Mirjana Rakic, long-time journalist and editor and former head of the Electronic Media Council, commented for N1 on Thursday the issue of vertical integration, which directly affects the position in which N1 TV found itself in.

She also spoke on the bill on electronic media and the Croatia’s chances to liberalise its media market in line with the EU.

“I left the agency five years ago, and then I worked on both the media market and legislature,” she said. “Even then there was talk that Croatia needs a media development strategy. Sadly that strategy has not been created to this day. The media act needs to be amended as well, and the final step is the law on electronic media and the law on public broadcaster HRT.”

“There is always a solution”

“This issue is incredibly complex and I know it’s not easy to tackle it, but it’s necessary. If a strategy had been made, some basics would have been handled already,” she said.

“Croatia is an EU member and it has to bring its legislature in line with the bloc. This also refers to media market liberalisation.”

“Limitations on the media market remain a bad signal, and a solution must be found. There’s always a solution. I hope that this new law…will find the right answer for that, which is vertical integration – someone who creates programming should also be able to distribute,” she said.

Rakic added she agrees that, without the option of vertical integration, there is a danger of duopoly or similar situations.

“Desire for control is in the core of politics”

Rakic said she believes cable TV will ultimately prevail over terrestrial, because it offers more options. But, that opens up the question whether the number of distributers should be increased in order to liberalise the market.

“That’s also the question of our legislature, whether these distributers ought to be tied to Croatia where they operate, but that’s also the question on the EU level because there are a lot of distributers based in Luxembourg,” Rakic said.

On the new bill on electronic media, Rakic said she believes it will be sped up as necessary to have a discussion in the parliament.

And finally, what about the influence of politics?

“It is the essence of politics to want to control. But we are now in the family of European countries where things are limited and you can call on legislature, therefore politics becomes less influential the more liberalised the market,” she said.