Any citizen or legal entity may submit a complaint/reaction to the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services regarding contents aired by the radio and television stations, the programme packages of the operators and the print media (not about the content of printed texts, but only regarding data published in the Impressum, their editorship, their operational transparency, minors’ protection, etc.).
Complaints may be submitted against the Agency’s work as well, if, by way of an act adopted or action performed, it has violated somebody’s rights and interests.
The Agency takes action upon every submitted complaint/reaction deemed to be under its competence, even in cases where it is not legally bound to do so (an exception from the Law on Acting Upon Complaints and Propositions are the initiatives for conducting inspection or some other kind of supervision, and the requests implying an initiation of a procedure that is regulated by a separate law).
For the purpose of explaining who may submit a complaint and on what grounds; the elements that the complaint should contain and how to submit it; the deadlines and the action taken upon the submitted presentations, the Agency prepared a small brochure titled “Submitting a Complaint: What Do I Need to Know?”. Apart from the brochure, the Agency also printed a leaflet titled “How to Submit a Complaint to the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services”,intended for the broader audience.
As part of the project on “Monitoring the Efficiency, Effectiveness, Transparency and Responsibility of Media Regulatory Bodies – PROformance Watch”, the EUROTHINK Centre for European Strategies developed an educational video advising the citizens of the possibility to submit complaints to the Agency.
Since recently, the Agency has started publishing all submitted complaints/reactions and its replies to the same on the Agency’s website.