Media Centre and the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) call on MPs from the ruling parties to finally stop violating the law and manipulating the process of electing members of the RTCG Council, to consistently apply the law, and to thoroughly verify whether all candidates and their nominators meet the prescribed requirements.
Legal and factual doubts concerning certain candidates have been raised publicly, threatening to further compromise a process already burdened by party influence and controversy. Once again, there are clear indications that the ruling parties are seeking to install candidates close to them on the RTCG Council.
In the category of cultural institutions and non-governmental organisations in the field of culture, the candidacy of Miroslav Bobo Milanović, until recently a member of the Municipal Board of Democratic Montenegro in Herceg Novi, is problematic. Article 22 of the Law on the National Public Broadcaster – Public Media Service of Montenegro stipulates that members of the RTCG Council may not include, among others, “officials of political parties (party presidents, members of presidencies, their deputies, members of executive and main boards, as well as other party officials), during the performance of their function and for at least three years after the termination of that function.”
Miroslav Bobo Milanović was appointed a member of the Herceg Novi Municipal Board of Democratic Montenegro on 1 May 2022. He was a party official at least until the end of July 2026, which constitutes a legal obstacle to his appointment as a member of the RTCG Council. As late as 30 July 2026, his name was still listed among the members of that board on the Democrats’ website, while his participation in activities of the Municipal Board was also recorded during July. On 20 July, the Democrats’ Facebook page published a photograph from a meeting between party president Aleksa Bečić and members of the Municipal Board, in which Milanović also appears. In addition, the Democrats’ website published a photograph of members of the party’s Municipal Board who, together with the President of the Municipality of Herceg Novi, attended a ceremony marking Statehood Day on 13 July this year, with Milanović among them. By contrast, the Democrats told the media that Milanović had ceased to be a party member at the end of 2022, which is at odds with publicly available information and also constitutes participation in the commission of a criminal offence. Equally comical is Milanović’s statement that he attended all gatherings of the Democrats’ Municipal Board in the capacity of the person who had rented out sound equipment for the events. For example, it is incredible that, at a Statehood Day commemoration, it would be precisely the person who rented out the sound equipment standing next to Minister Vujović from the Democrats, or that Milanović would be seated in the room during a Municipal Board meeting with Democrats’ president Bečić, even though the photograph shows that there was no sound equipment in the room. Although Milanović’s name has since been removed from the Democrats’ website, it is clear that subsequently deleting his name cannot erase previously publicly available information, nor the recollections of those who attended these gatherings with him, nor can it substitute for evidence of the date and legal basis on which his party function ended.
The Administrative Committee must therefore obtain the relevant party documentation and establish beyond dispute when Milanović’s function within Democratic Montenegro may have ended. If the legally prescribed three-year period has not elapsed since the termination of that function, his candidacy must be rejected.
We also call on Minister of Culture and Media Tamara Vujović, within the scope of her institutional and political capacities, to contribute to the consistent implementation of one of the key media laws, rather than remaining silent in the face of a process that further undermines the credibility of the system established by that law. She is particularly obliged to do so given Milanović’s connection precisely with the party of which she is an official.
The candidacy of lawyer Nebojša Asanović also requires serious scrutiny. According to information published on the RTCG portal, Asanović was supported by 21 nominators, while Olivera Nikolić was supported by nine. Precisely because of the unusually large number of nominators in a field in which only a limited number of organisations can meet the statutory criteria, the Administrative Committee must verify, individually for each NGO, compliance with all statutory requirements, including the financial and programme-related criteria (having had, in the previous three years, a budget exceeding EUR 3,000 allocated to activities related to the work and status of the media). We believe these are the same NGOs with disputed documentation that supported Veselin Drljević in the previous cycle of appointments to the RTCG Council, who was convicted by a final judgment and given a seven-month suspended prison sentence, after which he withdrew his candidacy.
We further draw the Administrative Committee’s attention to the fact that Nebojša Asanović represented RTCG in court proceedings, as well as to information concerning his links with the company “Jumediamont”, the founder of Radio D, which is engaged in the production of audiovisual media content. These circumstances must be examined against the statutory provisions governing the incompatibility of Council membership with engagement or a legal interest in legal entities engaged in the provision of audiovisual media services.
The standard in this case cannot differ from the one that the ruling parties have already applied at the local level. We recall that, in May 2025, the Committee for Elections and Appointments of the Assembly of the Capital City proposed the dismissal of Aleksandar Đurišić, a member of the RTV Podgorica Council, over a conflict-of-interest issue related to his representation of ND Vijesti before the court. If, in the current process of electing members of the RTCG Council, the same or comparable standards were interpreted differently, this would raise a serious question of the selective application of the law in accordance with party interests.
This process will also be a concrete test of the parliamentary majority’s approach to European standards of media freedom and independence. The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) requires public service media to be editorially and functionally independent, and procedures for appointing members of their governing bodies to be protected from party influence. European standards are not demonstrated through declarative support for EU integration and the technical closure of negotiating chapters, but through their application precisely when they limit the possibility of party influence.
Media Centre and CCE will submit all available documentation concerning the candidacy of Miroslav Bobo Milanović to the competent institutions in the form of a criminal complaint, because, as a candidate, he submitted a statement confirming that he meets the requirements prescribed by law, thereby giving rise to elements of the criminal offence of document forgery (Article 412 of the Criminal Code). We will proceed in the same manner with regard to responsible persons within nominating organisations where the documentation shows that they signed statements confirming compliance with statutory requirements that were not based on accurate information.
We call on the Administrative Committee, this time, not to act as an instrument of party arrangements, but as a parliamentary body that verifies the facts and applies the law. The RTCG Council is not a place for party puppets, but a body that must safeguard the independence of the public service broadcaster precisely from party and other impermissible influences.
Goran Đurović, Media Centre
Daliborka Uljarević, Centre for Civic Education (CCE)