Serbia's Media Regulator Refilled as Four Members Return

Serbia’s electronic media regulator once again has a fully staffed council. On July 10, the National Assembly adopted an authentic interpretation of Article 18 of the Law on Electronic Media, holding that a resignation filed before a member takes office carries no legal effect. The practical result is that four members of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) council return to duty, which, in the view of those who proposed the measure, removes the blockage that had paralysed the regulator.

The members in question were elected in November 2025 and later, on December 19, 2025, filed their resignations. Under the interpretation parliament has now adopted, those resignations are treated as producing no legal effect because they were submitted before the elected members had formally taken up their posts. Rather than a fresh election and a new call for applications, the council is refilled by the return of the previously chosen names: Malesic, Sabic, Prodanov Krajisnik and Valic Nedeljkovic.

REM is not a marginal body in the media system. It regulates broadcasters, grants and revokes licences for national frequencies, and oversees compliance with the law in programming. When the council lacks enough members, it cannot take decisions, so the question of whether it is staffed is at the same time the question of who controls key levers in the media space.

What the authentic interpretation actually changes

An authentic interpretation is a tool by which lawmakers later clarify how a disputed part of an already adopted law should be understood, without formally amending the text. The parliamentary committee found the proposal justified, arguing that it allows REM to function again by regulating the status created by resignations filed before members took office.

The returning council members said their return should not be read as support for the government. In their view, responsibility for the prolonged blockage of the regulator lies with the current authorities, and they are returning so the body can operate at all. In doing so, at least in their public stance, they tried to separate the legal question of staffing the council from the political judgment of who is to blame for the standstill.

Part of the public and the opposition, however, reads the move differently. Instead of resolving the disputed situation with a new competition and election, lawmakers used an authentic interpretation to change the legal effect of resignations that had already been filed. That is precisely where critics see a problem: a mechanism meant to clarify a rule, they argue, was used to bypass regular procedure.

Is this a legal or a political question?

The answer depends on the vantage point. For those who proposed it, this is a technical resolution of a legal ambiguity that restores the regulator’s ability to decide. For critics, it is a political decision dressed in legal form, because the outcome is not neutral: specific individuals return to specific posts without a repeated election.

What remains beyond dispute is that REM can now convene and take decisions, which after months of standstill is no small matter. What is contested is whether that result should have been reached by interpreting a rule or by electing new members. That question is unlikely to leave the agenda, because it touches trust in the independence of a regulator whose decisions directly shape what viewers see on national frequencies.

Does the return of the four members mean the regulator has truly been unblocked, or only that the dispute over how one of the country’s most important independent bodies is staffed has been postponed?