09. 05. 2005

WHEN LAW IS NOT ABIDED

BELGRADE, May 9, 2005 – One of the problems that Serbia needs to solve in order to enter the European Union one day is the television. Although the Broadcast Act was brought two years ago, nothing has been done in the aspect of television. Almost every Serbian town has its own television station. The owner of the station is by rule from the party in power or a very successful businessman from the area. Apart from this, there are television stations with national or almost national coverage. The majority of them, however, operate without the proper licenses for broadcasting, since the state has not yet implemented the Broadcast Act, which was brought in July 2002. Professor at the Faculty of Political Science Snjezana Milivojevic believes that the changes in the media sphere will not occur any time soon if the international organizations, and European Union before all, stop insisting on that. Milivojevic is also the author of the document reflecting on the state of television in Serbia. The document/report will become one of the most important papers for assessment of the prosperity of Serbia toward the candidacy for entering the European Union. While she claims that the government is responsible for the delay in frequency allocation, the Broadcast Council stresses that the television stations are to blame for the disordered state of the media. “If the broadcasters want the issue solved, then it would be done promptly, but if some of them want to create the problems then it won’t be done so fast”, said the president of the Broadcast Council Nenad Cekic. Serbian Ministry for Capital Investments and its telecommunications sector have recently announced the frequency allocation plan, but the Capital Investment Minister Velimir Ilic has distanced himself from the work of their associates who had presented the plan. No one from the Ministry was available for commenting on the issue and regulation of the electronic media sphere.