February 17, 2025
Ana Brnabić, President (Speaker) of the Serbian National, has also interfered in the election of new members of the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), despite having no jurisdiction in this process whatsoever.
She submitted analysis to the ambassadors of the Quint coalition countries (U.S., UK, France, Italy and Germany) rejecting objections to the legality of the election process and the fact that some proposers and candidates have a clear conflict of interest.
The document undermines one independent candidate for a lack of expertise, while failing to mention the fact that certain candidates who support the government not only have dubious expertise, but clearly aren’t independent, which is one of the legally stipulated conditions for membership in the Council.
No reliable information is available regarding the election of this body. The government is in a hurry, as forming the REM Council is one of the conditions for implementation of the Government’s Reform Agenda and the opening of the Third Cluster in the EU accession process. However, not repeating the entire election process places the government at risk of illegally selecting the composition of the Regulatory Body, which won’t differ from the previous Council – the illegal work of which led to the initiating of the entire election process.
Reporters Without Borders has called on the European Commission to “stop burying its head in the sand while media freedoms in Europe are being eroded”. In the part of the statement pertaining to Serbia, RSF notes that the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media is only formally independent, while in actuality it is under political control and is incapable of fighting the propaganda of the Serbian authorities and Russia.
