The issues of media ownership concentration and the formulation and implementation of an effective media legislation received considerable attention in recent years. Within the Media Watch program, we drew attention to the threat these issues pose to media pluralism in 2002 based on the analysis made by Sandra B. Hrvatin and Lenart Kueie. One year later, in 2003, a regional research and advocacy project was proposed and approved. It was carried out from July 2003 to June 2004 by the Peace Institute within the South East European Network for the Professionalisation of the Media (SEENPM). Its goal was to bring together the post-socialist European countries and initiate a debate about media concentration and potential changes in public policies in this Weld.

This book contains the regional overview compiled on the basis of the 18 country reports written for this project, the full text of the Slovenian report and the conclusions and recommendations of the international conference organized upon the conclusion of the project.

The objective of the regional research and advocacy project was to examine the media ownership situation in the countries of South East Europe and eu member states from Central and Eastern Europe. The emphasis was on the legal framework and the mechanisms employed by individual countries to implement legal provisions, the privatisation process, the ownership structure of the main media outlets and the influence of media ownership on the pluralism and independence of the media.

Eighteen researchers and journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Kosovo/a, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia, collected and analysed relevant data from October 2003 to February 2004.

The reports resulting from this project, including the regional overview, reXect the situation at the end of 2003/ beginning of 2004. However, media markets in these countries are dynamic, with ownership structures and the number of media outlets changing virtually on a daily basis, and media legislations being continually amended. So, inevitably, certain data in these reports had become obsolete by the time of their publication. Nevertheless, the collected data clearly expose the patterns that underlie the media market operation and regulators’ and media owners’ behavior in the countries under consideration i.e., their impact on media pluralism and independence.

The reports submitted in this project can be found at www.mirovni-institut.si/media_ownership and they have also been published in the book entitled Media Ownership and Its Impact on Media Independence and Pluralism (available only in English). The international conference, organised in cooperation with the Council of Europe upon the conclusion of the project, took place on June 11 and 12 in Bled (see www.mirovni-institut.si/media_ownership/conference). Our partner organisations and researchers from participating countries are responsible for the publication of the findings of the project translated into their local languages and organisation of public debates.

The project was carried out with the support of the Media Program of the Open Society Institute, the Guardian Foundation and the Fresta program funded by the Danish government, and in cooperation with the media centers and institutes, members of the South East European Network for the Professionalisation of the Media, several university departments and Open Society Institute national foundations in the participating countries.

The project advisory board that extensively participated in the conceptualisation and execution of this project consisted of Poul Erik Nielsen, University of Aarhus, Ian Wrigh and Mark Milner, the Guardian, Algirdas Lipstas, Open Society Institute, and Sandra B. Hrvatin, Faculty of Social Science and the Peace Institute.

The team at the Peace Institute that enthusiastically led the project included Brankica Petković, Sandra B. Hrvatin, Lenart J. Kučić, Olga Vuković, Soren Kloughart and Neva Nahtigal.

The reports drawn for this project and effort invested in their preparation and presentation derive from the belief that the issue of media ownership increasingly shapes the way in which the media relate to public interest and citizens’ rights.