Media capture/ EC deadline for Rama: No further steps for the EU without approving the media law

The European Commission has set a deadline for the government of Edi Rama, which is tasked with liberalizing the media market by adopting a media package if it wants to move forward in membership negotiations. In a direct statement to the EU-Albania Stabilization and Association Parliamentary Committee, the Commission representative, Sigrid Brettel, set the majority a clear deadline: by October, several legal packages for the media, as well as several key reforms involving corruption, justice and gender equality, must be adopted.

"Before the summer holidays, we expect the approval of the law on the Asset Recovery Office, and then in September and October, with the start of the new legislature, we expect several important legal packages," said Brettel, who listed 4 legal packages here.

It concerns, firstly, an anti-corruption package (including conflict of interest, whistleblower protection), secondly, a media package, thirdly, a legal package for justice, especially for non-magistrate members of the High Judicial Council and the High Prosecutorial Council, and fourthly, a gender equality package.

Among them, the media package occupies a central place, not simply for technical reasons, but because it constitutes an old and unresolved knot in Albania's rapprochement with the European Union. Listed within Cluster 1 – the most critical chapter group for the negotiations – this package also constitutes a concrete test for Prime Minister Rama, who is supposed to take a step back in the total control he exercises over the country's televisions.

In a preliminary report, the European Union has already openly expressed concern about the current state of the media in Albania: “Albania is still expected to adopt a comprehensive reform of the legal and regulatory framework for freedom of expression and the media, in particular to strengthen the independence and efficiency of the Audiovisual Media Authority and the public broadcaster,” the text emphasizes, which, unlike the usual bureaucratic formulations of Brussels, gives this problem special weight.

The legal changes are expected to address the high concentration in the Albanian media market – a phenomenon that has so far not even encountered the political will to discuss, let alone fix. The two largest television stations, Klan and Top Channel, control about 64 percent of the market by revenue, while together with Vizion Plus and A2CNN they account for almost 80 percent of the market.

In this context, the EU's demand to increase transparency on the financing, ownership and allocation of state advertising is a direct challenge to the model of vertical control of public information.

Another aspect that Brussels has been pushing for is the decriminalization of defamation – a step that would once and for all separate free speech from criminal punishment. This demand has been reiterated for years by both the EU and the OSCE/ODIHR, but no government has so far had the will to translate it into law.

In the same vein, the OSCE/ODIHR preliminary report on the local elections of May 11 painted a grim picture of media capture in Albania. According to observers, news is often produced by political parties themselves and broadcast by the media as if it were independent material, without any editorial filter, without labeling, without professional distance.

“Campaign materials were provided by political parties and broadcast by television stations without being marked as such, as required by the Electoral Code, while the CEC took no measures to stop this practice,” the OSCE-ODIHR report stated.

Investigative journalism is on the verge of extinction, while most major media outlets are kept alive by state advertising and public contracts – a relationship of dependency that has transformed the media into an instrument of propaganda, not a watchdog of power.

“The independence, diversity and integrity of news available to voters have been undermined by the media’s dependence on non-transparent funding, often linked to political and business interests,” notes the OSCE/ODIHR.

According to the same report, the concentration of media ownership in a few hands undermines pluralism, while the control of the advertising market by politically connected actors makes it impossible to distribute financial resources fairly and transparently.

However, it remains to be seen what real change the adoption of a legal package for the media, as required by the European Union, could bring, as there is always a risk that the new law will be nothing more than a facade, because the status quo has much deeper roots./ Lapsi.al