic Montenegro, Civic Movement URA, as well as independent deputies, are ready to support the amendments of the Center for Civic Education (CGO) to a set of media and related laws.
The representatives of CGO, Boris Marić and Ana Vujošević, during the past two days met with the representatives of the parliamentary clubs in the Assembly, in order to present the prepared amendments to the set of media and related laws and to hear the views of the deputies about them.
As announced by the CGO, the meetings were held with SNP deputies Aleksandar Damjanović and Danijela Marković, deputies of the Club of Independent Deputies, representatives of Democratic Montenegro Velizar Kaluđerović and Neven Gošović, URA Citizens' Movement Dritan Abazović and Miloš Konatar, as well as with representatives of SDP, Ivan Vujović and Mirko Stanić.
"All the interlocutors expressed their full readiness to support the proposed amendments in the coming period", announced the CGE.
As stated, the amendments were prepared with the aim of establishing equal opportunities for all media in Montenegro through precise regulation of access to public funds and media financing from the Montenegrin budget, and are the result of multi-year research and analysis, national and international, carried out by the CGE.
"The findings of the CGO research, which were taken as relevant by numerous international organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations, showed that media financing in Montenegro from public funds is non-transparent, uncontrolled and without clear criteria," the announcement states.
As they add from CGO, the tendency of state authorities to maintain their influence on the media, through selective funding, clientelistic relations and creation of unequal working conditions in the market, which directly endangers competition, but also exerts pressure on editorial policy, has been observed.
"This bad practice is helped by the unimplemented legislative framework, which further polarizes the media scene in Montenegro, collapses media freedom and consequently lowers the level of quality of informing the public," the CCE assessed.
That organization, in order to overcome the mapped problems, in cooperation with legal experts, prepared a set of amendments to several legal texts dealing with that area.
"Which we believe can provide the necessary level of regulation, transparency and equal treatment when it comes to financing the media from the budget of Montenegro," says the announcement of the CGE.
The amendments were prepared as part of the project "Regulation of equal access of the media to public funds in Montenegro", which is part of the regional project "Media Observatory for South-Eastern Europe", which is implemented by a regional partnership of ten civil society organizations, led by the Peace Institute from Ljubljana as the project holder. , with the financial support of the European Union.
CGO, as announced, will continue with consultations during the next week and will meet with representatives of other parliamentary clubs in the Assembly.
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