Dragoljub Duško Vuković, Niko Martinović and Jelena Šušanj are candidates for membership in the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services (SAMU). Their candidacies, it was announced today at the Assembly's Administrative Committee, are timely and complete.
"The Administrative Board has established a list of candidates. The Board will publish the list on the Parliament's website, the Official Gazette and the daily newspaper 'Dan'," said the president of that parliamentary working body, Jelena Nedović, stating that "the situation is the same as in the last competition."
This is the fourth competition for the election of two SAMU members this year. The first was annulled due to alleged technical errors, and during the second, alleged irregularities were found regarding the nominators. Although these candidates were put on the agenda after the third competition, most MPs did not want to express their views on them - they abstained.
The AMU Council has been operating with a truncated composition for years - instead of five, it has three members. The work has been made even more difficult after Branko Bošković recently resigned from the position of president, following the decision of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption that he violated regulations by voting for his own election to head SAMU four years ago.
The Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services has been in a reduced composition since December last year, as the mandates of representatives of non-governmental organizations in the field of media, Milan Radović and the Montenegrin PEN Center, Rajko Todorović, expired. Although the competition was supposed to be announced in the middle of last year, Mandić did so in January this year, but soon withdrew the invitation, explaining that he was doing so "due to a technical error". Two candidacies were submitted for the repeated competition - Dragoljub Duško Vuković was proposed by non-governmental organizations, while the candidate of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts was Niko Martinović, but the Administrative Board assessed them as incomplete at the end of March.
The NGO that nominated Vuković at the time announced that such a decision by the Administrative Board was "politically motivated and legally unfounded, but also a clear expression of the ruling majority's intention to capture the media sector through party politics at the cost of jeopardizing Montenegro's European path."
A few days later, a warning came from the European Union (EU) Delegation in Podgorica. They said that it was urgent to appoint new members of SAMU to ensure its functioning and independence.
Although the Administrative Committee concluded this summer that the candidacies of Vuković and Martinović were valid, they did not receive the required number of votes at the parliamentary session on July 30 - out of a total of 56 MPs, 12 voted for the proposal, while the rest - 44 of them - abstained.
During that vote, cries of “Oh, my Europe” were heard from the assembly hall. Europe responded very quickly. In its latest progress report, the European Commission stressed that the Assembly had not yet appointed a member of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services and warned that this “could have consequences for Chapter 10 in the negotiations with the EU”.
"The Parliament has repeatedly failed to appoint two members of the AMU Council, significantly exceeding the deadline prescribed by the Law on Audiovisual Media Services. The Parliament has twice annulled the competition for the selection of members. Additionally, in the third repeated attempt, in July 2025, the Parliament again failed to appoint members of the AMU Council. This situation prevents the full implementation of the legal framework and may have consequences for Chapter 10 in the negotiations with the EU. Montenegro must urgently appoint the remaining members of the AMU Council," the report states.
Shortly after such EC assessments, the President of the Parliamentary Administrative Committee, Jelena Nedović (PES), announced, during a conference titled "Media Horizons - Efficiency of Regulatory Bodies", that she "has nothing personally against" the candidates proposed by the NGO - Vuković.
"Nor do any of us believe it, but I think that a compromise measure would be for non-governmental organizations to propose another candidate in this public call. Maybe the MPs will agree on that other candidate because, after all, the law is such that a candidate is elected in parliament," Nedović said on November 6.
Non-governmental organizations that supported Vuković's candidacy responded that the PES MP's stance "proves that the parliamentary majority is trying to politically capture one of the most important institutions in the media system, contrary to the law and European standards."
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