Police Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic at the opening of the exhibition “Uncensored Lies”. Photo: BIRN/Milivoje Pantovic

Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said that it is incredible that the EU was funding media outlets in the region that he says publish lies.

“I think that it is impossible that the EU is funding some media outlets, institutions that are distributing lies, such as the story on Tamnava [mine], which was published by BIRN,” he told Serbia’s public broadcaster RTS on Thursday.

Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for the European Commission, told BIRN that the EU “consistently underline, including when this issue first came up back in 2015, the critical importance of media freedom as a non-negotiable fundamental right, and as key conditions for progress on our candidate and potential candidate countries’ EU path.”

“In this framework, the EU supports independent media and investigative reporting globally, not only in Serbia, and will go on doing so. However, the EU is not responsible for the editorial line and/or content of articles, which is the responsibility of the relevant media outlets,” Kocijancic told BIRN in an email.

Referring to Friday’s visit to Belgrade of the EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn – who will observe a government session on Saturday – he said Serbia would use the opportunity to seek “a clear attitude” from the EU on Serbia’s recent disputes with Croatia and on the media.

BIRN ruffled feathers in Serbia in January 2015 after it published an investigation into the pumping out of water and mud from the Tamnava mine, a task contracted out to a local company, Energotehnika-Juzna Backa, and its Romanian partner, Ness.

BIRN journalist Aleksandar Djordjevic, who conducted the investigation, won first prize in the EU awards for investigative journalism in Serbia for his report, “Pumping Out the Pit and the Budget”, which was named the best investigative story in 2015.

In his investigation, Djordjevic revealed, among other things, that although the bidders were required to have at least one relevant reference for the job of pumping out large quantities of water, neither member of the winning consortium had such experience.

BIRN wrote that the delay of several months, while the tender was carried out and while the work started, cost Serbia around a million euros per day. This was the estimated cost of the purchase of extra imported electricity and coal.

The investigation also revealed that the director of Energotehnika, Dragoljub Zbiljic, was on trial for tax evasion in the town of Kragujevac.

Since BIRN published its investigation last year, it has been trying in vain to obtain information from Serbia’s state electricity provider, EPS, about the exact costs of pumping the water out of the mine and how much money the Serbian state paid to Energotehnika.

BIRN requested EPS’s invoice for the service, as well documents from Energotehnika on February 3, 2015.

EPS never replied, and as a result the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance imposed two fines of 160 euros and 1,500 euros.

This is not the first time that the members of the Serbian government and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party have accused BIRN of lying.

The party in July staged an exhibition in Belgrade called “Uncensored Lies” to back its claim that, while the media is free to “lie” about the government, it suffers no official censorship.

One of the articles exhibited at the exhibition was the BIRN investigation, “Pumping Out the Pit and the Budget”, alongside other media reports on BIRN’s story.

Prominent editors and media watchdogs accused Serbia’s ruling party of adding to the pressures on the freedom of the media by organizing the exhibition, which has, however, continued to be shown through Serbia with Minister Stefanovic as one of its promoters.

NOTE: This article was amended on September 10 to include response from Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for the European Commission.

