EU Delegation: Appoint new members of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services as soon as possible

The appointment of new members of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services should be carried out without further delay.

This was announced to "Vijesti" yesterday by the Delegation of the European Union (EU) in Podgorica.

The newspaper asked the EU Delegation whether Montenegro would have a problem closing the negotiation chapter 10 (information society and media) by the end of the year, bearing in mind that the president of its parliament Andrija Mandic did not announce a public call for the election of two members of the Council of the Agency because the mandate of the two members lasts until December 2024.

"We are aware that the Assembly has initiated the procedure regarding the appointment to the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services. We expect the competent authorities to implement the appointment procedure, in accordance with the currently valid legislation, without further delay", said the EU Delegation, headed by the ambassador Johan Sattler.

At the end of November, the Parliament started the process of determining the form according to which non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as one of the proposers of the Council of the Agency, submit a report on their work for the previous three years. The Parliamentary Administrative Committee is responsible for preparing the form, which is a prerequisite for the beginning of the procedure for appointing members of the Agency's Council.

"Vijesti" announced yesterday that, although the government says it hopes to close four chapters in the negotiations with the EU by the end of the year, there is a possibility that one of them, chapter 10, will not be "crossed out" because the parliament has not appointed, nor can it do by 2025, new members of the Council of the Agency.

According to the information of the newspaper, European Commission officials asked the Government why this did not happen, saying, as many times before, that all institutions should work at full capacity.

However, the source of "Vijesti" from Brussels said that he had no information that the closing of the media chapter could be blocked, reminding that the discussions about the so-called common positions for four ongoing chapters on the working bodies of the Council of the EU.

To representatives of NGOs from the field of media Milan Radović and Montenegrin PEN Center Rajko Todorovic the mandate in the Council lasts until December, so the Speaker of the Parliament Mandić had to publish an advertisement for the appointment of their "successors" at the latest half a year ago. Since he has not done so, new members cannot be appointed.

Mandić did not answer the questions of "Vijesti" why he did not announce a public invitation, when he plans to do so, and by when new members can be expected to be appointed. The proposal of the list of candidates for members is determined by the Administrative Board of the Assembly, and it appoints them.

The Council has five members (one of whom is elected as the president), and they are candidates: universities, NGOs dealing with the protection of human rights and freedoms, NGOs in the field of media, the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Montenegrin PEN Center, and the Bar Association of Montenegro Above.

With the adoption of the Law on Audiovisual Media Services, which this summer "replaced" the Law on Electronic Media, the conditions for proposing candidates for members of the Council of the Agency from NGOs have been tightened, thus excluding the possibility that existed until then - that the Administrative Board chooses who will be included on list of candidates.

According to the newly approved act (Article 150), an NGO can be a proposer if, among other things, in the previous three years before the publication of the advertisement, the annual budget for the implementation of activities in the field in which it proposes a candidate was not less than 3.000 euros, and if in the same period at least 2.000 euros were spent during one year for the implementation of activities in the aforementioned area.

If, as written in the law (Article 157), NGOs submit several separate proposals, the list determined by the Administrative Board must include the candidate who has the support of the largest number of organizations that meet the prescribed conditions. This was not the case, according to the act that was valid until June (when the Agency was called the Agency for Electronic Media).