05. 07. 2002

Broadcast Bill Resubmitted to Serbian Parliament

BELGRADE, July 5, 2002 - The Serbian Government has forwarded to the Parliament the Broadcast Bill which was withdrawn from procedure at the beginning of the week for revision. In the new draft the industry control body, the Broadcast Agency Board, will have only nine members, instead of the fifteen in the earlier draft, and the majority of these will be state nominations, rather than the majority civil society nominations as previously. The government's chief whip in the Parliament, Cedomir Jovanovic, said today that all the "technical obstacles" because of which the draft was withdrawn have been resolved. Jovanovic claimed that despite the reduction in size and the dropping of NGO proposers for Board members, the industry control organisation would be "depoliticised". OSCE media freedom representative Freimut Duve has written to Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic expressing his concern over the problems of this legislation. Duve's advisor, Aleksandar Ivanko, told B92 today that Duve had written to Djindjic saying that he expects the legislation to be adopted as soon as possible. OSCE Ambassador Stefan Sannino also met Serbian Government representatives to press for adoption of the bill.