site.btaBulgaria's, Serbia's National News Agencies Sign Cooperation Agreement

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) and Serbia's national news agency Tanjug signed a cooperation agreement in Belgrade on Thursday.

BTA thus has news exchange arrangements with the national news agencies of all countries neighbouring on Bulgaria.

The agreement was signed by BTA Director General Kiril Valchev and by Manja Grcic, CEO of Tacno d.o.o., a Belgrade-headquartered Serbian news media company that owns Tanjug and operates as a news agency under the Tanjug brand.

Under the agreement, each party will receive the other party's full English-language news service and will have the right to use these news items in their news services.

Besides this, each of the two agencies will provide the other, on a daily basis, one significant news story from its respective country with text in English and a picture, which the other agency will publish on its distribution channels, expressly crediting the source, making it available for free-of-charge access to all visitors of the respective websites.

Another option provided for by the agreement is experience sharing and exchange of professional visits by journalists and other media professionals employed by the two agencies.

The agreement entered into force upon signature and will be renewed automatically for further one-year periods indefinitely. 

BTA and TANJUG previously had two cooperation agreements: one signed in 1995 and another in 2005, which was in effect until 2011.

Inter-Agency Cooperation

The cooperation agreement signed on Thursday brings to 42 the number of national agencies on four continents with which BTA has agreed on a daily free-of-charge news exchange: Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Ghana, Greece, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Yemen.

BTA and Tanjug are the only representatives of their respective countries in the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA).

Valchev invited Tanjug to join the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE), and Grcic said that she accepted the invitation. The seat of ABNA-SE is in Bulgaria, and the BTA Director General is the Association's Secretary General. ABNA brings together the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA), Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federal News Agency (FENA), the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), the Athens News Agency-Macedonian Press Agency S.A. (ANA-MPA), Italy's Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA), Kosovo's News Agency (KOSOVAPRESS), the Cyprus News Agency (CNA), the Romanian National News Agency (AGERPRES), North Macedonia's Media Information Agency (MIA), Turkiye's Anadolu Agency (AA), the Croatian News Agency (HINA), and the Montenegro Independent News Agency (MINA).

The signing of the agreement is timed in with the Sixth Cross-border Conference under a project titled under the project "Europe in the Balkans: A Common Future", which will take place simultaneously in Belgrade and in Vidin (Northwestern Bulgaria) on Friday.
 
BTA has so far held such cross-border conferences with the support of the European Commission in Belgrade, Bosilegrad, Bucharest, Edirne, Skopje and Thessaloniki.