ANEM: Changes to Law on Electronic Media Watchdog Should Have Been Adopted Before Publishing a Call for Election of Its Members

REM - Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (Beta/Milos Miskov)

Sasa Mirkovic, a representative of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), on May 20 said that changes to the Law on Electronic Media referring to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) should have been adopted before publishing a public call for election of members to the REM Council.

“Presentation of a Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media cannot substitute for the legally prescribed public debate on the aforementioned legal acts,” Mirkovic said at a meeting at the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications.

He said the Ministry had to take responsibility for the delay, which was triggering “doubts about the good intention” of the lawmakers.

“The proposed amendments to the provisions relating to media publishers directly or indirectly owned by the state do not provide enough guarantees or hope that  concrete improvements would be achieved that would contribute to media pluralism and freedom of expression,” Mirkovic said, according to a release from ANEM.

He also said that the draft text of the proposed amendments had been delivered to the debate participants just before the meeting, “following the intervention” of a representative of the OSCE Mission to Serbia.