Tag: Serbia

Novakovic and Georgiev were selected in the online media category for their article for Balkan Insight about the Serbian state hiring three private companies to produce material that TV stations use for free without informing viewers that it is not news, but PR.

The investigation showed that the state spent at least €3.8 million over the past nine years, despite already financing two costly public media outlets. The story can be found at http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/tv-viewers-force-fed-state-spin

Georgiev was also nominated together with Djordjevic in the print media category for their investigation that showed how Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s party entered the advertising market after coming to power in 2012, pushing out the Democrats who previously held a dominant influence in this sector.

The article was published in weekly news magazine Vreme, but can also be found online at http://javno.rs/istrazivanja/oglasavanje-kao-privatni-posao-vlasti/

Others nominated in the online media category are three journalists from the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Serbia, Dragana Peco, Jasna Fetahovic and Dino Jahic, who is also a Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence alumnus.

In the print media category, the other selected journalists are Nikola Lazic from the weekly Vranjske and Jelena Veljkovic, a freelancer.

The Investigative Journalism Award is organised by the Independent Association of Journalists in Serbia and is supported by the US Embassy in Belgrade. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Belgrade on May 8.

 

The report describes the mechanisms of a growing ‘soft censorship’ that denies Serbia’s citizens their right to a free and independent media and offers recommendations that can help tackle such practices.

The EP’s rapporteur on Serbia, Jelko Kacin, one of the conference organizers, said that adoption of media laws is one of the main tasks of the new government. 

According to Kacin, the three biggest problems of the Serbian media sector are self-censorship and a lack of investigative journalism, non-transparency of ownership, and the rise of tabloids. 

BIRN’s regional director, Gordana Igrić, presenting an overview of the research in Brussels, said that the system of censorship in Serbia has been established earlier, during the Democratic Party’s time in office.

Serbia’s chief negotiator with the European Union, Tanja Miščević, emphasized that the government will submit media bills to the parliament as soon as possible, but pointed out that it is more important for such laws to be implemented in practice. 

The main researcher on the project was Jovanka Matić, and it was supported by Open Society Foundations.

The report covers the policies position in four areas considered primary concerns by Serbian of citizens: the economy and public finances, the fight against corruption, health and education.

Electoral promises and policy reforms are graded into three categories: ‘complete success’, ‘partial success’ and ‘unfulfilled promise’.

According to BIRN’s monitoring, the least success was achieved in the sector of education, where none of the government’s promises was fulfilled. Mild success was achieved in the area of economy and health, where approximately 10 to 15 per cent electoral promises were graded as a ‘complete success’ and some 60 per cent as a ‘partial success’.

The report shows that the ruling parties had the most success in the fight against corruption, in which five of the seven announced reforms achieved a complete or partial success, with two completely unfulfilled promises.

In December 2013, BIRN Serbia launched a new website, meravlade.rs, the first online platform to provide clear, critical and unbiased insight into the progress of reforms and delivery of public policies, comparing them to the pledges made during the last election campaign.

MeraVlade offers full information on BIRN’s monitoring, along with news, analytical reports and information about the project’s public debates.

Full report in Serbian for download

Mera Vlade is the first online platform that provides clear, critical and unbiased insight into the progress of reforms and delivery of public policies, comparing them to the pledges made during the last election campaign.

This innovative watchdog tool enables people to evaluate to what extent, and in what way, the government has matched the promises that the parties of the ruling coalition made in the election campaign and at the beginning of their term in office. BIRN Serbia has collected various items of information from the spring 2012 campaign, including statements, programs, election platforms, the Prime Minister’s inaugural speech and the Coalition agreement.

In addition, Mera Vlade monitors the progress of reforms in five key areas that citizens have rated as most important for social development and quality of life: public finances; the economy; the fight against corruption; health; education.

Mera Vlade is intended for the use of all the citizens, but especially for voters, who are now gaining a user-friendly tool to monitor the government’s performance and accountability.

Within this portal, citizens, organizations, and both state and non-state institutions can also follow announcements about our own debates and other events organized within the project, which will review the government’s performance with a special emphasis on promised and implemented measures.

We invite you to contribute to the creation of a clear overview and objective picture of government activities by posting your comments and additional information related to project themes, either directly on the website or through BIRN Serbia.

For more information, contact Tanja Maksić, the project coordinator, at [email protected].

The speakers will be Perisa Simonovic, state secretary at the Health Ministry, Gordana Stevanovic, a representative of the ombudsman’s office, Marina Mijatovic, director of the NGO Legal Scanner, Predrag Stojicic, director of Serbia on the Move and representative of the council for patients’ rights in Kragujevac.

From December 1, under the law on the protection of patients’ rights, people have a right to better protection of their rights in the health care system in cooperation with a patients’ rights advisor in their local authorities.

However, a survey by Serbia on the Move shows that some municipalities have not yet appointed such advisers and are delaying implementation of the law on protecting patients’ rights.

The main obstacles in implementing the law, examples of good practice and the responsibilities of each actor in this process are all questions that the debate will cover.

BIRN Serbia in cooperation with NGO Serbia on the Move is organizing the discussion as a part of its monitoring project ‘’Mera Vlade’’.

Within this project, BIRN Serbia has been monitoring government policies in the fields of the economy, health, education and the fight against corruption since 2012.

The project aims to foster a greater degree of political accountability, transparency and efficiency in the implementation of reforms.

The panelists were finance minister Lazar Krstic, Pavle Petrovic, president of the Fiscal Council of Serbia, and Mihajlo Babin, assistant at Belgrade University’s faculty of economics, finance and administration.

The budget for next year is realistic and represents the first step towards the normalisation of fiscal policy because it does not make deeper cuts than necessary, said finance minister Krstic.

The minister said that a third of the budget will go to public sector employees, who number more than 740,000. He added that the government will propose a review of public administration employment.

Krstic also announced that there will be a reform of pay scales in the public sector, partly because of the budget deficit.

Responding to a suggestion from the Fiscal Council that reforms should be more aggressive when it comes to pensions, Krstic said that it was not politically possible.

Pavle Petrovic pointed to the need for fiscal consolidation, because without it, crisis is certain, he warned. He added that its aim was not to raise economic growth, but to create the conditions in which growth is possible.

”Necessary measures through which the state can affect economic growth include changes in the labour law, which have been announced but have still not been implemented, the shortening of procedures for construction permits, resolving the fate of companies in restructuring, and reforming public enterprises,” said Petrovic.

He said in 2014 alone, 560 million euro will be spent on unsuccessful public companies such as Srbijagas, Galenika, Serbian Railways, and partly on banks.

According to Petrovic, the biggest problem is Srbijagas with debts of over a billion euro, of which 800 million are owed to banks.

He stressed that it was import ant that from the middle of the next year Srbijagas, as a company which should operate with a profit, does not receive any money from the budget and begins paying off some of its debts by itself.

”Next year Srbijagas will cost 150 million euro, which is more than what is given to Serbian Railways, the company with the largest subsidies so far and more than overall government spending on science. Not only that, but it is more than the planned savings of 100 million euro by introducing a solidarity tax on salaries in the public sector,” said Petrovic.

Mihajlo Babin meanwhile pointed to the problem of ineffective financing of the public sector, as well as the problem of using up loans, with $3 billion of loan funds currently untouched.

”The key question is what the loans are used for, whether for structural reforms or not. Loans are not supposed to be taken up for covering liquidity, but to increase development. In the future, we should solve the problem of how to give up on loans that we do not need. It is better to pay the penalty now , rather than  interest later on, or to start efficiently implementing them in certain sectors,” said Babin.

The fifth national budget forum brought together more than 90 representatives of ministries, local government and civil society.