Understand the criticism of the EU press freedom law – 02/03/2023 – Market

Presented in September last year by the European Commission, the proposed law that aims to protect press freedom and media pluralism in all 27 countries of the European Union is considered an innovative step in the right direction, but, according to professionals involved in the debate, contains excerpts that need attention before it can be approved, which does not yet have a deadline.

Called the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), the bill is in its early stages in the European Parliament and is part of a larger plan by the Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, to combat disinformation. and regulate the major online platforms. Included in this strategy are the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), approved last year and currently being implemented.

With 28 articles, the new project brings together norms that seek to defend the independence of the press from political and economic interference, both in public bodies and in private groups. There are rules for more transparency in the ownership of media companies, and for journalists to be protected from spyware-type attacks. It also provides for the creation of a European council made up of representatives of regulatory bodies in the countries, with the involvement of the Commission itself.

“We need to establish clear principles: no journalist should be spied on for their work; no public media should be turned into a propaganda channel. This is what we are proposing for the first time: common safeguards to protect media freedom and pluralism in EU”, said Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the Commission (Values ​​and Transparency), in September. The expectation is that the law will be approved before the next European election, next year.

The presentation of the proposal was generally well received by civil society entities and professionals who defend press freedom, such as the International Press Institute (IPI), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and Reporters without Borders. “Media-related issues have traditionally been the province of countries. However, the threat to freedom is such that EU-wide action has become necessary to protect Europe’s democratic values,” they said in a statement. 20 organizations.

The communiqué adds as a caveat that, in order to work, the Media Freedom Act needs to strengthen efforts to increase transparency in media ownership “with clear rules rather than recommendations” and introduce rules that address “all financial relationships between and media”.

“It’s a good step in the right direction. However, there are problems surrounding the effectiveness and structure of the proposal. The work of lawmakers has just begun,” he told the Sheet the German MEP Petra Kammerevert, member of the Culture and Education Committee of the Parliament, where the project is currently being processed.

One of the hottest points in the debate is the EU’s own competence to regulate the media, an attribution that today is up to each country. To establish collective rules for the sector, such as the DSA and the DMA, the argument was based on the functioning of the internal market. “The Commission justifies its proposal with the internal market, because that is the only possible form of regulation. It does not recognize that the means of communication have a double character: they are economic and cultural assets. You cannot treat the media in exactly the same way than other commercial goods,” says Kammerevert.

For Elda Brogi, professor and coordinator of the Center for Media Freedom and Pluralism at the European University Institute, this issue explains the controversy surrounding the proposal, manifested by some countries, such as Germany. “The EU has no explicitly conferred legal competence to produce and approve a law of this nature, which falls on the pluralism of the media”, she says.

Brogi adds, however, that the current complexity of the sector opens up this possibility. “The conditions of this market have changed, including the structural ones. It is no longer the market for national TV stations, but the market for information, traditional and new media and online platforms. It is a market that is constantly evolving and that probably needs new rules. In this sense, I think the EU has competence”, says she, who participated, in February, in a public hearing in Parliament on the proposal.

Designed with the intention of combating the decline of press freedom and media pluralism, situations that have become chronic in countries like Hungary, the proposal, according to the MEP, is not effective in reversing situations like this. “The biggest problem is this: I don’t see a single rule that is capable of improving the situation in Hungary or Poland,” says Kammerevert. “The truth is that the Commission was very hesitant to use other instruments available to put Hungary and Poland in their place, such as suspending certain rights in the face of violation of fundamental EU rights.”

If the proposal is approved, the constitution of the European council, with national regulatory authorities, will mean a new supervisory body, a formal space to deal with future cases in which freedom of the press is threatened. Therefore, he says, it will be crucial for the body to be free from interference by the governments of the countries and also by the Commission.

The participation of the European Commission in the council, as provided for in today’s text, is one of the main points of opposition to the law expressed by the European Association of Newspaper Publishers (ENPA) and the European Magazine Media Association (EMMA). “As it stands, the council is not completely independent of the Commission. The European press has always relied on self-regulation due to its scrutiny role over the powers. two associations.

Entities raise other issues with text. Article 6, which deals with the duties of news content companies, requires publishers to ensure that “editors are free to make individual editorial decisions in the exercise of their professional activity”. For Konteas, this can open space for interference in the internal way in which publishers manage their business and conduct the vehicle’s editorial line. “The moral and legal responsibility for the publication is the publisher, which also ends up protecting the journalist”, he says.

According to him, issues such as media concentration do not need new regulation, since national markets operate under existing antitrust rules. On the other hand, the Commission, he says, missed the opportunity to include in the proposal measures that modify the Digital Services Law, which paves the way for large online platforms, such as Google and Meta, to be able to remove legal editorial content based only on their policies. internally, without court orders. According to the proposal, in cases like this, the platform will have to inform the vehicle about the reasons, before the removal is carried out.

“We recognize and appreciate the importance that is given to press and media freedom and the interest of the European institutions in the matter, but we are concerned that the chosen tool, the European Media Freedom Act, despite good intentions, will not be able to solve the sector’s problems”, concludes Konteas.

For Professor Brogi, the procedure in Parliament can result in a constructive discussion, based on the Commission’s text. “The world of information is changing and this standard is to reiterate that the media are important and to protect them. It can be improved, it is certainly not the best standard, but it is what can be done given the premise that it is a European Union standard.”