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Igric talked about political pressures on the media in the Balkans, noting that political parties try to influence the media elsewhere too but the phenomenon is more pronounced in countries which are suffering economically.

“I don’t see any sources for mainstream media to be independent,” she said, referring to a discussion about the impact of financing on media independence.

Igric also said that one of the problems of the media in the Balkans is ownership, which is often not as transparent as it should be.

Ljiljana Zurovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Press Council said that the media laws in her country were very good, but what was lacking was their proper implementation. She agreed that one of the problems for the media in the Balkans is the lack of money.

But Goran Milic of Al Jazeera Balkans said that the lack of money is not always a problem because a large number of media have managed to develop strong audiences.

The panel was a part of an alumni meeting of past participants in Economic and Political Reporting From South-East Europe journalism training courses organised by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The three-day meeting brought together six groups of journalists who had been on the course at different periods for panel debates, discussions and workshops.

The UNDP report analysed the role of media in reporting on transitional justice issues, comparing the current situation with a previous survey published by the organisation in 2007.

“Although print and electronic media throughout the region still continue to reproduce nationalistic narratives, it is evident that respondents [to the latest survey] can clearly make a distinction between media that are professional in researching and reporting on war crimes,” the report said.

“New media cooperation initiatives in the Western Balkans that cover transitional justice issues have become more visible after the 2007 survey. For example, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and Balkan Insight have managed to cover these topics successfully,” it underlined.

The report, based on a public opinion survey of 1,250 people from all Kosovo’s ethnic groups, said that past grievances were still obstructing progress on reconciliation within society.

The survey’s authors interviewed 850 ethnic Albanians, 200 ethnic Serbs and 200 people of other ethnicities in Kosovo.

The curbs are due to remain in place until their maximum legal limit expires at the end of 2013 – seven years after the two so-called “A2 countries” joined the bloc.

“Seven years no longer mean restrictions, they no longer mean differentiation – they mean discrimination,” said Vasile Puşcaş, Romania’s chief-negotiator with the EU in 2000-04.

Romanian MEP Renate Weber told the conference, organised under the auspices of the Balkan Fellowship of Journalistic Excellence, that her country had expected the curbs to be lifted sooner.

“When we joined the EU, we agreed to these long-term restrictions, hoping they would be lifted long before the deadline,” she said.

She argued that this would have been logical as European Commission studies had “demonstrated the benefits [to other EU economies] of the Romanian and Bulgarian labour force”.

However, she said, the restrictions had become an “electoral weapon” in the domestic politics of the countries that had imposed them.

Several EU nations – including the UK, Germany and France – have enforced laws that aim to restrict Romanian and Bulgarian migrants to specific sectors of their labour markets. Under EU rules, any such curbs must be lifted by the end of 2013.

The looming deadline has prompted speculation in the media that some governments may look for ways to extend the curbs.

However, speakers at the conference said any talk of prolonging the restrictions was misinformed.

Luminita Odobescu, a senior official from the Romanian Prime Minister’s Chancellery, said her government was confident that its European partners would lift the curbs in January 2014, in accordance with the EU accession treaty.

Weber added that Romania would challenge any member state that “invented reasons or statistics” to extend the restrictions on A2 citizens’ right to work in the EU.

The conference, held on February 13 at Bucharest’s Novotel Hotel, looked at the effects of the curbs on A2 workers as they entered their seventh year. Participants in the debate included Romanian government officials, academics, foreign diplomats and trade union officials.

The conference was prompted by an investigation by reporter Sorana Stanescu that showed how labour curbs have left Romanian builders vulnerable to exploitation in the UK. The investigation argued that the restrictions were in some respects counter-productive, harming indigenous workers by driving down wages and safety standards, as well as depriving the British economy of tax revenue. Stanescu’s report was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an annual bursary for investigative and long-form journalism.

Governments in the UK and elsewhere argue that the labour curbs have protected the domestic workforce and restricted immigration from eastern Europe.

However, speakers at the conference questioned if the restrictions had been effective.

Sean Bamford, a migration expert with the UK’s Trade Unions Congress, said there was “no evidence that Romanians and Bulgarians have threatened the jobs of British nationals”.

“They have however left Romanian and Bulgarians open to extreme forms of exploitation.”

Bamford said the British workforce’s problems were caused by “casino capitalism” and the failure of government regulation, rather than by migration from eastern Europe.

Dumitru Costin, the president of the Romanian National Union Block, said the labour restrictions had benefitted “employers, some employment agencies, lawyers, insurance companies… and last, but not least, those politicians who lack solutions and vision”.

Sociologist Dumitru Sandu said most Romanians in future would choose to migrate to Germany, rather than the UK, because its economy was stronger.

Background information

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was established in 2007 by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), to promote incisive, cross-border reporting. The first prize-winner of the 2012 edition was Romanian journalist Sorana Stănescu, for her investigation: “Cheap, and Far from Free: The Migrants Building Britain”.

http://fellowship.birn.eu.com/en/fellowship-programme/cheap-and-far-from-free-the-migrants-building-britain.

At the close of the project’s first year, the BTJ team presented to its donors what had been achieved in terms of editorial coverage, online publishing and radio and television production. The team also outlined the project’s future targets and plans, among them a series of major regional investigations and the release of a documentary film and television series.

Lode Desmet, the director and producer of the upcoming film, in which six young people testify about their lives in the Balkans, showed sequences from the documentary for the first time. During the afternoon session, there was a debate on current transitional justice issues and in-house briefings from six BTJ reporters across the Balkans who explained the major themes and challenges for journalists working on the subject in their respective countries.

“Despite various challenges, we managed to reach the public in the region and provide crucial information. Twenty years after the wars in the Balkans, people still need answers and the public is entitled to receive information about war crimes trials. BIRN’s aim is to distribute necessary information supporting reconciliation among communities, but also to raise questions related to facing the past in the Balkans,” BIRN Project Manager Anisa Suceska Vekic said at the meeting.

During the first project year BTJ has achieved the following results:
•             Established, trained and developed a regional network of six transitional justice reporters
•             Developed a unique online written and audio archive of war crimes trials and analysis, with 1,160 published articles on transitional justice issues
•             Attracted more than 300,000 page views for the BTJ website
•             Gathered more than 13,000 followers on social networks
•             Finished filming the TV documentary
•             Released nine episodes of the ‘Roads to Justice’ radio programme
•             Recruited 100 radio stations in the region to broadcast nine episodes of the radio programme

The meeting was also attended by experts from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE, who actively contributed to the debate.

The Balkan Transitional Justice programme is funded by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

A portal offering in-depth analysis, investigative reports, commentaries and interviews, the Premium Content section of Balkan Insight offers readers exclusive and independent information on a range of important issues affecting the region.

This section was restricted to subscribers in 2008 and marketed as BIRN’s primary commercial product in an effort to cover production costs and help provide self-sustainability.

Our subscriber base has also expanded to Australia, and subscribers now include the University of Melbourne as well as the University of Michigan in the United States, the Council of the European Union and the US State Department.

Access: Balkan Insight Premium, Facebook, Twitter

Together with Sandra Orlovic from the Humanitarian Law Centre, retired Serbian Army military prosecutor Lakic Djorovic, Dragan Popovic from the Policy Centre and publicist Zoran Janjic, Igric discussed the impact of security sector reforms on transitional justice.

All the participants agreed that Serbian society has failed to accept its responsibility for the crimes committed in the 1990s, and considered it unlikely that the Serbian government will raise new indictments for war crimes given that the great number of its members were part of the 1990s war machine. Orlovic said that the security sector reforms appear to be nominal because reform of the security sector’s personnel has failed – a fact that has direct implications on transitional justice processes.

The presence of compromised personnel at the security sector directly contributes to a climate of impunity, she said. Orlovic added that is unlikely that security sector reform will ever achieve its goal of re-establishing citizens’ trust if people who took part in the 1990s conflicts are still part of the sector.

Igric said that all ex-Yugoslav countries have developed their own war narratives which, through the media, have entered their education systems. Each country has declared the conflict to have been defensive and has no will to prosecute the perpetrators, while Serbia acknowledges only the NATO bombing as a genuine war. She added that the opening of secret files should lie at the core of security sector reform.

The Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies, CEAS, is an independent, non-religious, socially-oriented left-liberal think-tank founded in 2007 in Belgrade. With its research work, CEAS generates precise analysis of Serbia’s foreign, security and defense policies.

The publication provides a snapshot of the past year in south-eastern Europe, capturing some important truths behind the news.

Original research by the journalists focused on issues ranging from religious radicalism, the exploitation of migrant workers in the EU, football hooliganism, environmental activism, bad privatisation deals, and the exclusion of youth from a politicised job market. The stories were grouped under the annual theme, Communities.

The journalists were selected through open competition to receive funding and professional support that would help them conduct cross-border research into a topic of regional and EU significance.

The stories produced under the programme were re-published by prominent outlets in the region,as well as by international media including The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, Der Standard, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Huffington Post and the EU Observer.

The work of the fellowship and of its editor, Neil Arun, has been shortlisted for the 2013 European Press Prize in Amsterdam.

One of the participating journalists, Eldin Hadzovic, has also received an award from UNICEF for his fellowship story which examined the failure of Bosnia’s orphanage system.

“The publication of the fellows’ articles in the most important media in the region and internationally is clear proof that this project is a worthy venture,” said Remzi Lami, the director of the Albanian Media Institute and a member of the programme’s selection committee.

The 10 articles from 2012 were re-published by more than 400 outlets, supporting the fellowship’s ultimate goal – to promote and reward excellence in journalism.

The new cycle of the programme will be launched on January 28, when journalists will be invited to submit applications under the annual topic for 2013, Integrity.

The session was aimed at enhancing techniques for covering transitional justice issues and developing topics for upcoming cross-regional investigations. The investigations are part of BIRN’s Regional Reporting on Transitional Justice Issues programme. Over the next two years, the organisation’s network of journalists will produce four major investigations on transitional justice issues in the region.

The meeting brought together journalists and other team members from six countries, including BIRN’s reporters, translators, television editor and radio producer. The team also discussed project activities for the forthcoming two years and held a development session intended to boost investigative reporting skills and further improve coverage of transitional justice issues.

Journalists examined strategies for employing social media and online content to enhance and promote investigative work, as well as innovative ways of presenting investigations in multimedia formats to deepen readers’ understanding and gain a wider audience.

The Balkan Transitional Justice journalists were joined at the meeting by the Balkan Insight team of correspondents and editors for a series of joint cross-regional editorial discussions.