EBU imposes sanctions on BHRT: Access to "Eurovision News Exchange" blocked

Members of the Public Broadcasting System of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been denied access to the "Eurovision News Exchange" as of today. This marks the implementation of 3rd degree sanctions due to BHRT's inability to pay its financial obligations to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Given that BHRT is responsible for and pays for the functioning of the Eurovision News Exchange for all three public broadcasters, this means that none of the broadcasters, BHRT, FTV, and RTRS, can receive news from the international exchange via EBU from today onwards.

The BiH Parliament was supposed to make a decision, but...

BHRT's debts to the EBU have accumulated because the Public Service of BiH has been unable to service high bills due to the constant decline in RTV fee collection. This summer, the EBU threatened that BHRT would not be allowed to broadcast the European Football Championship due to a debt of six and a half million BAM, but citizens were still able to watch the championship because the BiH Parliament was supposed to adopt a new financing model for public broadcasters.

Unfortunately, this has not happened to this day, and debts have continued to accumulate.

All proposals for more efficient RTV fee collection have been rejected in the BiH Parliament, and the proposal for telecom operators to continue collecting the fee under the old collection principle, which only allowed broadcasters to survive without the possibility of significant programming advancements and technical development, has not been voted on.

BHRT has been brought to a situation where program production has become an almost impossible mission, and the cessation of operations of this company is increasingly mentioned.