The Danish Presidency want to make also conferences on this issue where they have best practice exchanges. But we also have to recognise that there are Member States which are more critical, which perhaps don't want to implement the legislation. We see at the moment, for example, in Malta, you know the Daphne Galizia's situation we had there. The media landscape is not really free because there is also a lot of pressure  from Member States. We have the situation in Hungary or in Slovakia where we have a situation that, yeah, they are not really willing to implement this legislation in an adequate manner and there we have to intervene and that is what we can do."

What could the EU do in cases where Member States are not ready to implement the European Media Freedom Act?

"So what we had in the plenary debate was a misuse of the debate, to be honest, because this narrative coming, especially from the extreme right, has no basis in the legislation. The legislation is nothing about censorship. If we would discuss with the DSA, that might be more a situation like that, but this is just implementing a framework for the independence of media and not censorship, it's totally against all these things. It's against surveillance. It's against influence of Member States into the media content. It's totally opposite to what was claimed by the extreme right wing. And that shows that they just are looking for a narrative against the Media Freedom Act because they don't want their member parties or their governments that are in this having to enable independent, critical and free media. The most negative positions came from ESN (Europe of Sovereign Nations). And if you know that the Fidesz party is part of ESN or Le Pen but with the PfE (Patriots for Europe). But most critical were his. And you know which political parties are in this group and so." 

Let's imagine that this European law on freedom of the media could be deliberately interpreted and rewritten by some countries in favor of the ruling party - for example, by the far right. Could they use it as a tool for censorship there?

When it comes to the media authorities and the power media authority might get as being part of the European media board.  There you have a regulatory mechanism because all the decisions have to be taken in the media board with the two third majority. So we just will have a situation that it can be structurally misused by such states when we have, a two third majority of Member States that want to misuse. And I think if that happens we have other problems than that." 

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English publication: Rositsa Petkova
Photos: Rositsa Petkova