Thessaloniki, 22 March 2023 (MIA) – The Association of Balkan News Agencies – Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) held a General Assembly on Wednesday in Thessaloniki, in which MIA participated, represented by general service editor Ana Cvetkovska.

The General Assembly unanimously voted in favor of allowing Italian news agency ANSA to become a full-fledged member of ABNA.

The Turkish Anadolu Agency will take over ABNA’s chairpersonship in 2024, and will organize the next General Assembly in Istanbul, which is expected to make a decision regarding the 2025 chairpersonship, with MIA being the only candidate so far.

The ABNA-SE member agencies are MIA, the Albanian news agency ATA, Bosnian FENA, Bulgarian BTA, Greek ANA-MPA, Cypriot CNA, Kosovo KosovaPress, Romanian Adjerpress, Serbian TANJUG, Turkish Anadolu, Croatian HINA, Montenegrin MINA, and, as of today, the Italian news agency ANSA.

The idea for the creation of ABNA-SE emerged in 1994 at a meeting of the heads of the Balkan news agencies in Sofia.

The Founding Assembly was held in June 1995, in Thessaloniki. At the 30th General Assembly held in September 2022 in Burgas, ABNA became a formal Association with its own Statute, created on the basis of the legal document of the European Alliance of News Agencies, bringing ABNA-SE’s operations closer to the EU standards and rules.

The current chair of the Association, Greek news agency ANA-MPA, held a conference Monday titled “The Role of News Information in the New Balkan Reality”, during which the representatives of the ABNA-SE agencies, including MIA, signed a declaration pledging to combat the distribution of disinformation. ad/nn/