Macedonia is one of many countries where citizens struggle for democracy and against measures to control the media and limit freedom of expression and access to information online and offline. The latest of these measures is the proposed new Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services which will require all media, both print and online, to be filtered through a centralised government agency, effectively allowing the government to legally filter and censor content. On 8 April 2013, the Macedonian Minister of Information Society and Administration presented a draft of the Law and announced a 60-day public consultation period, formally ending 8 June. No consultation with civil society took place during the development of this first draft. Macedonia’s media is already

The new Macedonian law on Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services creates serious risks for freedom of expression in Macedonia. The new law expands the scope of state control from broadcast media (which is justified because they use a limited public resource, namely wireless spectrum) to all kinds of media, including online and print. This is neither justified and unnecessary and far exceeds the requirements of the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2010/13/EU. Furthermore, excessively broad definitions (for instance, the concept of journalists) and vague formulations create the risk and possibility of arbitrary interpretation by state regulators, which would increase the risk of the undermining of freedom of expression. The drafting of the law suffered from a lack of