Centre for Civic Education (CCE) had two objectives through conducting a research on financial allocations for the media in Montenegro, within the project “Equal opportunities for all media”.
Firstly, to contribute to raising awareness of the interested public towards responsible spending of financial means from the Budget of Montenegro, pointing to the relation that the public sector has towards media through financial allocations, but also indicating to what extent the Free Access to Information Law is implemented.
This research is being carried out for the third consecutive year and has proven to be a justified way of documenting the relation of the state towards certain media in Montenegro. Unfortunately, this year’s findings also indicated the lack of order in this area and the consequent unequal treatment of media by the public sector institutions. The research methodology is based on application of the Free Access to Information Law and all findings are based exclusively on the official documents of public sector institutions, which were the subject of the research.
In the conclusions of the document, it is clearly stated, that CCE, despite of all the efforts and months of research, has not received all the information which underlines the inadequate implementation of this Act.
When it comes to the attitude of the Council of Radio Herceg Novi, CCE expected that their reaction and criticism will be directed towards the responsible in the Municipality of Herceg Novi, having in mind presented findings and conclusive evidence (attached) where the Municipality of Herceg Novi stated that the amount paid to the radio Herceg Novi is 251.396.00 EUR, while the Council of Radio Herceg Novi claims that they have not receive any funds in 2013.
CCE expresses concern for the fate of the specified money, if the claims of the Council are accurate, and assesses that the given information goes beyond the objectives of the CCE research but that these should arise the interest of the competent authorities, primarily prosecution.
Ana Vujošević, programme coordinator