Ljubljana University Professor: Telekom's Role in Serbian Media Sector Clear

Telekom Srbija (BetaPhoto)

Professor and chief of the Ljubljana University's Department for Communicology Marko Milosavljevic has said that the fact that some important things were taken out of the European Parliament's report on Serbia or went unmentioned "indicates that the document is severely lacking."

"This casts doubt on the way and criteria that were used to create the report, who was included in it, in which way and were there other influences, and not just lobbying," Milosavljevic told the BETA news agency.

The European Parliament's MPs adopted last week a resolution on Serbia which, among other things, reiterates concern about the dominant market position of the Telekom Srbija company and due to allegations that the ruling party was using this to boost its influence in the media market in Serbia.

Milosavljevic, a member of the Council of Europe's expert group for media sustainability, said that Telekom's role was clear in the media sector in Serbia.

"The influence that Telekom has in the market and does it have a dominant position is not the only problem. The bigger problem is that Telekom, as a state company, has created several media companies through its firms in the past several years that function as a parallel media system, which is not only under the influence of, but is directly controlled by the ruling structure," Milosavljevic said.

He also stressed that in EU member states it was hard to find an example in which a state telecommunications company, like in Serbia, directly or indirectly owns "so many media companies that often hide under licensed names (Euronews, Euractiv, Bloomberg etc.) to create the false impression in the domestic and international public that there is pluralism in the media sector in the country."