s Macedonia ready for fair and democratic elections on 24th April?
After the last week events, where a journalist verbally attacked the President of the opposition, it was confirmed again that the reform in the Media Law according to the Przino’s agreement is necessary. After many attempts, starting from June/July 2015 efforts and negotiations to change this law are still made.
According to the Social Democrats fundamental reforms of the media are necessary. They expressed their opinion just before the new round of negotiations of the four parties about the media sphere. All four parties have already submitted amendments. The basis for negotiations is the proposal of UN facilitator Peter Vanhoutte since December last year. Before the meeting he was optimistic and said that the good news is that the parties agreed to propose the new amendments and discuss them.
The night before the EU and the US publishing evaluation whether there are conditions for fair and democratic elections on 24 April, negotiations on media reform ended without agreement. According to the Belgian facilitator of the negotiations, Peter Vanhoutte, the responsible for failure are representatives of all political parties.
The EU Ambassador Aivo Orav already went to Brussels where probably will be discussion about the political situation in Macedonia and the implementation of the Agreement of Przino. Political parties have repeatedly breached the terms of the points provided by the Agreement of Przino but still failed to agree about the Media Law.