Proposal for a Regulation on a common framework for safeguarding media freedom and pluralism in the European Union (European Media Freedom Act)
Date: 2022-08-12
Institutions: Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
Subjects: single market



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Factual summary report of the public consultation on the impact assessment to accompany an EU initiative on the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA)



Disclaimer: This factual summary report presents the views of the respondents who participated in this public consultation, not the views of the European Commission.






The public consultation, held from 10 January 2022 to 25 March 2022, collected views on the most important issues related to the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) initiative. The online questionnaire targeted all types of stakeholders and received a total of 917 responses from 24 EU Member States and four non-EU countries (Norway, Somalia, Switzerland, and United Kingdom). The results of the consultation were an input to the impact assessment on the European Media Freedom Act. 





1.Introduction




This report summarises the outcome of the public consultation which was conducted by the Commission as part of the impact assessment on the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The public consultation was open from 10 January until 25 March 2022 on the Have your say portal. A total of 915 submissions were received via this website, while two additional ones were received outside the portal and were also considered. 


The objective of the public consultation was to collect insights and views from all types of stakeholders to support the problem definition and impact assessment of the EMFA initiative and to gather feedback on its preliminary policy options. In particular, the consultation aimed at collecting data on:


·stakeholders’ views on the current and emerging problems related to media freedom and pluralism with a specific focus on obstacles/issues affecting the operation of the media in the EU internal market;


·evidence and concrete data underpinning the problems identified;


·stakeholders’ views on the potential policy approach, options and impacts.


This report provides a brief description of the responses. In this context, the following is worth noting: 


·the consultation was open to all stakeholders and citizens and those interested replied so the responses cannot be considered to be statistically representative; 


·Out of the 917 respondents, 681 respondents (88%) under the category of ‘citizens’ originated from the same EU Member State (Slovakia). Their responses are very similar in content and mention the same issues, thus they were identified as a campaign. 


2.Overview of respondents



In total, almost 85% of the respondents (776 out of 917) replied as individuals in their personal capacity, while around 15% (141 out of 917) replied as representatives of an organisation, an institution, or a company. 


The breakdown of category of respondents, as indicated by the respondent, was as follows
1
:


Figure 1: Respondent categories 





The responses came from 24 EU Member States and four non-EU Member States (Norway, Somalia, Switzerland, and United Kingdom), with a large number of individual responses from Slovakia. A campaign was identified in Slovakia which explains the substantial number of responses of respondents from Slovakia
2
. It was assumed that one respondent mistakenly indicated Somalia instead of Slovakia due to the proximity of Slovakia and Somalia in the drop-down list, as the contribution was provided in Slovak. Correcting this supposed mistake, the geographical distribution of responses is provided in the figure below. 



Figure 2: Number of respondents by country of residence or establishment



3.Summary of the replies



Safeguarding the EU internal media market, media independence and pluralism


The first set of questions asked respondents to give their general views on the current levels of media freedom and pluralism in their Member States, and in the EU as a whole. Overall, 81% of all respondents (745 out of 917) found the safeguards for media independence and pluralism in their Member States as unsatisfactory. With regard to difficulties for the freedom to exercise business activities in the EU media market, 693 out of the 917 respondents (76%) identified insufficient transparency on media ownership as the main difficulty encountered. The second biggest overall difficulty mentioned by 68% of all respondents (622 out of 917) was diverging national scrutiny procedures over media market operations.


81% of all respondents (747 out of 917) identified as the preferred EU-level action enhancing transparency of media ownership and 71% (653 out of 917) enhancing transparency and fairness in the allocation of state advertising.  However, preferences over the most important area of EU-level action varied across stakeholder categories. Over half of companies and business organisations (16 out of 29) identified audience measurement methods as the most important area of action, while NGOs (30 out of 42) identified the independence of public service media governance, and public authorities (14 out of 19) and citizens (668 out of 776) identified transparency of media ownership as the most important area of action.


Transparent and independent media markets


The second set of questions related to the transparency and independence of media markets, with three subsections respectively on transparency of media ownership, media market scrutiny procedures and restrictions to media market entry and operation, and on audience measurement. With regard to the first subsection, 94% of all respondents (864 out of 917) agreed that it was important to have access to information on who owns or controls media companies, while altogether 81% of all respondents (602 out of 917) claimed that this data was currently only available to a limited extent or not at all (139 out of 917). Nearly half of companies (12 out of 29) and a third of business associations (10 out of 28) considered that the information is accessible to a large extent. With regard to policy options, 80% of all respondents (735 out of 917) were in favour of the introduction of EU obligations to all media companies in the EU to disclose their ownership structure, including beneficial owners with vast support particularly from citizens and NGOs.


In terms of media market scrutiny procedures, more than half of all respondents (489 out of 917) identified that the best EU-level action on media ownership restrictions/authorisation requirements would be to require Member States to justify any national measure that has the effect of restricting/limiting the entry or operation in the media market.


With regards to the transparency of audience measurement, only 6-8% of citizens fully or somewhat agreed with the statement that audience measurement is carried out in a transparent, objective and inclusive way in relation to TV broadcasting, video-on-demand services, radio broadcasting, online radio broadcasting, online press and online platforms. Companies and business associations, including those pertaining to the sectors concerned by the question, tend to consider audience measurement for TV broadcasting, radio broadcasting, online radio, online press and video-on-demand services to be more transparent, objective and inclusive than citizens (68%, 51%, 47%, 47% and 40% fully agreeing or somewhat agreeing with the statement, respectively). However, only 5% of companies and associations fully or somewhat agreed with the statement that audience measurement for online platforms is transparent, objective and inclusive (3 out of 57). More than half of all respondents (494 out of 917) claimed that EU action would be useful to ensure an independent auditing of audience measurement.


Conditions for healthy media markets


This set of questions encompassed subsections on balanced and impartial media coverage, regulatory convergence and cooperation, on media self-regulation, and on an enabling environment for innovative media. With regard to the first aspect, over two thirds of EU citizens (530 out of 776) reported having encountered issues in having access or being exposed to a diverse media offer. The majority of companies and business organisations (25 out of 29), including those to whom possible obligations could apply, thought that the EU should not consider actions to ensure balanced and impartial media coverage and exposure to plurality of views.


In terms of regulatory convergence and cooperation, academic institutions, companies and business associations, citizens, NGOs, public authorities and trade unions all identified common guidance or best practices exchange by independent media regulators on key areas of media regulation as the best action to ensure more regulatory convergence in the EU media market. 


The findings under the sub-section on media self-regulation revealed that more than half of citizens (459 out of 776), 14% of companies and business associations and 12% of NGOs were unaware of media self-regulatory bodies. More respondents fully or somewhat agreed (355 out of 917) than fully or somewhat disagreed (302 out of 917) with the need for EU action to foster independence of media self-regulatory bodies. More than half of all respondents (584 out of 917) claimed to be aware of problems regarding the application of journalistic standards and ethics in the EU. This was particularly the case among citizens (526 out of 776), trade unions (7 out of 9) and NGOs (24 out of 42).


Concerning technologies and processes relevant for media innovation over the next five years, 71% of respondents identified data spaces and analytics (649 out of 917) to be the most relevant new technology, while 339 of them identified artificial intelligence. More than half of the business associations and companies (33 out of 57) considered that the editorial media’s financial health has weakened in the last five years. Around one third of company and business association respondents (20 out of 57) claimed that improved access to finance for editorial media, including through guarantees for debt financing and equity investments, would help enhance the economic sustainability of media outlets.


Fair allocation of state resources in the media markets


In this set of questions, respondents replied to sub-questions on the functioning of public service media and state advertising. With regard to the first aspect, 79% of all respondents (726 out of 917) were aware of some instances of state interference in editorial decisions or management of public service media in some EU Member States, and 70% of them (639 out of 917) claimed that this interference affected competition in the EU media market to a large or very large extent.




In terms of allocation of state advertising, three quarters of respondents (687 out of 917) assessed the level of transparency of state advertising in their Member State and the EU as a whole as insufficient. A majority of all respondents agreed, to a large or very large extent, that the main practices related to state advertising that create distortion in the internal market are the discrimination in the allocation of state advertising (612 respondents), the absence of clear criteria for allocation (596) and the heavy reliance of media companies on state advertising to finance their operations (530). In this regard, a bit over half of the respondents (486 out of 917) identified the introduction of reporting obligations for Member States as the preferred EU-level action to improve transparency and fairness in the allocation.


Governance options


With regards to the questions on governance options, nearly half of all respondents did not have an opinion concerning the role of ERGA in ensuring a consistent and healthy regulatory framework for media across the EU. This can be explained by the high number if responses from EU citizens, which may not have an opinion on such a specialised matter. Taking into consideration only the replies provided by the other categories of respondents, over half of them (75 out of 141) considered the role of ERGA as quite or very important. 12 out of 13 public authorities who expressed an opinion on the issue, considered that the current institutional set-up of ERGA is not sufficient to enable national media regulators to effectively contribute to the proper functioning of the internal media market and safeguarding media pluralism. With regards to the most appropriate governance arrangements for the institutional structure of the possible new EU framework for independent and pluralistic media, the option with the relatively highest support corresponds to ERGA being an independent European regulatory body, assisted by an independent secretariat, with 143 out of 917 respondents fully or somewhat agreeing with this option. The second most popular option (105 out of 917) was to keep ERGA in its current status, which received more support by companies and business associations (16 out of 57). 



4.Next steps


The results of the open consultation, together with other consultation activities, feed into the impact assessment on the EMFA initiative and inform policy making to improve the functioning of the internal media market. In this context, the Commission has carried out a more in-depth analysis of the replies. The outcome of this analysis will be presented and published as a full synopsis report in the impact assessment (Annex 2) and published on the Commission website.






(1)


 The European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA) identified itself as ‘other’ but was considered as part of the ‘public authorities’ category when assessing the responses received.




(2)


 A campaign was identified through the Facebook post of the blogger Judita Laššáková, who invited her audience to respond to the public consultation. This campaign followed the adoption of a law on 26 February 2022 by the National Council of the Slovak Republic which enables the regulatory power to block access to certain websites, although the criteria on which the institution may block access to websites is not specified in the law. This law raised the concerns of Slovak citizens on the misuse of this legislation to censor the information provided by certain media outlets, and in particular those whose views are not aligned with the government. In this regard, the large number of responses from Slovak citizens started in fact being received since 27 February 2022, a day after the law was adopted.