The Government does not plan to amend the law despite the Parliament refusing to elect members of the AMU Council

While Montenegro boasts of harmonizing its laws with EU legislation, progress on paper is increasingly not accompanied by the implementation of key reforms.

The latest criticism of this comes from European Commissioner Marta Kos, who says that the EU is concerned about the state of the rule of law in candidate countries, and warns:

"Interference in court proceedings, pressure on officials investigating corruption and politicization of media regulators persist, which is unacceptable. It is clear that if candidates do not respect the implementation of the rule of law in their countries, they will not be able to be members of the Union."

In the case of Montenegro, the criticism also refers to the fact that, despite numerous warnings from the EU, the Parliament has not yet elected members of the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services. The Ministry of European Affairs has not given us a specific answer.

Minister Maida Gorčević says that Montenegro still faces certain challenges in the area of ​​the rule of law, but that we have received positive and encouraging messages from Brussels to continue the good work on closing the chapter. We asked how the Government plans to resolve the issue of the election of AMU members and whether further amendments to the media laws are being considered in this regard. From what we were told, it would seem that the Government has no such plans.

"Montenegro will continue to align its media laws with new EU directives and laws. As the first candidate country, it has already started implementing new European rules. All future changes to the law will be aligned with EU standards and aimed at improving the regulatory framework and creating a stable and free environment for the work of professional media," Gorčević said.

The responsibility for the failure to elect members of the AMU Council lies with the Parliament, or rather the ruling majority, which refuses to elect them. Dragoljub Vuković, who was nominated by NGOs, and Niko Martinović, who was nominated by the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, were left without the necessary majority for election on three occasions.

While the ruling parties are not voting on this, opposition SD MP Boris Mugoša points out that the situation is much more complicated and that the real problems lie in the lack of cooperation within the parliamentary majority.

"Let's remember the famous IBAR. From the great celebration, that it was some kind of achievement in Montenegro, that we passed laws harmonized with EU legislation, we have reached the point where the parliamentary majority, due to their mutual blackmail, trade and desire to politically align all institutions, has not wanted to implement the provisions of the law that we passed for a year, which concern, among other things, the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services," he points out.

The fact that members of the AMU Council were not elected even after the third attempt represents a serious problem for the functioning of this key media regulatory institution.