A newsletter from Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg. Editor: Natacha López, freelance journalist |
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The beginning of the year means a lot of yearly reports are published. Several of them reveal interesting facts about Europe’s media reality – such as how the implementation of the EMFA is going. We also report on new initiatives to combat the use of spyware. Read about these and other news in the new European Media Policy newsletter.
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In this issue: Digital rules Disinformation
Media freedom
Authors' rights
Surveillance | Digital rulesUS sanctions Breton and other Europeans
On 23 December, the Trump administration announced they were imposing travel restrictions on former Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other European nationals involved in curbing hate speech and disinformation. This as part of what the administration described as an action to combat the “global censorship-industrial complex”. The sanctions included revoking the US visas of British citizens Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford, who respectively head the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and the Global Disinformation Index, reported Politico. Also, German citizens Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, leaders of Hate Aid, a non-profit that tracks digital disinformation spread by far-right groups, were subject to the visa bans. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers justified Breton's visa ban by naming the French official, who served within European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s first administration, as the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, a law the Trump administration claims targets American companies and imposes censorship on digital platforms. In a statement a day after the announcement, the European Commission condemned the move, stating the bloc’s digital rules ensure a “safe, fair and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination”. The commission also said it had requested “clarifications” from the US and, if needed, will “respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures”. On 20 January, Euractiv reported that the European Commission will back Breton in his legal challenge against the US visa sanctions. (US sanctions former EU commissioner and four Europeans over efforts to curb online hate speech) (EU Commission to back Breton in legal fight with Washington) US threatens European companies over EU digital rules On 16 December, the US warned it could impose fees or restrictions on European service companies operating in the American market, if the EU continues to restrict and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through “discriminatory means”. In a post on X, the US trade representative expressed the latest American threat as a response to the EU’s digital rules. The Trump administration has been persistent in its criticism of mainly the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which set out strict requirements for large online platforms. The statement claimed that the EU and certain EU member states have persisted in a course of “discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers”, and explained that if responsive measures should be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, “among other actions”. It went on to list European companies that have been able to “operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field”. Among those companies were Siemens, Spotify, and DHL. The European Commission rejected the accusations, and Euractiv reports that Thomas Regnier, the commission’s digital spokesperson said: “We will continue to enforce our rules fairly and without discrimination”. (’Discriminatory': US threatens EU companies over tech fines) | DisinformationParliament classifies Democracy Shield initiative as too weak
On 21 January, the European Parliament’s rapporteur, Swedish MEP Tomas Tobé (EPP), presented his suggestions for the upcoming Democracy Shield, intended to protect democracy from foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), disinformation, and hybrid threats. In his report, Tobé argues that the European Commission’s proposals for the shield are insufficient to match the scale of threats facing the EU. He concludes the planned Centre for Democratic Resilience lacks “sufficient operational detail, clear budgetary allocations, a specific governance structure, a concrete mandate and a timeline”. Furthermore, he expresses concern that the centre might remain only a coordination hub that “could further reduce the EU’s capacity to make efficient use of the full spectrum of tools available at present, and add to the shortcomings that have been identified by the commission itself, including reduced reactiveness, fragmentation and stretched budgets”. The report also calls on the commission to assess the feasibility of making large online platforms contribute financially to the centre’s budget, arguing that “the banking sector funds banking resolution mechanisms, pharmaceutical companies support safety monitoring, and polluting industries bear environmental costs”. Tobé also suggests cybersecurity efforts should be given additional muscle and focus, in particular on protecting democratic systems.
According to Euractive, EU justice commissioner Michael McGrath has said the parliament’s concerns had been “carefully noted” as work continues. The centre is due to be formally launched on 24 February on the margins of the General Affairs Council. (European Parliament Draft Report) MFRR response to Democracy Shield initiative Like the European Parliament, the journalist organisations behind the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) also demand further operationalisation of the European Democracy Shield (EDS). In its response to the European Parliament’s report and the European Commission’s original proposal, published on 26 January, the MFRR emphasises the need for a comprehensive action plan, particularly regarding the role of independent media and “public interest journalism”. The MFRR calls for a concrete action plan for the functioning of the Centre for Democratic Resilience, and a stronger involvement of journalists and media – as well as stronger support to independent journalists. In their response, the MFRR also calls for the EDS to be more tightly hard‑wired to the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) and forcefully support the implementation of the EMFA in cases where high‑risk of media capture has been identified. The MFRR commends the parliament’s draft report for emphasising the importance of media in the next Multi-annual Financial Framework, and reiterates their calls for allocating adequate mechanisms for independent media viability and long-term financing. The MFRR also welcomes the commitment to provide core support to exiled independent journalists but highlights that transnational repression requires a coordinated EU response, which the EDS is currently lacking. The organisations also state the EU should ensure durable and structural protection for journalists in exile through accelerated access to special visas beyond short-term relocation, regardless of their nationality. ( MFRR proposed amendments to the European Democracy Shield Draft Report) | Media freedomNew report on EMFA implementation – Finland stands out positively In December, the International Press Institute and the Media and Journalism Research Center published its final overview report on media capture and the degree to which member states meet the new requirements in the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) to combat this. The report provides an analysis of eight EU member states: Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. A conclusion of the report is that even though countries should already have aligned their regulations with the EMFA, which entered into force in August 2025, most of the countries examined in the study have yet to adopt the necessary compliance measures. Finland, which was included primarily as a comparative case, stands out as the only country that has achieved a timely and comprehensive alignment with the EMFA. By contrast, Slovakia adopted only partial measures and deepened political control over public service media through the 2024 dissolution of RTVS and the creation of STVR, a move that directly contravenes EMFA’s article on public service media independence. Some other conclusions from the report are: - Although all countries assessed legally guarantee editorial independence of public service media, in practice, political interference is widespread. Finland’s Yle remains largely independent, but even it faces renewed political pressure via budgetary debates.
- Also, all countries have formal legal provisions for regulator independence; however, effective independence is largely absent. Appointment processes in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia remain vulnerable to political control.
- Overall, state advertising remains one of the most powerful and commonly used tools of media capture across Europe. Across all countries examined, except Finland and with the partial exception of Spain, none have put in place cohesive rules ensuring that state advertising is allocated transparently, objectively, or proportionately, as required under the EMFA.
- When it comes to media pluralism, ownership-transparency obligations remain only partially implemented in all of the countries examined. Several have media ecosystems vulnerable to increasing concentration, with particularly acute risks visible in Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Romania, and Slovakia, where major conglomerates or politically connected investors dominate significant portions of the media market.
( Media Capture Monitoring Report: 2025 Overview)
1,481 press freedom violations in 2025 In February, the Media Freedom Rapid Response partners published their annual monitoring report for 2025, which documented 1,481 press freedom violations in 36 European countries between January and December 2025. The report was compiled by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists, and the International Press Institute and looks at violations in the 27 EU Member States and nine candidate countries. The report is based on verified cases recorded in the Mapping Media Freedom database. According to the findings, verbal attacks remained the most common type of attack (40%). Further violations involved interference with journalistic work (24.3%), legal attacks (23.2%), physical assaults (14.7%), and attacks to property (13.9%). Also, online attacks continued an upward trend from previous years and accounted for one-fourth of all attacks in 2025. When it comes to perpetrators, private individuals were behind most attacks against journalists (24%), but government and public officials stood for 18% of attacks, a number that has constantly increased over the past years. Serbia stood out as the country with the highest number of recorded violations in 2025 – with 208 media freedom cases. (Mapping Media Freedom Monitoring Report 2025) More strategic lawsuits against journalists despite new EU law The 2025 report on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) in Europe, published on 28 January, shows a slight increase in the registered numbers of new cases during 2024 compared with 2023. According to the report, 167 new cases were filed in Europe in 2024, an increase from 166 in 2023. This even though the EU’s Anti-SLAPP Directive entered into force in May 2024, and member states have until May this year to transpose the directive into national law. Journalists appear as the most frequent SLAPP targets, closely followed by media outlets, activists, editors, and NGOs. The claimants are overwhelmingly actors who occupy positions of power, such as businesses or political figures. According to the report, this shows that SLAPPs “function as a tool through which those with resources and influence seek to insulate themselves from public scrutiny”. Another conclusion is that powerful actors are strategically diversifying their legal claims beyond traditional defamation to exploit complex legal areas like data protection and intellectual property. While the large majority of SLAPPs are still based on national defamation laws, the data confirms the rising use of alternative legal vehicles. This is the fourth edition of the annual SLAPPs Report, which is prepared by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation for CASE, a coalition of over 120 non-governmental organisations from across Europe. (2025 Report SLAPPs in Europe: Democracy in the Dock) | Authors' rightsAI companies not complying with transparency requirements An analysis published by Euractiv on 19 January showed that several large AI companies are not adhering to the EU’s transparency rules for companies that build large foundation models, such as those used in ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. EU rules require the companies to publicly disclose information about the data used to train the AI models, so that copyright owners such as journalists, writers, or artists can identify whether their work has been used in the training. The timeline for compliance with the training data disclosure depends on when a model was launched. Companies that put an AI model on the European market before 2 August 2025 have until August 2027 to abide by the rules, while models released after this date were expected to comply immediately. Still, the European Commission will only formally start enforcing the rules from August this year. Euractiv reveals that, for example, Google and Mistral do not seem to disclose the required data, even though they were launched after the 2 August 2025 deadline. (AI companies are not being as transparent as the EU wants)
JURI report on copyright material used by AIRightsholders of protected content should be able to opt out of AI training and automated data crawling, says the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI). On 28 January, the committees MEPs adopted a series of proposals to ensure full transparency and fair remuneration of rightsholders for the use of copyrighted work by generative artificial intelligence, by 17 votes in favour, 3 against, and with 2 abstentions. According to the MEPs, AI providers and deployers should be transparent about the protected content used to train their systems, and rightsholders must be properly remunerated for the use of their material. They also call on the European Commission to examine whether such remuneration could also apply to past use. The MEPs also want EU copyright law to apply to all generative AI systems available in the EU, regardless of where the training takes place. The parliament’s rapporteur, German Axel Voss (EPP), said in a statement following the vote: “Our aim is to foster innovation while safeguarding the core principles of intellectual property”. The report, which is a non-binding resolution only setting out the parliament’s view and recommendations, will be put to a vote in the parliament’s plenary session in March. (Protect copyrighted work used by generative AI, say Legal Affairs MEPs) | SurveillanceNew initiatives to combat spyware use
The network European Digital Rights (EDRi) has launched a new resource to document abuses of spyware use in Europe and support a full ban on spyware in Europe. The document pool brings together research on the topic, EDRi’s analysis, reports, and official documents on spyware from the EU and other international bodies, as well as country cases reporting on recent spyware scandals across the continent. Over the past years, repeated investigations have shown that at least 14 EU member states have deployed spyware against journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, activists, political opponents, and others. EDRi writes that despite this and the findings of the European Parliament’s PEGA Inquiry Committee in 2023, the European Commission “has so far refused to propose binding legislation to prohibit spyware”. The launch of the spyware document pool is part of EDRi’s broader effort to sustain pressure for EU action on the topic. Also within the European Parliament, an informal anti-spyware group was established on 21 January this year, bringing together MEPs from four different political groups, according to the Italian edition of the magazine Wired. The new group was established as a response to the Italian Paragon spying scandal, by Italian MEP and journalist Sandro Ruotolo, who tells Wired it will be an “informal commission of inquiry” against abuse. (EDRi – Spyware Document Pool) (Spyware in Europa e caso Paragon, c'è una nuova commissione d'inchiesta... [Spyware in Europe and the Paragon case, there's a new commission of inquiry...]) | |
Don't forget our Nordic newsletterDid you know that Nordicom has another newsletter about the media policy sector in the Nordics? It is called Nordic Media Policy. |
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About the newsletter
The newsletter European Media Policy provides an update on policy developments at the European level. It concentrates on news from the European Union: current issues and trends in media policy, new proposals for legislation, debates in the European Parliament, recently taken or impending policy decisions and reactions among those concerned, new support programmes, EU studies in the field, etc. There is also some coverage of policy developments in the Council of Europe and at the international level. European Media Policy is published with support from the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Editor
Natacha Lópaz, freelance journalist
natacha.lopez@gu.se Publisher
Nordicom University of Gothenburg
PO Box 713
SE-405 30
Gothenburg
Sweden
www.nordicom.gu.se
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