The Education and Cultural Affairs Committee of the House of Advisors approved, by a majority vote, the draft law No. 026.25 concerning the reorganization of the National Press Council after a discussion lasting approximately three hours on Monday evening. The law saw no amendments from the version passed by the House of Representatives, which had been referred to the House of Advisors for discussion and voting.
The committee’s deliberation on the project was delayed by nearly two months from the date it was referred, as opposition groups submitted several requests for postponement to deepen the discussion and review the proposed amendments. The opposition presented 139 amendments, mostly from the Popular Movement party, which had the largest share, along with amendments from the Moroccan Trade Union, the Socialist Union, the Democratic Confederation of Labor, the National Labor Union, and representatives of the General Confederation of Moroccan Workers who supported the majority, some of whom felt compelled to withdraw their amendments after they were rejected by Mehdi Bensaid, the Minister of Culture, Youth, and Communication.
Minister Bensaid emphasized during his remarks that the law aims to address the legal gaps that hampered the previous council’s work. He stressed the importance of strengthening media enterprises to regulate them and establish precise financial governance and accounting, rather than relying on limited public funding for journalists’ salaries. The minister called for raising the minimum wage for journalists to 12,000 dirhams and ensuring their promotion within a few years, in addition to their registration in the National Social Security Fund to guarantee full health coverage and supplementary retirement, enabling them to work with dignity.
He also differentiated between structured media enterprises that have grown from small to medium and then large, employing more than 60 journalists, and those that employ a small number or are run in collaboration with family members to benefit from support, or those that own multiple enterprises to achieve the same goal, which contradicts the purpose of establishing media enterprises.
