Subcommittee on Human Rights in cooperation with the Pre-Accession Actions Unit Exchange of views on legislative aspects of media freedom

in Western Balkans and Turkey chaired by Ms Barbara Lochbihler Wednesday, 19 June 2013 17.00 - 18.30 Room: Altiero Spinelli 5G3 European Parliament, Brussels

Speech held by Mr.Dragan Sekulovski, Executive Director of Association of Journalists of Macedonia

Distinguished members of the Parliament, of the subcommittee for human rights, of parliaments from Western Balkan and Turkey, dear journalists and dear representatives of the civil society organisations and other relevant institutions. Macedonias membership in the European Union is the highest strategic priority for the country, crucial for its future, stability and position in a global sense. One of the major challenges in the country in the euro-integrative context, in the past few years, became the freedom of the press. I will try to briefly explain why this is so by tackling the current status of legal aspects in the media sphere. The Constitution of Republic of Macedonia is very liberal in terms of protecting the freedom of the press; Article 16 guarantees the freedom of expression, public information, establishment of institutions for public information, free access to information and the freedom of reception and transmission of information. Also, the right of reply via the mass media, the right to a correction in the mass media and the right to protect a source of information are guaranteed. In addition, Article 16 clearly states that censorship is prohibited. The existing laws and bi-laws that refer to the media community are generally in line with the Constitution and the European standards, but proper and non-selective implementation remains a challenge. There are cases that indicate a selective approach of the executive and court authorities that are also noted in the reports of the international institutions that monitor the media situation in the country. The media situation in Macedonia is famished for improvements; in the last reports of RWB the country was ranked 116th on the world press freedom index; for comparison in 2008 Macedonia was ranked 34th. Freedom House also placed Macedonia on 115th position this year which is the lowest in the region having the status of, I quote: partly free country. Now let us go over the reasons for this partly free country status. The largest private TV (A1) station with 3 daily newspapers, considered to be critical towards the Government, was closed. The official reason was abuse of taxpaying but it is peculiar

that the Government did not find a mechanism to prevent the closure of several critical mainstream media that resulted in many journalists losing their job and a negative effect on media pluralism. By amending the Broadcasting Law in July 2011, the composition of the members of the Broadcasting Council was increased from 9 to 15 with 6 additional members - all nominated by state institutions. Despite of the warning of local media organizations, the law was amended and subsequently the Council revoked the license of the television channel A2 TV on the grounds that the programming content was not in line with the license requirements. In the Report that followed, the EC expressed concerns about the political independence of the regulator due to these cases. In 2012, changes of the media ownership of some of the mainstream media finally took place as stipulated in the Law, since 2005; but there is a hesitation if the way this was handled will really contribute towards a greater independence of the media. Annually, MRT, the public service broadcaster, receives close to 50% of its budget from the state, 49% comes from obligatory license fees for the audience and about one per cent is derived from advertising so the law does not provide financial sustainability which leads to high fragility towards political pressure. A very concerning issue are the governmental campaigns or advertisement which cost (pursuant to DG Enlargement) more than 1 % of the national budget for 2012 in total. Without any criteria and often contrary to the public interest, expensive campaigns are produced and broadcast mainly in the friendly media and thus those which are considered to be critical are not part of this scheme. This issue disrupts the media market and very often imposes political propaganda but also effects on the editorial policy in the media outlets. On the 24th of December 2012, while the Parliament was having a session for the annual budget, the journalists were expelled from the gallery by using force. This act prevented the public from receiving objective information and prevented the journalists from doing their job, which the AJM saw as an act of censorship. So far, the AJM has submitted several appeals to relevant national institutions but the case still remains unresolved and responsibility has not been identified. As a result of the events of 24th of December, the institutional dialogue for improving the media situation between the Association of Journalists and the Government was put on hold. I want to repeat that the dialogue as method of cooperation was evaluated by the international institutions, including the EC, as a good platform for solving the challenges that should be applied in other sectors. This is why the authorities should provide proper environment for this dialogue to endure. As a concrete result of this dialogue was the decriminalization of defamation and insult; yet the court practice following the court of Human Rights in Strasbourg remains a concern. After two years of announcements, this April, the Ministry of Information and Administration published a Draft Media Law. Having in mind that the text was drafted in a non-transparent and non-inclusive method, but also considering its extremely broad scope and other peculiarities of this proposal, the attention of local and international media organizations is high. Though the legislator announced simple harmonization with the EC Audiovisual Media Services Directive, there is an actual attempt to encompass all types of media (including print media and web portals and the public broadcaster - MRT) in one law under one regulator in the form of an Agency. The local media community organized its own consultation process comprising the majority of journalists and media experts with a common stand that the offered concept will create new problems instead of resolving the existing ones. Particularly worrying is the fact that the new draft law offers no solution for the

governmental campaigns that currently destroy the media market, and provides the government an opportunity to influence the editorial policy of the media. International media organizations, as well as the Council of Europe and the OSCE office in Vienna also made an assessment of the proposed concept and they all generally overlap with the conclusions and recommendations of the local organisations. For the benefit of media pluralism and freedom of expression, but also for improving the level of democracy in the country, the new legislation that is about to be adopted must be in line with the European standards which means that all substantial remarks on the draft made by the local, international media community and the CoE and the OSCE need to be implemented accordingly. At the end, I would like to stress that in order to improve the media environment in Macedonia, it is necessary to improve the legal framework outside of media legislation, which directly and indirectly affects the current situation in the media. The key problem areas here are the lack of enforcement of the labor law and the needed substantial negotiations between employers and media workers to define the mutual rights and obligations, the necessary changes in the Election Code that would prevent the media to be donors in campaigns of political parties, full implementation of the Law on Access to public Information and the Copyright Law, and creating a favorable environment for effective self-regulation in the media community in Macedonia.

Thank you for your attention