The Independent Media Commission (IMC), on July 17, 2023, under the leadership of the Chairman of the IMC Mr. Jeton Mehmeti, held the fourth regular meeting for this year.

At the beginning of the meeting, Chairman Mehmeti expressed concern about the increase in hate speech in the media, calling on licensed entities not to broadcast calls for violence against any citizen or specific group in the Republic of Kosovo.

The Commission then approved the agenda with 35 agenda items, including the approval of the minutes from the last meeting and the Chief Executive Officer's report.

Chairman Mehmeti emphasized the issue of debts that some media have to the KPM. He said that until the end of last year, the amount of accumulated debts was 795,969 euros, of which about 495,000 are from non-payment of the license tax, where some of the media have not paid the license tax since 2011 He said that the Commission cannot tolerate the non-payment of the license tax because this represents a violation of the Law on the KPM, damages the state budget, and is unfair to the entities that pay their dues regularly. As a result, the Commission decided that all licensees who have unpaid tax (or fine) debts within thirty (30) days to fulfill all legal financial obligations to the KPM, or bring the agreement to the KPM with the executor for the payment in installments of up to twelve (12) months of their debts.

In the next point, the Commission discussed the release for public consultation of the Draft Regulation on the Acceptance, Evaluation and Discipline of the Chief Executive Officer, which the Commission decided to put into public discussion for a period of 15 working days.

In the following, the Commission has reviewed and approved two quarterly work reports of the IMC for the period January - March 2023 and for the period April - June 2023, which based on the legal obligation arising from Article 15 of Law No. 04/L-44 for the Independent Media Commission, are sent to the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo.

Regarding licensing cases, the Commission has examined the Reports of the Evaluation Commissions for the public competition for local radio frequencies in the Municipality of Peja and the Municipality of Prizren. According to reports, in these contests there is only one party that applied in each contest and based on the results of the reports, the Evaluation Commissions found that in both contests the applicants did not meet the legal licensing criteria. In this case, the Commission decided to approve the recommendations for rejection of requests Radio Grand and Radio Hisar, for equipment with a license in both cases and decided to re-announce the public competition for local radio frequencies in the Municipality of Peja and in the Municipality of Prizren.

Also in other cases of licensing, the Commission has approved the request of OPEN TEL for the licensing of the distribution operator and has approved the requests for renewal of the license for Radio Gjilani, MBTV, PP KDS Telestar IC. While it has rejected the request for change of ownership for Radio Shqip FM.

Regarding the cases of requests by some licensees who have voluntarily requested the termination of the IMC license, the Commission has examined these cases and approved the requests for termination of the license for TVEHO, Swiss Plus-1 SHPK, 1TV, Comnet-A LLC and Premier Songs.

As for the other items on the agenda, the requests for licensing of Audiovisual Media Service Providers (OSHMA), the Commission has examined the following cases and has approved the following OSHMA license requests: ARB Aksion, ARB Aventura, ARB Film, ARB Hits, ARB Comedy, ARB Max, ARB Mrekulli, ARB Nostalgia, ARB Premier, ARB Shqip, ARB Thriller, Arbëria, Florinjet and Sport ALB. While he postponed for decision-making in the next meeting the request for license of OSMA from A2 CNN Albania.