The directors have been replaced. The regulator has not yet approved the takeover. That sequence is the entire story.

The Portuguese company „Alpac Capital” has taken over the media outlets of Adria News Network - the television channels N1 and Nova S, the Nova.rs portal, the daily „Danas” and the weekly „Radar”. These are precisely the newsrooms in Serbia that have spent years reporting critically on the government. The news that they have been sold is significant in itself. What turns it into an alarm is that, according to Serbia's business registry, the previous directors and legal representatives have already been replaced, with „Alpac Capital” chief executive Pedro Vargas David entering as representative in their place.

Control first, permission afterwards

Luxembourg's independent audiovisual media authority (ALIA) confirmed that the transaction has not yet been approved and that the procedure assessing the change of control over ANN is still under way. So the new owner is changing the people at the top while the body meant to assess whether he may change them is still deliberating.

The Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia (NUNS) called it what it is - serious concern over management changes carried out before the regulatory procedure has concluded. Their wording is careful and precisely for that reason heavy: changing governance structures before the procedure ends raises the question of whether de facto control over the media is being established before the competent bodies have even finished their assessment.

A thousand people and one signature

More than a thousand people work at ANN across the region. Newsroom unions have already requested an urgent meeting with the new director and written guarantees that there will be no interference in editorial policy and no threat to the professional positions of editors and journalists. Asking someone to put in writing that they will not change your job is a request nobody makes when they feel secure.

The concern is not abstract. The same fund took over „Euronews” in 2022, and the takeover was followed by a plan of layoffs and reorganisation. Journalists in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo know that by heart and need nobody to explain to them what that curve looks like.

Who stands behind the Portuguese name

This is where the story stops being corporate. Media in Serbia have previously reported that Pedro Vargas David and executive partner Luis Santos are linked to people close to senior political circles in Hungary and Serbia - connected to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who makes no secret of his impatience with the critical reporting of these very newsrooms.

None of that has been established in court and it should not be presented as if it had. But the pattern is recognisable everywhere in the Balkans: media outlets are not shut down, they are bought. The police do not come for the editor; an owner comes with a contract. The end result is the same, only now there is an invoice.

Why this is not only a Serbian matter

The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) provides that in media concentrations, alongside the market aspect, the impact on media pluralism and editorial independence is also assessed. That is exactly why ALIA's opinion is not a formality - it is the test of whether the European rule works at all when it collides with real capital and real political connections.

N1 and Nova S are not watched only in Serbia. Those newsrooms are part of the information space of the whole region, and their reporting is read in Skopje too. If the editorial line of the largest critical network in the Balkans can be changed by a single entry in a registry, the question „who owns the news you watch” is no longer academic.