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The new Law on Electronic Media was officially presented before the Croatian Parliament in November 2020 and is scheduled to be discussed in a first reading before the end of this year. This will be the seventh change in the law; it was first adopted in 2003 and amended in 2007, 2008, 2009 (twice), 2011, and 2013. Prior to 2003, the audiovisual sector was included in the Law on Telecommunications (first adopted in 1994, amended twice in 1999 and twice in 2001, with subsequent changes ceasing to encompass the content-producing media industry). The 2003 law created the Agency for Electronic...

Balancing the freedom to convey remarks in a television interview concerning a matter of public interest and the necessity of protecting a child’s best interests and privacy rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found a violation of the right to freedom of expression as protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR found that the domestic courts in Croatia had applied a too formalistic approach as to the confidentiality of information revealed in a television programme about a child’s custody case. The applicant in this case, N.Š.,...

In Vučina v. Croatia, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that the level of seriousness associated with the erroneous labelling of a photograph in a lifestyle magazine and the inconvenience the named person may have suffered did not give rise to an issue under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), neither in the context of the protection of the applicant’s image nor of her honour and reputation. The ECtHR dismissed the complaint that the domestic courts had failed to protect the applicant’s image and honour, also observing that the Croatian judicial...

The judiciary, national regulatory authorities, self-regulatory bodies, and media literacy programmes play an important role in combating hate speech in the media, as the international conference held in Zagreb on 6-7 November 2018 showed. The event was organised by the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Agencija za elektroničke medije (Croatian Agency of Electronic Media - AEM). It gathered together more than 130 participants and speakers from 28 CoE member states, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and UNESCO. The big tech industry was represented by the market leader, Facebook. The conclusions...

The Croatian Regulatory Authority for Network Industries (HAKOM) has begun to investigate interference to Croatian radio and television signals which has its origins in Italy. The authority had announced that it would be measuring interference in the VHF and UHF frequency bands between July and September 2018 in order to examine the effect on FM, DAB-T and DVB-T services. The investigation would cover the Adriatic coast and islands. HAKOM pointed out that the conditions for the distribution of electromagnetic waves were favourable in the summer months on account of the weather, which meant that...