03 May 2024
Why Europe Needs a Harmonised Access to Information Act
May the 3rd marks press freedom day around the world. Today, many articles and editorials will be published across Europe, highlighting the need to put an end to threats faced by journalists in Member States. While all these pan-European threats certainly need to be tackled, one fundamental pan-European crisis faced by journalists across the continent remains widely ignored: the difficulties to access information held by public authorities and the disparities among Member States when requesting data. This article aims to review the current situation of the right to request information from public bodies in EU Member States and offers a proposal that opens the door to discussing the possibility of harmonising such a right through the internal market competence. Continue reading >>
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12 June 2023
The Key to Ensure Media Pluralism in the EU? A Unified Framework
Media freedom is one of the necessary conditions for democracies to function. Yet media freedom is currently not guaranteed in all European Union countries. The European Media Freedom Act proposed by the European Commission in 2022 aims to protect and foster media pluralism across the EU block and, while some changes would need to be made to strengthen the proposal’s efficacy, monitoring on the ground shows that a common European framework is indeed needed. While there are already several harmonisation measures that revolve around media – such as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) – this is the first text that clearly and specifically addresses the media market in and of itself, which marks a paradigm shift in EU media regulation. Continue reading >>
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