Minister of Culture: Government is waiting RTCG's response to agreed text of Agreement for over a month

Minister of Culture Aleksandar Bogdanović said today that it was more than a month since representatives of the Government and Montenegro's national broadcaster (RTCG) management agreed on details of the first agreement between the Government and the RTCG, and that the Government has since waited for the response of RTCG.

A little over a month has passed since the meeting with the management and the President of the RTCG Council, when the Work team of the Government of Montenegro adopted all eight amendments to the Proposal of Agreement on Public Broadcasting between the Government of Montenegro and RTCG, proposed by representatives of the national broadcaster. Pursuant to international standards and legal arrangements, this Proposal of Agreement is based on the European Commission's Report on the Application of the State Aid Rules for Public Broadcasting Services (2009/C 257/01) and contains guarantees and the concept of institutional, financial and political independence of RTCG. However, since then every trace of this Agreement is lost and we have neither received the information from the RTCG executives in what phase this Agreement is nor the information about its status, Minister Bogdanović said.

The Minister of Culture added that the response to these issues – which is in the public interest – is expected from the President and members of the Council, as some members of the Council in their public appearances at the end of the last year and early this year tried to impute, albeit unsuccessfully, the obstruction to the Government regarding the signing of this Agreement.

From this point of view, it can be said that such actions were more of a daily-politician, and less professional and responsible understanding of the duties of the President and members of the Council, who perform these functions on behalf of the state, i.e. the founder. The Government remains committed to the concept of full independence of the public service and demands full implementation of the legal obligations, specifically in this case of giving consent to the contract in question. When the final text of the Proposal of the Agreement by the RTCG Council is submitted to the Government, it will, in accordance with its procedure, put it on the agenda of its next session. Thus much can be said about a concrete relation towards the public interest for which, to remind you, the Government of Montenegro, according to the proposal of the agreement for the next three years, has allocated about EUR 40 million for the broadcasting of public services, whose amount fully guarantees the sustainable functioning of the national broadcaster, Minister of Culture Aleksandar Bogdanović concluded.

MINISTRY OF CULTURE / PUBLIC RELATIONS SERVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF MONTENEGRO