22. 06. 2007

FINANCING AND PRIVATIZATION OF MEDIA

BELGRADE, 22 June 2007 (B92) - Dragan Janjić said that financing the media from the state budget should have stopped a long time ago.

The deputy culture minister in charge of the media told B92 that the politics of Culture Minister Vojislav Brajović look end the practice of financing the media groups through the state budget.

“That is our obligation towards our laws, and that is the obligation towards the rules promoted by the European Union. We will propose some models for this before the end of the year. We will see at what pace this will go. There are four public companies in the media which are being financed directly from the budget, and they need to be transformed,” Janjić said.

He said that the League of Vojvodina Hungarians has begun an initiative for leaving minority media groups out of the privatization process because of the difficulties of achieving profit with a limited market.

Janjić explained that the ministry currently had no finished solutions, but that meetings wold be organized in the coming weeks for all interested parties to try and find an adequate solution.

He said that privatization of the media would be beneficial, and that it must be finished by the end of the year.

Janjić also said that he would not like to see ethnic minority media companies adversly affected by the privatization.