EBU warns on imminent threat to BHRT
December 9, 2025 11.37 Europe/London By Julian Clover


The European Broadcasting Union has stepped up its warnings over Bosnia and Herzegovina’s public broadcaster BHRT, after a coalition of international media groups and Central and Eastern European public broadcasters appealed directly to the European Commission to avert its collapse.

In an open letter to Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and other senior EU officials, the signatories say BHRT is now “on the verge of total collapse” after years of financial obstruction and political inaction. They warn that a shutdown would remove the country’s only independent state-level source of news, fuel foreign-backed disinformation and damage Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU accession prospects.

The crisis is rooted in the continued non-payment of BHRT’s share of the licence-fee–linked RTV levy by entity broadcaster RTRS since 2017, depriving BHRT of more than €46 million and leaving it unable to meet salaries, pension contributions and basic operating costs.

The warning comes after weeks of protests by BHRT staff, including highly publicised “tent studio” broadcasts outside parliament in Sarajevo, staged to highlight the lack of political response despite court rulings in the broadcaster’s favour.

Broadband TV News has been reporting on BHRT’s funding problems for more than a decade, including earlier EBU alerts that the broadcaster was “close to collapse” in 2015, plans to suspend broadcasting in 2016 and renewed closure warnings in 2022. A temporary €2 million cash grant approved in early 2024 failed to resolve the structural problems around fee collection and revenue-sharing.

The latest appeal also points to the July 2025 closure of Al Jazeera Balkans and cuts at regional news channel N1, arguing that the loss of BHRT would leave Bosnia and Herzegovina without any mainstream public-interest television journalism at national level.

The coalition is calling on domestic authorities to restore BHRT’s lawful share of RTV revenues, agree a sustainable long-term funding model and settle outstanding pension liabilities, and on the European Commission and wider international community to treat the situation as both a media-freedom emergency and a security risk with wider regional implications.