Debate: Hungarian interference in the media in Slovenia and North Macedonia
Date: WEDNESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2020
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

I will first reply on the comments addressed to the Commission. This Commission does everything to support an independent, professional and trustworthy media because, more than ever before, we need objective news which will inform citizens about the situation. We have to do it and we are doing everything with the competences we have.  Concrete steps on the concrete situation is always a matter of a thorough analysis as to whether this is against EU rules and whether we have the instruments to take concrete steps which will address an individual case. You know the system very well. We work on individual cases, which can be addressed by enquiry into infringements – which is not this case – and we can work by adopting new legislation, or proposing new legislation, to address systemic issues. This is what we are doing. We now have the Audiovisual Media Services Directive already being transposed into national laws. We are scrutinising whether it is done in full because, if not, we have to launch an infringement against the Member State and ask for an improvement in the implementation or application of the European Directive in national law. This is now ongoing because this Directive came into force this year. We are preparing very thoroughly for the application date of the Copyright Directive, which will come next year in June. It will be a very important moment in history for strengthening the position of professional journalism because, behind this heavily lobbied piece of legislation – I think you will remember the time when this was in the final stage of adoption – there was a very simple idea, namely that professional journalists have to get paid for their work.  This is going to come into force next year in June and the Commission is prepared to help with proper implementation in the Member States, which will not be possible to circumvent. We have already seen in France that an effort was made by Google to find some middle way solution, and we said no. It has to be implemented and applied in full.  We are going to adopt the European Democracy Action Plan and the Media Action Plan next week, on 2 December. I will not go into details because of the time limit here, but you will see that in everything we are doing – by the current legislation which is already in application or the rules we are going to adopt – we are trying to strengthen the position of independent media because we need the independent and professional media to be strong and do their job. The character of their job is twofold. One is that they are economic actors. What we see now, in the time of COVID, is the more we need professional and objective media, the less money they get. They are in horrible financial distress now in the time of COVID. That’s why we recommended to the Member States to use the state aid schemes also to help the media as economic players and employers. The second task of the media, and an indispensable role, is that they must remain strong watchdogs of democracy. They must hold us, who are in power, under control. We are also working in this direction. You will see in the European Democracy Action Plan that we will propose several actions to strengthen their position as the watchdogs of democracy. I will always emphasise professional independent trustworthy media. This is what we are speaking about.  And why? Why are we trying to strengthen the position of the media? Because we see clearly that when the media are weak, they are easy targets for political and economic pressure. This is what we see in Europe. The trend is worsening. In the summer this year, we published the Media Pluralism Monitor, where we saw this very clearly. A worsening trend of political pressure on the media has increased everywhere in Europe. Economic pressure, now made more dramatic by the impact of COVID, has made the situation of the media very difficult. Advertisers have moved to the online sphere and 50% of all advertising money goes to Facebook and Google in Europe. This is the reality. When the media are hungry, then they have no other choice than to take the money from those who want to impose the political agenda. This is what we are witnessing in many cases. So we need to do everything we can – this is for me a systemic measure – to make the media stronger and not to be driven into this financial trap because they of course need to make money doing their job. We have a very vivid dialogue with media organisations because we also want the EU money to help, but of course we cannot pay individual media because we have to respect the independence of the media. I will finish by asking all of us to try to look at things objectively. The EU is, of course, supporting the media, which is also financed by foreign actors when they operate as business players. But when we see that there is a political agenda behind that, then there is something wrong.  Thank you very much for this debate. I do not believe that this was the last debate about the media. This was a geographically—specific one, but it also revealed the systemic issues we are facing and that we are trying to solve at European Union level because we have a limit to systemic functioning solutions, including the increase in transparency of ownership. This is one of the things which we now want to scrutinise in more depth because this is one of the conditions which are already in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which is now in force.