Constitutive session Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media it could be held at the beginning of next week, spokeswoman of REM told FoNet Olivera Zekić. The session will be held in a truncated composition of eight members, the ninth member has not yet been elected.
Before the constitutive session, an informal meeting is planned this week to reach an agreement on further work. Zekić pointed out that the new convocation, due to the huge volume of work awaiting it, will most likely be in constant session.
Deadlock regarding the election of the president
The main challenge for the new body will be the selection of leadership. According to Olivera Zekić, in public the members have already divided themselves in a ratio of four to four. With such a balance of power, it is impossible to elect the president and deputy president of the Council, because their election requires the vote of at least six members.
Zekić added that members should still be allowed to try to find a "minimum common quotient" at an informal meeting.
Dubravka Valić Nedeljković as a temporary solution
If the members fail to reach an agreement, the chairmanship of the body will be taken over by the oldest member, namely Dubravka Valić Nedeljković. In that case, she will have all the powers as the elected president of REM.
This means that she will be in charge of scheduling meetings and setting priorities on the agenda.
Dubravka Valić Nedeljković belongs to the "independent" candidates who are not under the control of the authorities.
It is the turn of the RTS and RTV management boards
One of the first major tasks of the new Council will be to solve the issue of public media services. Namely, the Management Board of RTS ceases its work because six of its members were left without a mandate.
Zekić explained that the dynamics of the Council's work will determine when it will be the turn to announce public competitions for filling positions in the administrative boards of RTS and Radio-television Vojvodina (RTV). After receiving applications, REM members will decide on new names.
A mountain of unresolved complaints
A huge amount of work awaits the new members, which has been accumulating for a year and a half.
All applications received since November 2024, when REM is not functional, are not out of date and will be subject to work. Zekić mentioned that there were also applications from the period when she led the Council, which had not yet been processed. Because of everything that has arrived in the past 21 months, she wished the new members good luck in their work.
How did you get to the truncated line-up?
The formation of the REM Council was attempted twice after the mandate of the previous convocation expired in November 2024. The first procedure failed because some of the candidates dropped out, claiming that the process was illegal. The assembly started the process only after the students blocked the RTS building.
Subsequently, eight of the nine members of the Council were elected, since the parliamentary majority at the last moment refused to vote on the ninth member proposed by the national minorities. The conditions for work were created only when four independent candidates (Dubravka Valić Nedeljković, Ira Prodanov Krajišnik, Mileva Malešić and Rodoljub Šabić) decided to enter the Council. They previously submitted their resignations, but the Assembly adopted an interpretation of the law according to which these resignations have no legal effect because the members had not yet officially assumed office.
The European Union insists on the formation of the REM Council. In the event that REM does its job, the current way of working would be subject to punitive measures in many segments, for example, Informer and Pink TV.
A functional REM would have a great impact on improving the equality of elections, which the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, announces for the fall of this year.
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