At its session held on 17 May, the Culture and Information Committee unanimously adopted the project proposal put forward by its member Svetlana Stojanovic for applying for funding from the OSCE Committee Development Fund. According to the project proposal, the Committee is to adopt an official position regarding cultural policy, exchange ideas with artists’ organisations and the appropriate Ministry, identify problems in the field of culture, initiate the adoption of a new cultural policy and create a multilingual website of the Culture Committee. The project is designed to be implemented in three phases to a time schedule.

The Committee discussed a petition of the Libertatea Newspaper and Book Publishing House, as well as the request to re-assess the grounds for transferring founding rights over ethnic minority media to ethnic minority councils. As the petition raises serious concerns, the Committee resolved to convene a special session, charging Committee member Snezana Lakicevic-Stojacic with preparing a report on ethnic minority council issues. It was also agreed that The Vojvodina Culture Secretary and the Republic Minister of Culture should be invited to attend the special session.

The session’s agenda also included a petition submitted by the Steering Committee for the Preservation of the Museum of Yugoslav History, requesting the establishment of the museum’s legal status and the assessment of the state of its collection. As part of this item, the Committee discussed the proposal of the Ministry of Culture of merging the Museum of Yugoslav History with the Historical Museum of Serbia, providing expert curatorial services and registering the museum as a cultural institution, as it is now legally a Federal organisation. Members of the Committee endorsed the Ministry’s proposal, describing the solution as an acceptable stop-gap before the passage of legislation on cultural activities of general interest.

The Committee also discussed the petition of the Serbian Trade Union of Cultural Institutions’ Employees regarding the problem of financing national heritage institutions and historical archives on the territory of the Republic of Serbia, and proposed to the Ministry of Culture to foresee appropriate means of financing these institutions when preparing legislation.

Members of the Coordinating Board of Serbian Artists’ Associations presented requests of 13 associations, numbering more than 11,000 members, and asked for support in communicating with other ministries. The Committee resolved to support a proposal for maintaining the legal category of independent artists.