Tanja Fajon, a Slovenian politician and a member of the European Parliament said on Tuesday that the last week’s attack on a Montenegrin journalist showed in which circumstances investigative reporters there work.

She said that all countries in the Balkans faced problems with media freedom and that she has been constantly warning about that.

“I want to join the most severe condemnations of the attack on Olivera Lakic and to express the hope that this case will be solved and the perpetrators punished,” Fajon told the Radio Free Europe (RFE) in an interview.

She added that free media were crucially important for a healthy democracy and thus this case was a clear violation of the values the European Union was founded on.

She reminded that the European Commissioner Johannes Hahn said the attack was brutal and that it spoke a lot about the media situation in Montenegro.

Hahn added that such things would inevitably influence the country’s progress toward the full EU membership.

Fajon also said that the EU had clear criteria regarding the rule of law and that such an act would not go unnoticed.

“I think that the state itself, because of its citizens and its progress, should tend to secure the basic conditions for the journalists’ work and a climate in which it is possible to have a freedom of expression,” she told the RFE.

Fajon said that the latest Reporters Without Borders (RSF) report showed that the main challenges to free media remained the same: intense authorities’ pressure, attacks and attempted murders of those who report on crime and corruption…

“When we add the economic problems media houses face, an increase in self-censorship, constant fear for personal safety, then we see how difficult that is,” Fajon said, adding that “practically, it is impossible to properly do the journalistic job in Montenegro.”.