N1 and Nova S said on Wednesday that their legal team has filed filed suit against the Serbian electronic media regulator (REM) for its decision to renew national frequency licenses for four pro-government broadcasters.

The law suit over the decision to renew broadcasting licenses for TV Pink, B92, Prva and Happy TV cited violations of rules, faulty fact finding and failure to implement the law properly.

The N1 legal team said that the REM did not meet its obligation under the law to analyze the market before taking its decision in order to determine how many license are required and what content would best meet the needs of the public to justify its decision. The decision was explained with a number of generalized statements, not backed by evidence or facts and the REM did not prove that the current license holders are providing the public with the highest quality and most diverse programming of all the stations that applied, the lawyers said.

“N1 and Nova S are convinced that any – even low-level – objective analysis would have determined that their applications are superior in technical, organization, financial and especially program terms. The REM is no empowered to use its own discretion to decide and subjectively grant its trust to broadcasters, nor can it favor existing broadcasters based on what they did so far but is obliged to base its decision on defined criteria which it disregarded in these proceedings,” the N1, Nova S legal team said.

“REM consciously ignored the earlier practice of harsh violations of legal obligations by license holders which it is legally obliged to take into consideration, including the fact that they failed to meet programming conditions continuously for a number of years. REM did not take into consideration the obligation to promote media pluralism since it granted two of the four licenses to the same entity and that all the licenses were given to broadcasters with similar programming,” the lawyers said.

“In these proceedings, REM obviously acted illegally and took a discretionary decision contrary to the conditions and goal of the competition. Not only is that decision contrary to international practice and the obligations of the Republic of Serbia but also to earlier practice by Serbian courts in similar cases which the REM has to be aware of and Nova S and N1 feel that the court will not have a difficult job in this case,” the lawyers said.