On 8 May 2024, at a press conference in Šibenik, the leader of the far-right Homeland Movement, Ivan Penava, declared that his party would only support a new government coalition led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) if it cuts off funding for the weekly Novosti. In their views, the only print media for the Serb minority “represents an agenda to attack the foundation of the state, to present political attitudes under the guise of protecting minorities.”

Financed by the public body “Council for National Minorities as part of the Program for Cultural Autonomy of Minorities” and published by the Serbian National Council, Novosti is one of the most respected publications in the country, well-known for its investigative reports.

“The very idea of imposing the abolition of one media outlet as a condition for concluding a coalition agreement is scandalous and unacceptable,” said CJA President Hrvoje Zovko.”The financing of Novosti, as well as a number of newspapers and magazines of national minorities in Croatia, is prescribed by the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities. Encroachment on Novosti is therefore an encroachment on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of a minority community.”

“Blackmail over funding for Novosti is an attack on media pluralism and minority rights,” stated EFJ President Maja Sever. “If this agreement is ratified by the coalition government, it would mean that the Croatian government would not hesitate to seal the government pact on a violation of the rule of law and the Constitution. This is extremely serious.”

 

This statement was produced by EFJ as part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and Candidate Countries.

Several hundred people demonstrated yesterday in Zagreb in front of the government building against the new amendments to the Criminal Code which criminalise the unauthorised publication of the contents of an investigation with penalties of up to three years in prison. According to representatives of the press, it is a “gag law”, or rather a “law with bad intentions”, as Hrvoje Zovko, the president of the Association of Croatian Journalists (HND), the initiator of the demonstration, nicknamed it.

“No one will dare to inform journalists anymore if they know that they can be mistreated by justice for years. And so, the already widespread practice of corruption will continue”, Hrvoje Zovko said yesterday into the megaphone, before asking Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to “withdraw article 307a”, otherwise – he promised – “the demonstrations will continue”. The text of the law proposed by the government is currently being discussed in the Sabor, the Croatian parliament.

The modification of the criminal code had been announced by the Croatian prime minister already in February last year, when Plenković – stung by yet another scandal revealed by the press and concerning his government – had said: “we will modify the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Criminal Code and situations like this, where information from our archives is made public in an uncontrolled, deliberate, political, selective and organised way, causing political problems, will not happen again”.

Since coming to power in 2016, Plenković has had to replace 30 ministers in his government, mostly due to corruption scandals revealed in the press. Precisely for this reason, trade organisations fear that behind the amendment to the Criminal Code suggested by the Prime Minister there is no desire to protect those under investigation from undue publications, but simply to silence investigations into his government’s corruption.

 

Clint Eastwood

“As Clint Eastwood put it, you can’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining!”, said yesterday Maja Sever, the president of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and head of the Croatian Union of Journalists (SNH). “Andrej Plenković wants to avoid having ‘political problems’, as he himself said in February 2023”, she declared, “but we are not sheep and it is not a problem for us to continue with the demonstrations!”. Hence the l last-minute intervention by the Croatian government, which on Tuesday evening had tried to calm the anger of journalists by promising to introduce an exception for facts of public interest into the new article 307a of the Criminal Code. “Who should determine which facts are of public interest?”, asked investigative journalist Drago Hedl, who then added, “and who will define who is a journalist and who is not?”.

As proposed by the government, the new crime of unauthorised disclosure of investigative content would not punish journalists, but “exclusively participants in criminal proceedings”, such as “judicial officials, defendants, lawyers, witnesses, judicial experts and so on”, as Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said in recent weeks.

“Is a journalist someone who has graduated in journalism? Or is it exclusively someone who is employed in an editorial office?”, Drago Hedl continued, before adding: “We are not here today for fear of ending up in prison for having published information coming from an investigation, we are here in the interest of the profession, of journalism as a public good, which works in the interest of the community”.

 

Women’s rights hostage of the government

Another point that has concerned Croatian journalists is linking the approval of the new article 307a to another amendment to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, which instead received bipartisan support in parliament. This involves the introduction of the crime of femicide and in general a tightening of penalties for gender violence and sexual abuse and mistreatment.

“This is a new low. Plenković, we will remember you for this!”, exclaimed yesterday the president of the HND Hrvoje Zovko, who recalled how the current Croatian prime minister is the one who provoked the greatest number of protests organised by HND during his tenure. Opposition MPs also criticised the government for proposing the two amendments in a single package. “You can have more protection for women victims of violence, but only if you protect me from corruption scandals”, summed up MP Sandra Benčić from the opposition Možemo party.

 

Election year

The changes to the Criminal Code also come at a very delicate moment for Croatia, facing three elections this year. Citizens will vote in June to renew the European Parliament, in September to elect the Croatian parliament and in December to choose the new President of the Republic. Andrej Plenković will lead the HDZ in search of a third term as prime minister and pressure on the media, especially local ones, is already increasing.

The risk is that press freedom will be curtailed in Croatia, particularly in light of the government’s recent appointment of a controversial attorney general. This is Ivan Turudić, “who for seven years conducted proceedings against journalist Dražen Ciglenečki because in his article he had compared him to Vojislav Šešelj, and for which […] he obtained compensation of 90,000 kuna [almost 12,000 Euros, editor’s note] for moral damages, after initially asking for almost twice as much”, said Sanja Pavić of the non-governmental organisation Gong yesterday. According to Pavić, in Croatia there are currently “concerning regressive trends for freedom of speech and journalism”.

This statement was coordinated by the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and candidate countries. 

2024 will be a big election year in Croatia. Voting takes place in June to renew the European Parliament, in September to elect the Sabor and in December to choose the new President of the Republic. This “super izborna godina” – or “super election year” as the Croatian press has already christened it – is a crucial moment for the country. The new political balance will be decided in the next twelve months and the results will also influence the local elections to be held in 2025.

In short, the stakes are very high and the Association of Croatian Journalists (HND) looks with concern at the latest changes in the Croatian media landscape, which is under ever greater pressure. Between changes of ownership and controversial relations between power and journalists, the independence of the local press is crumbling.

 

The latest scandal

2023 ended in Croatia with a political scandal. Yet another “afera” cost the conservative government of Andrej Plenković (HDZ) another minister, without however unseating the prime minister, who has been in power since 2016. The affair concerned precisely the relationship between power and the press.

Some wiretaps published by the weekly Nacional revealed that Jurica Lovrinčević, an advisor to the Minister of Economy Davor Filipović, offered public money to a local television with the promise of dividing part of the sum between some television presenters and Lovrinčević himself.

Following the revelations, an investigation was opened and Plenković fired both the advisor and minister Filipović. The scandal, which broke out in mid-December, monopolised the Croatian media for several days, but in the end the prime minister succeeded in yet another slalom and replaced the 30th minister in seven years   without striking a blow.

Sitting at a table in a bar in central Zagreb, Hrvoje Zovko shrugs. “There is nothing new in this scandal”, says the president of the Association of Croatian Journalists (HND). “What has emerged is worrying, but it has been the HDZ’s modus operandi for decades”, explains Zovko, according to whom “the Croatian media are being captured and with the election year approaching, there will be even greater pressure on the Croatian press”.

Croatia has just under four million inhabitants and has a varied media landscape, albeit weakened by the economic crisis. There are over 150 registered radio stations in the country and over 30 televisions, not to mention the dozens of newspapers printed at national and regional level and the many portals. However, editorial offices are often understaffed and overworked, and in this context public funding plays a decisive role.

 

A new relationship between power and the press

“We are not against public funding of the press and we do not want to deprive institutions, municipalities or regions of the right to advertise in the media, but we cannot continue like this. We need a public fund for journalism with clear rules and sanctions for those who do not respect the code of ethics. We must clearly separate advertising from journalism”, continues Hrvoje Zovko.

In 2022, the Association of Croatian Journalists created a transparent media financing model and is now presenting it to municipalities and regions with the hope that they will join the initiative. “Makarska and Split have already accepted, Zagreb and Pazin have adopted the model almost completely and now we are discussing with Karlovac, Virovitica, Slavonski Brod…”, concludes the HND president.

The new financing model should avoid the many small abuses that are regularly recorded in Croatia and which often do not get the visibility of the Lovrinčević case. For example, the mayor of Valpovo in Slavonia invented a newspaper distributed free of charge in every home and of which the mayor himself is the editor-in-chief and main protagonist of the articles.

A similar scenario occurred in Čađavica near Virovitica: here the mayor achieved the record of producing a 16-page newspaper with as many photos of himself. The incorrect use of advertising financed with public money often becomes an instrument of pressure by the authorities on the local press, whose survival is sometimes linked to these funds.
But the opposite also happens, that is, a local media asks the municipality for money to cover the local city council and otherwise deserts it. In any case, we end up with a weakened local press, not very independent and at the mercy of local power.

 

Media Solutions and the assault on the local press

But while experts from the Association of Croatian Journalists travel far and wide across the country to promote a more virtuous model of relations between local administrations and the press, power continues to grab the media at all levels.

The most striking case is that of Media Solutions, a company founded in 2017 in Osijek and which will soon control four important local newspapers: the Novi List in Rijeka, the Zadarski List in Zadar, the Glas Slavonije in Osijek and the Glas Istre in Pula. Chiara Bilić, a long-time journalist at Glas Istre and now employed at the new portal Istra24  , has written on several occasions about the background to this earthquake in the world of Croatian publishing.

The two co-owners of Media Solutions, writes Bilić, are Bojan Divjak – nephew of Vladimir Šeks, one of the founders of HDZ – and lawyer Oleg Uskoković, who in 2017 donated around 5,000 Euros to the electoral campaign of Damir Habijan, at the time HDZ mayoral candidate and the new Minister of Economy for a few days in place of Davor Filipović. According to Chiara Bilić, “the HDZ takes control of regional newspapers   through a venture by Šeks’ nephew and a generous donor of Damir Habijan’s”.

However, the ownership of Media Solutions is not the only problem in this matter. The entire operation that will lead to the merger of the Novi List and Glas Slavonije group is in fact unclear.

Drago Hedl was editor-in-chief at Glas Slavonije in 1991, when young Bojan Divjak joined the paper. “He was a good journalist at the time”, recalls Hedl, reached by phone while he drives through Slavonia. “I don’t know how his company managed to buy these newspapers”, continues the famous journalist. “After his experience at Glas Slavonije, Divjak worked at Slobodna Dalmacija and Vjesnik before it closed. He then ended up at Narodne Novine (the publisher of the Croatian Official Gazette) and then returned to Osijek as editor-in-chief and co-owner”, summarises Drago Hedl.

“Who owns the media is an often unclear question in Croatia”, says the journalist and writer. While Glas Slavonije, with an editorial team now counting “less than thirty journalists”, is often late in paying salaries (“minimum figures”, comments Hedl), a company born from nothing and without employees – Media Solutions – will soon control four outlets. “And it’s all happening right now, on the eve of the elections…”, mutters Drago Hedl at the wheel.

This content is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and Candidate Countries. The project is co-funded by the European Commission.

In February 2023, Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced changes to the Criminal Code that would criminalize unauthorized disclosure of the content of investigative or evidentiary action. The declaration followed a highly mediatised leak of text messages from January 2023, which was used as evidence in an investigation launched by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, and ended up being somewhat embarrassing for Plenković. In the leaked correspondence, former EU Funds and Regional Development Minister Gabriela Žalac, caught up in a corruption probe over an allegedly inflated cost of software, makes a mention of a certain “A.P.”

Fast forward to September 2023. The law, dubbed ‘Lex A.P.’ in the media, after the initials of the Prime Minister, was submitted to a public consultation, and instantly alarmed journalists and law practitioners. “This law of silence that the government wants to pass is an attack on the journalistic profession and public interest,” said Hrvoje Zovko, the president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association (HND) in a phone interview with IPI.

The Prime Minister stated explicitly that the proposed changes to the law, which envisage punishment of up to three years in prison, would not target the media. However, “the proposed bill doesn’t include any protective clauses for journalists, and will dissuade potential sources from talking to them,” said Zovko. He stressed that this could make it possible to seize and search journalists’ communication tools – phones or laptops – in order to reveal the source of the leak. The Supreme Court judges also criticized the law proposal, stating that if no clause specifically stipulates the protection of journalists, the proposal leaves a possibility for them to be considered instigators or ‘guilty by association’.

The current Criminal Code already contains punishments for the violation of the confidentiality of proceedings (including evidentiary actions), as well as for the unauthorized disclosure of professional secrets, official secrets, and other secret information. This means, concretely, that a police officer can’t reveal that a defendant in a proceeding for drug trafficking is being secretly tapped, either to the defendant or to the media.

“If he did, he would be criminally liable”, explained Igor Martinović, associate professor at the Faculty of Law in Rijeka, Croatia. “But the proposed law changes would prohibit the public disclosure of any relevant information regarding the proceedings before the indictment is filed,” he told IPI in an email. “This would ban defendants from publically presenting their version of the story. If a victim, for example, submitted a video of the violence they suffered to the media, and if that video is also evidence in the proceedings, the victim would be liable for a criminal offense,” he added.

If the criminal proceedings were to start on the basis of the whistleblower’s report, the whistleblower would become a witness. Both the whistleblower and the journalist to whom he would pass on any information about the case would be in trouble. “It is difficult to predict what exactly would happen in that case, because the Act on the Protection of Whistleblowers provides for the protection of whistleblowers (…) but the atmosphere of fear would surely increase among potential whistleblowers and journalists,” believes Martinović. And while the new proposal states that the disclosure of information will be possible after the indictment becomes legally binding, that is a small comfort in a country where the judicial system is notoriously slow, and where corruption is still rampant (Croatia ranks 57th out of 180 countries on to the Transparency International 2022 corruption index).

 

New media bill on hold

At the same time, the media representatives are still waiting for updates on the new draft of the media law that the Croatian Journalist Association (HND) deemed “unacceptable”. The controversial draft suggested creating a registry (photo)journalists, with a special committee deciding on who would be approved as a (photo)journalist, and granting the right to publishers not to publish a journalistic piece without any explanation.

“This is a legalization of censorship,” said Zovko. “The draft also mentions that the journalists would be required to reveal their sources not only to their editor-in-chief but also to the publisher.” The current media law stipulates that journalists might need to reveal information on the source to the editor if the source is anonymous. Also, the courts might compel a journalist to reveal a source, if no alternative is available, to protect national security, territorial integrity, and public health.

The draft, penned by the Ministry of Culture and Media, seems to have been put on hold. “The HND sent their comments on the proposal at the end of July. We were told that the working groups would meet soon after, but nothing has moved forward since,” said Zovko.

When it comes to the “anti-leak” legislation it is yet to be debated in the Parliament. For both legislative changes, the stakes are especially high at the moment, Croatia is entering a ‘super election’ year in 2024. The country of just under four million people will vote at the European elections in June, at the parliamentary elections in August or early September, and at the presidential elections in December.

This article was commissioned by IPI as part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and candidate countries.