Expertise of CoE on draft Audiovisual Code is in the Parliament from the end of the last week

The expertise of the Council of Europe on the draft Audiovisual Code (AC) will be distributed to the MPs until the end of this week, sources from the Parliament declared for Info-Prim Neo. According to them, the expertise arrived at the Parliament at the end of the last week. Now it is translated and in several days it will be seen by the authors of the project and the rest of MPs. According to the quoted sources the expertise contains 42 pages. At the end of the last week, several MPs, inclusively the authors of the draft Code declared for Info-Prim Neo that they know nothing that would confirm the existence of the expertise in the Parliament of Moldova. On the other hand, Estelle Steiner, representative of the Press Office of the Council of Europe, responsible for Moldova, sent to the agency the following answer: “the expertise of the Council of Europe on the draft Audiovisual Code was sent to the Moldovan authorities on May 29, via the permanent representative of the Republic of Moldova to the Council of Europe”. On a supplementary solicitation, addressed to the Council of Europe, to send a copy of the expertise, Steiner answered: “I would suggest that you get in touch either with the permanent representative of the Republic of Moldova in Strasbourg or with the Speaker of the Parliament for a copy”. “Publishing this document is the competence of the Moldovan authorities”, Steiner said. Info-Prim Neo addressed an official solicitation to the Chairman of the Parliament, Marian Lupu. The draft Audiovisual Code was elaborated by Communist, Democrat and Christian-democrat MPs and adopted in first reading in the Parliament on April 6. The representatives of other political parties and also experts from the field, journalists, and representatives of the civil society qualified the document during multiple debates that took place in Chisinau, as a political one, that will allow interference of the government in the national audiovisual.