On a November morning, the bitter state of Bosnian media took physical form. Radio-Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BHRT) relocated the newsroom into a canvas tent pitched outside the parliament building.
Snow blankets the improvised studio as the broadcast persists in the biting cold, a raw cry for survival.
Merima Kurtovic-Pasalic, the union president, declared the action a final warning. The broadcaster employs roughly 700 people, providing the sole countrywide programming for a state where mainstream journalism endures existential danger.
The staff keep working largely on professional pride, broadcasting from tents in winter weather while electrical systems falter during rainstorms.
A Region of Silenced Voices
The tent outside parliament constitutes the most visible symptom of a broader breakdown. The region suffered a major blow barely four months prior as Al Jazeera Balkans announced an abrupt closure.
After 14 years of operations from the Sarajevo headquarters, the channel turned off the transmission at the end of July 2025, leaving over 200 journalists unemployed and widening the information vacuum.
A contagion of instability spreads through remaining outlets. Regional news channel N1 Television now sustains mounting anxiety over ownership and editorial independence.
Programme directors across Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia proposed a management buyout in November 2025 to secure the channel against external takeovers.
Losing BHRT would signify the definitive erasure of mainstream public-interest television journalism at the state level. The situation grows evident upon viewing the region as a whole, where media pluralism declines steeply. The space for credible journalism narrows with every outlet shutting down.
The Arithmetic of Strangulation
The crisis at BHRT originates from calculated financial suffocation.
The broadcaster operates under a revenue-sharing model where Radio-Television of Republika Srpska (RTRS) collects licence fees from citizens through electricity bills. Since 2017, RTRS has refused to transfer the legally mandated half of the funds, withholding over 46 million euros.
Nearly a dozen unenforced court rulings have ordered RTRS to pay. Consequently, the 2025 state budget practically cut off BHRT’s financing. Council of Ministers chairwoman Borjana Kristo acknowledged the lack of consensus among leadership on resolving the funding dispute.
Financial drought manifests as physical decay. The central building deteriorates daily without maintenance funds. On 21 November, programmes went dark for three hours as heavy rain penetrated the facility and soaked electrical installations.
For staff, conditions are barely tolerable. They work receiving zero social contributions since 2015.
Around 780 employees live in precarity as pension rights vanish annually. Fundamental services like electricity and gas could be severed at any time, and bank accounts risk freezing.
The Hollow Promise of Europe
Brussels watches the slow-motion collapse from a distance. Luigi Soreca, head of the EU Delegation in Bosnia, stated that a state aspiring to join the European Union must maintain a state-owned public service broadcaster. Soreca noted that the disappearance of BHRT would constitute a major step backward for Bosnia’s international reputation.
Rhetoric outpaces action. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has delivered warnings for over a decade.
The broadcaster nearly collapsed in 2015, planned to suspend broadcasting in 2016, and received renewed closure warnings in 2022. A two million euro cash grant arrived in early 2024, leaving structural flaws regarding fee collection and revenue sharing unresolved.
Coalition members from media freedom groups appealed directly to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in November 2025. The letter urges the Commission to handle the emergency as a security risk and media-freedom crisis.
An Option for the Future
Public broadcasting systems require sustainable funding to operate, a prerequisite established by the European Media Freedom Act for EU accession. Bosnia pursues membership alongside dismantling the institutions the union demands it maintain.
A disturbing trend pervades the region. In the 1990s, Western governments poured millions into media development, betting that a pluralistic press could inoculate post-conflict societies against authoritarianism. Such a wager appears lost.
Europe built institutions to prevent past mistakes from recurring. Such institutions operate through funding, legislation, and enforcement.
Bosnia receives rhetoric about European values as the last state broadcaster operates without heat. The EBU recognises the professionalism of the journalists, but professionalism alone cannot pay the electric bill.
The option becomes obvious monthly. The European Union validates the worth of accession requirements by demanding authorities restore revenue sharing and treating the collapse as an emergency.
Snow persists falling on the tent outside parliament. The final warning echoes through empty streets while bureaucrats in Brussels deliberate process.
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