Source: "Press"
Bill directly contravenes Serbian Constitution and European Convention
I do not know whether the Amending Law to the Law on Information will be adopted or not. The parliamentary outcome of the "fuss" about that Bill is in the domain of speculations with which I do not wish to deal. All the more so because that outcome depends on political constellations which are not based on solid, stable bases such as principles but can easily be changed as a possible subject of various political trades.
Personally, I think that this Bill should not be adopted, as I said a long time ago. I think that there are many cultural, political, sociological and, of course, legal reasons for that. As a lawyer, I will deal only with the legal reasons and let others speak about other reasons.
To begin with, the proposed penalties seem irritating to me. One does not even have to be a lawyer to see a lack of logic in the fact that penalties proposed for infringements and economic infractions committed by journalists and the media exceed the general maximum for that kind of offences envisaged under the law. They are even more strict than the penalties envisaged by the Criminal Code for criminal offences resulting from identical actions.
However, the main problem of this Bill is its relation to relevant provisions of Serbian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. It is impossible to find a basis for the provision under which a publisher must stop publishing a newspaper if its account is frozen more than 90 days, even if this is through no will or "responsibility" of his own. Article 50 of the Constitution stipulates that "a competent court may prevent the dissemination of information through means of public informing only when this is necessary to prevent inciting to violent overthrow of the system established by the Constitution or to prevent violation of territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia, to prevent propagation of war or instigation to direct violence, or to prevent advocacy of racial, ethnic or religious hatred enticing discrimination, hostility or violence". Article 10 of the European Convention envisages more or less the same reasons for ban on publishing a newspaper.
I also think that we should not neglect the fact that the European Court of Human Rights, which could ultimately have the final say, has had a clear attitude about such and similar issues for a long time. As early as 30 years ago, the Court ruled in the case "The Sunday Times V the United Kingdom" that possibilities to restrict freedom of expression should be strictly interpreted and that "strict interpretation means that criteria other than those set out in paragraph 2 cannot be a basis for any limitation. And the said criteria must be interpreted as implying that formulations do not relate to anything outside their common meaning".
