Last week marked the World Press Freedom Day – a time to reflect on the state of free press in Europe and beyond.

Europe, particularly Western and Northern Europe, remains a place with high press freedom compared to much of the world. A recent ranking by Reporters Without Borders registered improvement in multiple EU countries, such as the Netherlands, and in some non-EU Eastern European countries, like Ukraine and Moldova. Still, many European countries struggle with press freedom, a multiyear trend that The Fix has covered extensively before.

Let’s take a look at the types of threats journalists face in the European Union and other European countries – and what the EU is doing to try and tackle the challenges.

Threats to press freedom, from violence to legal intimidation

“The more room for the media, the less for dictatorship,” said Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, at the beginning of the conference presenting a survey on press freedom, in Warsaw earlier in the month. The survey, led by the Committee for Editorial Independence and Reporters Without Borders Austria, showed increasing concern compared to last year by the Visegrád 4 (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) countries’ population over the state of press freedom.

But the V4 countries are not the only ones to have cause for worry. Journalists and media workers are facing physical and online attacks, threats, and intimidation attempts. Governments in several European countries are increasing pressure on public service media, and business owners are expanding their hold on the media. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) are on the rise. Cyberattacks, police violence, discriminatory remarks by politicians are recorded each week by press freedom organisations and mechanisms.

The threats can be broadly sorted by countries: in France, the number of incidents in the country recorded on the Mapping Media Freedom platform increased by 25% from 2022 to 2023 when comparing the first quarters of each year alone. A high number of incidents are linked to police violence, especially in the framework of the anti-pension reforms protests, which was the object of a statement by the Council of Europe.

Poland has nine legal incidents recorded on the Mapping Media Freedom platform for the first four months of 2023. Parties tend to engage in SLAPPs against media outlets or journalists to silence them. As a matter of comparison, 11 cases of pressure on media freedom were recorded for the whole year of 2022.

Serbia is, according to a mission by the Media Freedom Rapid Response, in “deep crisis”: verbal pressure and attacks from the state leadership and smear campaigns are frequent. It is famously known that president Aleksandar Vu?i?, not unlike President of the Republic of Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Milorad Dodik, is trying to silence the media in opposition.

In Italy, violence towards media outlets, journalists and their families has risen by 9% in the first three months of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022, according to the Mapping Media Freedom tool. The increase coincides with the election of right-wing politician Giorgia Meloni in October 2022 as Prime Minister. We can see the beginning of an erosion of democracy in Meloni’s tendency to sue media outlets in opposition for defamation, tendencies we have seen for years in other countries: Hungary and Poland, for example. And, if we are not careful, we will see this in a lot of other countries in years to come.

The European Union’s response

“By protecting journalists and their safety, we are also protecting media as such,” said European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova during her keynote speech at the European Federation of Journalists’ World Press Freedom Day event on 3 May 2023, hosted in Brussels. The EU institutions have a crucial role to play: strong safeguards to protect the media have to be implemented.

In the media world, two of the most important documents of the past couple of years are the Digital Service Act (DSA) and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA).

The DSA, like the Digital Markets Act (DMA), is an EU regulation holding accountable online platforms with the goal to create a safer digital space in which the rights of users are protected. Both acts are focused on search engines and other providers of digital services, and aim to establish a playing field for all actors for growth, competitiveness and innovation. The DSA, which has a focus on intermediaries and online platforms specifically, came into force in November 2022, and the obligations under this text are due to come into force in February 2024 for smaller platforms, but big platforms and search engines will have to apply to the text from August 2023.

The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) is a proposed regulation aiming to protect media independence and pluralism in the European Union, by providing safeguards against political interference and surveillance, and to fight against captured media markets. The overall goal is to ensure that private and public media can better operate in the EU single market. The EMFA is currently discussed at the European Parliament and the European Commission.

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Many European countries struggle with press freedom. What can the EU do?