The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)’s Steering Committee on October 9 discussed how to best support its affiliates in Serbia. This came "following the recent media stage black out in Serbia to warn against Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic‘s muzzling of the press," the EFJ announced, explaining that the goal of the meeting in Brussels was to find ways to best support its affiliates to resist such mounting pressure and coordinate successful advocacy at European and international level.
“We ask the European Commission and in particular EU Commissioner Hahn, responsible for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations, to be firm and coherent when it comes to enforcement of European standards of freedom of expression and media freedom in Serbia,” said Mogens Blicher Bjerregard, EFJ President.
In the latest EU Enlargement report on Serbia (2016), the Commission said that Serbia has “achieved some level of preparation” but still needs to “create an enabling environment in which freedom of expression can be exercised without hindrance.”
The Steering Committee agreed to send an international mission to Serbia to shed more light to the state of the media in Serbia, which has worsened in recent years and invited also the Council of Europe and the OSCE Media representative to continue their pressure on the government of Aleksandar Vucic. Critics say Western officials have turned a blind eye to Vucic’s stifling of democratic freedoms in Serbia as long as he cooperated in maintaining stability in the volatile Balkans.
In 2017, the EFJ together with the IFJ tabled five alerts on Serbia to the Council of Europe Platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists with no reply from the CoE Member States Serbia.
