By his inaction, the President of the Parliament of Montenegro, Andrija Mandić, violates the recently adopted Law on Audiovisual Media Services and makes its application impossible. The Government of Montenegro, the Ministry of Culture and Media and the Ministry responsible for cooperation between the Government and the Assembly are observing all this silently, said the director of the Media Center, Goran Đurović.
"The Law on Audiovisual Media Services was adopted in June 2024, as part of the so-called IBAR (media) laws. Article 153 of the Law on AVM Services provides that: 'the procedure for appointing a member of the Council of the Agency shall be initiated by the President of the Assembly by publishing a public invitation to authorized proposers, no later than six months before the end of the mandate to the member of the Council of the Agency'. (representative of the Montenegrin PEN Center), the mandate expires in December this year, so the deadline of 5 months stipulated by the law has already been exceeded. In accordance with the law, the President of the Assembly Andrija Mandić had to announce a public invitation to the authorized proposers in July," Đurović said. .
He added that the Administrative Committee of the Assembly, headed by Jelena Nedović (PES), was obliged to, based on paragraph 4 of Article 149 of the Law on AVM Services, prepare a form in which authorized proposers for members of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services submit applications and work reports for the previous three years.
"After two initiatives of the Media Center (September 10 and November 15), the Administrative Board finally prepared and adopted the forms in which the data of authorized proposers are submitted at the end of November (with a delay of almost 6 months), so that the procedure for checking the fulfillment of the conditions for authorized proposers The consequence of not applying the law is that in December 2024, the Council of the Agency will have 3 instead of 5 members and will potentially be blocked, because it is necessary to make decisions that all three members vote equally. If it is known that the procedure for appointing the members of the Agency Council takes at least 2-3 months, it is clear that the two vacancies in the Agency Council will not be filled until the regular session of the Assembly in March 2025 to be adopted by the Council, and on the basis of which the new law should be implemented, will be pending," said Đurović.
He adds that the Council of the Agency is also a secondary authority in making certain decisions related to the activities of the regulator of the audio-visual media services market.
"For example, the Council of the Agency is an important body if the Agency decides to restrict cable operators from broadcasting inappropriate media content from the environment. Such an example was the adoption of a decision to limit the broadcasting of Pink and Happy TV content, whose headquarters are in Serbia, when they are in their permanently insulted the state of Montenegro and the citizens who feel Montenegrin nationally impose a penalty or a warning measure on a media (public or commercial) for non-compliance with legal provisions. Recently, the Agency imposed a legal measure on RTCG because, contrary to legal procedures, it launched a new internet platform for broadcasting content produced by a public media service".
Đurović said that they believe that in the background of this obstruction of the application of the law there are political reasons that are directly related to the process of closing the negotiation chapter 10 (information society and media).
"Political reasons are manifested in the fact that the members of the majority in the Assembly have become aware that, thanks to the new law, they can no longer decide on representatives of NGOs in the Council of the Agency. This directly leads to a decrease in the interest of parties in power to initiate the procedure for appointing new members of the Council of the Agency The Media Center, together with other representatives of NGOs from the field of media, made a significant contribution to the adoption of new legal solutions that reduce the inappropriate influence of political parties on the independence of the regulator, i.e. the AVM Agency. If the President of the Assembly Andrija Mandić does not immediately implement the Law on AVM Services and publishes a public call for the appointment of Council members, it will be a clear message to the European Union in anticipation of the intergovernmental meeting on December 17 (the Government of Montenegro and the European Commission) that can only be interpreted so that the authorities in Montenegro are not interested in the implementation of the IBAR law and that, in fact, the EU accession process is not a priority of those in power".
Đurović also said that if Mandić does not immediately implement the Law on AVM Services and publishes a public call for the appointment of Council members, they suspect that a scenario is being prepared in which, after the closing of 4 negotiation chapters in December (among which Chapter 10 - IT society and media), the parliamentary majority to amend the law in order to ensure full control of the election of members of the Council of the Agency.
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