Transparency of media ownership in Croatia

Transparency of media ownership refers to the public availability of accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date information about media ownership structures to make possible for media authority and the wider public to ascertain who effectively owns and controls the media. Between 2011 and 2012, following some concerns on opaque activities which accompanied the process of privatisation of the media in Croatia, the government initiated the reform of the law on transparency of media ownership with the aim to avoid the concealment of information on media ownership structure.

The Croatian law provides the disclosure of information that are sufficient to establish who formally holds shares in the media organisations operating in Croatia. However, in practice, some obstacles have been observed. There are also some unclear aspects in the new legal framework which is the result of uncoordinated legal developments needed to complement the original Media Act with provisions to be applied to electronic media, which emerged several years later and that are now covered by a dedicated law, namely the Electronic Media Law. In general terms, the information disclosed can be accessed by the public at large, but, as a matter of fact, this is quite uncommon. In Croatia, the public debate on media ownership transparency developed only recently, in connection with the amendments to the Media Act and Electronic Media Act.

Transparency of media ownership refers to the public availability of accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date information about media ownership structures. It is an essential component of any democratic media system and its crucial for media pluralism and democracy. A legal regime guaranteeing transparency of media ownership makes available all the information needed for finding out who effectively owns, controls and influences the media as well as media influence on political parties or state bodies. The importance of transparency of media ownership for any democratic and pluralist society has been broadly recognised by the European Parliament, the European Commission's High-Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism and the Council of Europe.

To ensure that the public knows who effectively owns and influences the media, national legal frameworks should ensure the disclosure of at least the following basic information:

Importantly, to understand who really owns and controls a specific media outlet it is necessary to check who is beyond the official shareholdings and scrutinise indirect, controlling and beneficial ownership which refers on shares of a media company hold on behalf of another person. To be meaningful and easily accessible by the citizens and national media authorities, this information should be updated, searchable, free and reusable.

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