Debate: Threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom, on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day
Date: TUESDAY, 3 MAY 2022
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

I said before that the EU has never done so much in the field of media, and it is maybe because we hear from many different sides ‘do not regulate media, they have to remain free’. This is exactly what we want. We want rather than regulate, we want to support, to protect and to give the media sufficient space and protection in the EU because we need a well—functioning media sector for our democracy. We discussed today about SLAPP or anti—SLAPP and as Tiemo Wӧlken said, we owe it to the journalists because we see too many processes and too many cases of abuse of justice, against freedom of speech, in fact. As the former Justice Commissioner, I have to fight against that. I do not want our courts to be abused. There is something elementarily unfair or incorrect. We have to narrow the space for abuse of justice. And why? Also because we see that the goal of these abusive litigations is the process itself. And the longer and the more costly, the better for those who complain and who abuse the system. So this is not what European justice should be used for. This is a pioneering exercise. Ramona Strugariu said that it has not been easy to come to this point. It will not be easy to come to the point of the final adoption because I had a debate with the Ministers of Justice, and only some understood fully why we need to act. I am not criticizing them, I just say that this is surprisingly new for many of them and that it will require a lot of work not only to convince them to say yes to the cross—border directive or the directive which is looking into cross—border cases, which are always more costly and more difficult. We are doing it for a very good purpose, but at the same time to convince them to address the issues of domestic cases. The argument I heard from the ministers mainly was that we have to balance or guarantee free access to Courts for everyone. Even the rich and powerful person has the right to go to the Court when he is facing some unprofessional behaviour from the side of the journalist or human rights or rights defenders. It can happen. So, I will keep promising to the Ministers of Justice that we will, in any case, balance these rights. I think already the text itself of the legislation shows that we tried to find the right balance. I said that never before so much attention to media. When you look into our rule of law reports, there is a very strong chapter on media. We are mapping the situation in all the Member States this year. For the first time we will issue the recommendations. This might be a very strong instrument for the years to come, to have the proper insight on how the media situation looks like in the Member States and what might be the measures to be taken. In the rest of my time – I have a generous five minutes, so I will use it in full. We have to do more for the media, especially now when we are in the information war. Now we see things very clearly what we didn’t see several years ago. I have to say I was calling on action already several years ago when I saw that disinformation is part of the Russian military doctrine. It was openly known that disinformation will be used as a weapon and they are exactly doing this, and disinformation can be very efficient. Russian disinformation already is bearing fruits and it has the potential to do a lot of dirty work in the EU. That’s why we have to fight against disinformation by all means, and not to forget that our primary obligation is also to protect freedom of speech. But freedom of speech cannot be absolute and is not absolute in the EU. We have laws which are limiting the freedom of speech. Nicolaus Fest said that it is not defined anywhere, but hate speech is defined in all the Member States penal courts. It is clearly defined. As for disinformation, we define it in several strategic papers and also in the Digital Services Act it’s defined in the way of harmful content. If we give the freedom of speech absolute power, then we also absolutely resign on the truth. I truly believe that we must not be naive, especially now, in war time. We have to defend ourselves. We see how disinformation works. It’s not new. It was here already since 2014 and the annexation of Crimea. We saw a lot of disinformation campaigns against Ukraine and our campaigns which were organised to influence and manipulate European people. What we saw in COVID time, disinformation was used as a poison. Now in the Ukrainian war, disinformation is used as a weapon. This is why we have to act. Sorry, I had to also mention this because in the fight against disinformation, the media, the professional journalists, play an extremely important role because we need to get the facts right and we need the European people to understand the situation and make their own decisions and choices based on trustworthy facts. This is the job of the media, and that’s why we have to protect journalists.