Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs – LIBE DRFMG Working Group Meeting
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LIBE European Parliament
Follow its sittingsGiuseppe Abbamonte
Across the EU. Now a few words about the audiovisual media services directive. So we are currently working on the evaluation of the impact of the directive, which we are required to do. And the.
and we are working also on a proposal for a revision of the directive, which is foreseen in the third quarter of this year under the decommissioned work program. We are undertaking an extensive stakeholder consultation in line with the better regulation principles and guidelines to ensure that there is indeed a demonstrable need for change. A public consultation was published on February 10, while all these aspects will be addressed, and it will remain open until tomorrow. So I would like to flag that the visibility and prominence of audiovisual media services of general interest is likely to be one of the focal points of this exercise. So several member states and stakeholders have made numerous calls to improve the current legal framework in this area, which is key for the economic sustainability and competitiveness of European media service providers.
Another aspect which is crucial for the sustainability of the sector and which needs to be addressed is the fairness in the advertising market. Now the regulatory framework is too asymmetric. The rules applying to traditional players are too heavy, and there are no equivalent rules applying to streaming platforms and intermediaries. So there is something which needs clearly to be, which deserves a reflection and prop and possibly also a regulatory rebalancing. And similarly, another point of attention will be how to make sure that the rules are still up to date and proportionally address new market players like influencers, while still ensuring effective protection of viewers, in particular, minors.
So this will also include analyzing the impact and application of the measures aimed at protecting minors from illegal and harmful content on video-sharing platforms. Can I say so one more minute on the journalist recommendation? So the commission recommendation on the safety of journalists was adopted in 2021, predating the adoption and application of all the laws that you mentioned before, M. Fadianti's lab directives, the AI Act, and the Digital Services Act. So while the recommendation does not contain a specific review clause, the European Democracy Shield foresees the updating of the recommendation by end 2027.
So in line with the recommendation, measures and actions taken by the member states were already reported in a study on the implementation of the recommendation, which was published in 2023. The study highlighted that the implementation at national level has been challenging and uneven, and it also showed that despite some national initiatives, problematic issues for journalists signaled in the recommendations persist, such as the safety of journalists during demonstrations. DG Connect has already had several meetings with relevant stakeholders representing journalists and took note of their views on the update. The analysis of the recommendation is ongoing. And for instance, one of the priority areas will be clarifying the scope of the recommendation in view of the legislative acts adopted after 2021, in order to avoid duplication since some of its provisions now have become legal requirements in the laws of the member states.
Thank you very much.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. I will now give the floor to mister Cesare Pitea who is from the Director General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Freedom of Expression and Steering Committee on the Media and Information Society Division from the Council of Europe. Please, you have the floor.
Cesare Pitea
Madam Chair, honorable members of the parliament, distinguished colleagues, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion on media freedom from the perspective of the Council of Europe. We live in a time of abundance of information, and yet this abundance does not automatically translate into what media freedom is ultimately meant to deliver: independent, reliable, and trustworthy information that enables citizens to participate in public life and hold power to account. The Council of Europe New Democratic Party for Europe highlights this information as a growing threat to democratic security. In this context, protecting media freedom is not simply a policy objective. It is a core condition.
Cesare Pitea
Democratic resilience. The standards developed over the years by the Council of Europe under the guiding light of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights provide a solid foundation for member states' interventions at the regulatory level and other levels. Many of these standards are now reflected at the EU level in the MFAR and the other pieces of legislation that were mentioned before by Mr. Abamonte and also nonbinding instruments adopted by the commission. The key challenge, therefore, today is less about defining comprehensive standards for media freedom, but rather to ensure the effective implementation of what is already there, and provide adaptability and adaptation of the existing standards to the rapidly evolving digital environment.
And one can think about the challenges that are posed to media freedom by generative AI and the development of generative AI. I will focus on five interrelated dimensions of media freedom very briefly: safety, viability, quality, independence, and exposure. It's a quite arbitrary classification that is just one of the many possible. First, safety. Threats and attacks against journalists remain a serious concern in the Council of Europe member states.
Online abuse of the gendered is increasing. Abusive legal proceedings continue to have a chilling effect on journalists. Addressing these issues requires stronger alignment between international standard, domestic legal protections, and for action of enforcement action. The Council of Europe continued to work with its member states through the journalist matter campaign supporting the implementation of the 2016 recommendation on the safety of journalists. It's starting the work to support member states in implementing the recommendation on countering SLAPPs and continues to facilitate dialogue with civil society through the platform for the safety of journalists.
Second, viability. The economic model of journalism has been shattered, and digitalization has shifted user attention and advertising revenues towards large online intermediaries and content creators. Generative AI is further diverting resources. Ensuring sustainability requires understanding information as a public good and providing neutral financial support mechanisms for independent media, transparent allocation of state funds through advertising, and sufficient and stable resources for public service media, independent public service media. Third, quality.
In the context of this information, the challenge is how to support trustworthy journalism without overstepping into content control. The Council of Europe favors creating enabling conditions for quality journalism and independent journalism, strong professional standards, independent public service media, community media, fact-checking organizations, and effective self-regulatory frameworks. Trusting media can be supported through transparency and accountability of both media and the digital gatekeepers of information. Coregulatory frameworks for addressing systemic risks posed by digital platforms to pluralism and the reliability of information are needed, including the containment of coordinated inauthentic behavior and synthetic content. Mitigation measures can also support industry-led labelling initiatives to certify trustworthy media.
Fourth, independence. Media must be protected from undue political and economic influence. This includes safeguards for editorial autonomy, transparent allocation of public resources, and clear rules of ownership, transparency, and concentration, including new forms of power concentration in the digital information ecosystem. Independence must be ensured both in law and practice, and this applies equally to media regulatory authorities whose remit is expanding to cover digital services. Finally, exposure.
Access to information is increasingly mediated by digital platforms, algorithmic systems, and generative AI tools. On the supply side, ensuring that diverse and reliable sources reach audiences requires greater transparency in content curation and appropriate safeguards for public interest content. On the demand side, media information literacy must be strengthened and integrated at all levels of formal and informal education so that citizens can better navigate the information environment. Finally, users of digital platforms should be given better tools to control the content they are exposed to in their online experience. In conclusion, these five dimensions form a coherent ecosystem.
Weakness in one area inevitably affects the other. The role of the Council of Europe is to support member states in translating these shared standards into effective practice, while adapting to ongoing transformation. And in this framework, the cooperation with the EU institutions and the commission in particular in both standard setting and support to implementation is a very important key aspect of our prospect of success. I look forward to our discussion. Thank you very much.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. We have online the secretary general and coordinator of the European Digital Media Observatory, Missus Paula Gori. Paula, hi. Welcome. I'll give you the floor for five minutes, please.
Paula Gori
Thank you very much. Honorable Chair Williams, honorable members of the European Parliament, dear experts, dear citizens who are following online, it's really a pleasure to be here. ADMO stands for the European Digital Media Observatory, and our main focus is disinformation and, more broadly, information integrity. Info integrity is a key pillar of democracy, and let's also remember that disinformation can also exacerbate economic instability and insecurity. Now, in democracy, the agency should be in the hands of citizens.
However, in the current online information environment, the agency isn't in the hands of opaque algorithmic amplification. It's the algorithm deciding which information we consume. It's not us, and this is against the right information. The algorithm is driven by engagement, with the ultimate aim of generating revenue. And engagement-driven algorithms favor outrageous and negatively emotionally charged content and build on our own cognitive exploitation.
Let me just give you a recent data. The revenue of Meta for 2025 was $162,000,000,000, and 98.6% of those were coming from ads. We have heard about MFAR, the Arvudo Visual Media Services Directive, the DSA. There is a code of conduct on this information. There is the regulation on transparency and targeting of political advertising, the AI act, the EU digital services, sorry, the EU Democracy Shields and others.
And it's also good to see that other policy sectors, like, for example, the climate sector, are also focusing on information integrity. And I would say, in general, there is an overall agreement that the EU is paving the way. However, in light of the title of this session, in these few minutes, I would like just to mention a few examples of the challenges that we are seeing on the regulatory side. The first is that in order to have evidence-based policies, we must reduce the knowledge asymmetry between us and the value-aligned online platforms and search engines, the VLOPSIS. EDMO is collecting a large set of evidence, but full enforcement of Article 40 of the DSA is key.
VLOPSes must give access to their data, and the procedures to get that access need to be clear and accessible. In addition, tools and infrastructures for researchers to analyze those data need to be put in place in all member states. It's not easy to access the date those data procedurally, but even if you can, you need a proper technical infrastructure to manage that.
Yes.
Sophie Wilmès
I'm very sorry to interrupt you, but our interpreters are requesting for you to speak a bit.
more to probably.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Paula Gori
Okay. Sure. The code of conduct, of which Edmo is a member of the task force, is a key multistakeholder tool, and its implementation is a risk mitigation measure under the DSA. Meantime, there is, however, unclarity on the risk assessment methodology and on the mitigation measures implemented by the platforms. VLOPSes, so very large online platforms and search engines, are playing with fragmentation and non-comparability.
Moreover, they are still not addressing the core of the DSA, which is to act on their design and functioning. This means acting structurally. And this is true particularly when it comes to systemic risk to civic discourse, media pluralism, and media freedom. Malign actors, including foreign ones, are exploiting this to implement their influence operation, manipulate the information environment, and threaten our democracy. The regulation on transparency and targeting of political advertising is an important tool.
As a reaction, however, some platforms have decided not to allow political advertising anymore. However, first, there is evidence also from the Admob hubs that this is still happening on the platforms that have decided not to allow political advertising anymore. And there is also a flip side to this. If they don't allow political advertising, what happens is that those political parties which are more polarized use emotionally charged content to get viral, to be organically amplified by the algorithms as they cannot pay anymore for virality. Another key element is the monetization of this information.
This is paramount as it cuts a huge part of the incentives behind its spread and amplification, and way more needs to be done in this regard. I was mentioning some numbers before. We are also repeatedly facing AI slop and LLM poisoning, but there is still uncertainty on the regulatory approach to tackle this. Let me also underline what was said previously by the Council of Europe. Preparedness and resilience are key, but they cannot be a one-off exercise.
They need long term strategy funding implementation. Media literacy, for example, is something that we need in all ages, in all geographies, in all languages, in all contexts. I would also like to underline that experts are targeted by adversarial behaviors. In our recent survey, 66 percent of the respondents, and the responders are people, experts that are tackling this information, are getting adversarial behaviors. So more needs to be done to protect them.
Let me conclude by mentioning something that is related to democracy, shield. There is a section on that is titled investing in democracy means investing in our future. The digital, I'm sorry. The Democracy Shield mentions key players that are active in the mission of protecting democracy, such as journalists, civil society organizations, independent fact-checkers, media literacy experts, and also EDMO. However, there is an asymmetry between the key role that these actors play to safeguard democracy and the size and instability of their funding, including EDMO.
The protection of democracy needs proper and stable funding. As it clearly emerged from this conversation, safeguarding democracy means having different gears in action. If some gears are still, the whole mechanism stops. Thank you very much.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much, Missus Gori. I will now give the floor to Tom Gibson, who is deputy advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Tom, yes. Good morning. Welcome, Strasbourg.
We can't hear you.
Hear me now?
Yeah.
Tom Gibson
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. It's great to hear these comments today. It firstly should be noted that the progress that has been made since 2019 with the European Media Freedom Act, rule of law report, the anti-SLAP directive, the general safety recommendation, these are remarkable in their way in terms of the ability for the European Commission to push its competency to support the media, which was once not really considered possible pre-2018.
The question is whether or not these are actually now going to translate into meaningful change. And overall, the rate of progress that we're seeing at member state level is not matching the needs. We need more political will, engagement, and support from the member states. We also need the European Commission to get tough, to take leadership and uphold the media reforms, in particular, the European Media Freedom Act. So the second half of this year is gonna be the test as to whether or not there's a political weight to make that happen.
The European Parliament, including the rule of law monitoring group, should always, as you do, be seeking to defend journalists and monitor and speak out against all deteriorations of press freedom context around Europe. So what do we need to actually help protect journalists? Journalists on the ground in member states need to be able to report abuse. They need to be able to seek protection. They need to be able to often get that from support structures, which exist in order to help them manage risk and gain emergency support, and, where necessary, act as an avenue for engaging with the authorities, including with law enforcement.
A couple of examples that are regularly cited are the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Now this was covered in the European Commission's recommendation 2021, and some member states do have concrete national measures, including action plans that have been put in place. It's still unclear as to the full extent to which these were actually inspired by the journalist safety recommendation on whether some of these measures are actually in place anyway. Protection measures generally need to be open to scrutiny and criticism from civil society. We have had a couple of countries where it feels like the government has put in place these measures to be able to deflect criticism.
But, ultimately, we need to be seeing whether these national measures are working. And journalists in particular need to know that there's support available, and that they report to press freedom groups that they are being supported through these structures. But more importantly, helping journalists, supporting them, it isn't just a one-off thing. There has to be a continuous dialogue to make that effective. And the conditions in which journalists work are very multifaceted, detailed, and complex.
So the review in the Democracy Shield, the proposed review of the journalist safety recommendation, is important. I would argue that the standards that we have on journalist protection are actually very well codified already by the Council of Europe and the OSCE. So any review should also be incorporating implementation strategies for actually how to put in place meaningful measures, and really trying to provide some sort of carrot and sticks scenario for member states. Funds, for example, could be made available through Agora EU under the MFF to make some of these measures a reality for journalists on the ground. The Council of Europe Journalists Matter campaign has set up focal points.
It doesn't feel like it's a good thing now to repeat the work that campaign has done. That campaign, quite frankly, has been under-resourced. It's been slow to set up and small in structure, but there's really goodwill there to make it work. And the European Commission could be looking at ways to provide that synergy with the Council of Europe. Unfortunately, the campaign ends next year.
And, again, it's taken such a long time, years, several years now, to set up those focal points. This shouldn't be allowed to drop. The rule of law report has to be used better to implement meaningful change on press freedom. You will know that we have often cited the lack of specific and detailed recommendations. They should be serving as accurate benchmarks to really generate proper national debate around either progress or backsliding.
And they should be clearer, because then it will allow for better and easier pan-European scrutiny. You can check CPJ recommendations, Greece or Hungary or Malta, to see the sort of level of detail which I'm talking about. If we're looking to change things, we need to have a detailed discussion rather than cursory recommendations. On the European Media Freedom Act, as we know, the commission's tasked with compliance. Member states have different things to address at the national level.
Some member states have not responded to them, some have introduced legislation only partially or minimally addressing the concerns. So we need that political will. And, again, after we know that the process now is building up to infringement after the summit, and we really push the commission to do that. I know that I'm running out of time, but there's so much to talk about. The debate on surveillance and spyware needs to be reenergized, in particular, within the EU institutions in Brussels.
The PEGA Committee of Inquiry report from 2023 has not been followed up on, including their national recommendations to member states. Article 4 of the European Media Freedom Act has loopholes in it. It now needs to be seen the way that national courts will interpret article four, and the real ability of journalists to be able to seek remedy through AMFA. The question of encryption is constantly up for grabs between member states. There should be a real commitment, an agreement that upholding encryption for source camp confidentiality respects the full rights of journalists, and also allows journalists to report on matters which matter to all of us.
Lastly, because I know that I am basically out of time, the legal threats, obviously, the May deadline for the transposition of the anti-SLAPP directive is only around the corner. It's not looking promising. A quarter of member states have undertaken transposition or are around the verge of transposition. Our call has been that member states look not just at the anti-SLAP directive, but also the European Commission's recommendation and the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers' recommendation, and that they go far further than just civil cross-border cases. They look at a holistic approach to addressing SLAPs, legal threats, defamation, and so on, and not just judicial answers, data collection, victim support, awareness raising.
The online harms, yes, threats and insults are now, they must not be normalized. We need to really invest our time into making better use of the DSA to apply pressure to protect the rights of journalists online. I know that I'm well over my time, so I'm going to stop there. Thank you very much.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much, Tom, for this very insightful and precise, concrete speech. You will be happy to know that we voted yesterday in plenary session the report on the rule of law report, where the request for specific detailed recommendation and many other things are included with the rule of law cycle. So I'm sure you have read it already, but I'm just underlining this since a lot of us worked on this subject. I have also online the head of the Brussels office European Broadcasting Union, mister Walter Gequiere. Yes.
Good morning. Welcome. You have the floor for five minutes.
Wouter Gekiere
Thank you so much, Missus Chair and members of Parliament. Thanks for inviting me. Life in Brussels, here in the European Parliament. I'm representing today the European Broadcasting Union, 113 public service media organizations from across Europe. So typically, we provide a range of quality media content from news, sports, to music, to our members, and we facilitate cooperation.
And advocating for media freedom and prudence is very much part of that. It was said easy access to high quality independent and impartial news and information that people can trust is absolutely key for our democracies. Now we should remind ourselves that overall, the trust in the media in Europe is fairly high still. Public service media remain trusted news sources in more than 90% of the European countries. But this is not to be naïve.
Trust in media cannot be taken for granted, and I share the concerns that were eloquently pronounced by my colleagues. So, what is needed? First of all, it's obvious. It's the high investment levels in the media. For public service media, that means stable, sustainable, and independent public funding at the national level.
The figures we have shown worrying overall economic trend, taking into account inflation. Public service media funding in Europe has dropped by 8.6 percent over the past decade. Our figures relate to 2014 to 2024. Now the EU funding support that was mentioned, Agora EU, is also key as a support for journalists and also for innovation. So we support the ambitious and inclusive approach proposed.
MFAR was mentioned, absolutely crucial for us alongside the other journalistic protections and standards. The EPU invests a lot in ensuring and supporting our members to advocate for a proper application of these rules. Article five on public service media is clear. Democracies, strong democracies that is, depend on well-funded and independent public service media. Now the event application in Europe remains a pressing concern.
We see it also every day. The attempts to undermine governance, and reduce and destabilize funding were very much, on top of the developments in various countries recently in Lithuania and The Czech Republic, but also we keep a close eye and provide expert advice in countries like Poland where there's a major reform also going on. While all these national contexts tend to have their small differences here and there, the overall challenge is very similar. Match adequate long-term funding to the guarantees for independent governance. So there is no one size fits all, when it comes to organizing a public service media, but the EBU is there to identify best practices and help every member to ensure the stable, adequate, predictable funding.
So the pressure that is needed from all EU decision makers, and we're grateful also for your support in Strasbourg, to keep up the pressure to commit firmly to EMFA. We hope that the 26 rule of law report will also have robust recommendations for countries. We found that very useful also in our work when we can refer to that in the particular country chapters that are usually included in the rule of law report. The big tech role when it comes to access to news is also an important factor. The Reuters Institute figures from last year are very clear.
One third of people questioned use Facebook and YouTube for accessing news every week, one fifth use Instagram and WhatsApp. And combining that with some of the big tech decommitments in terms of news on their platforms, this is indeed worrying. We also see the accelerating campaigns on inaccurate information online. And media find it quite challenging to tackle all these inaccurate information campaigns and harmful campaigns online, especially now that the use of new AI tools have kicked in. Strong and robust enforcement of the digital rule book, DMA, DSA, MFAR.
One notable example in the Digital Services Act is indeed the deepfake online scams that affect our prime-time journalists on a weekly or daily basis. Firm action is needed to really tackle that. AI is an interesting component that adds further complexity. That same Reuters Institute report from last year identifies that 7% of total online news consumption or consumers use AI assistance to get their news. And when we consider minus 25, that even rises to 15%.
So leaving access to news entirely to commercial chatbots comes with risks. We undertook a major pan-European study last year on news integrity in our AI assistance, and we found that in 45 percent of the cases of the answers collected, there was at least one significant issue. How do we tackle that? A, support for innovation and funding. Public service media plays an important role in creating trusted media spaces and innovative formats.
We need more of that with the help of also some of the European funds that will be available. And second of all, some additional safeguards when it comes to regulation. Mister Abamonte has mentioned it. The upcoming audiovisual media service directive is key. A notion of prominence of media of general interest is not just some theoretical, hypothetical issue we want to discuss.
It is really how to improve that quality media with a certain general interest can actually surface, can rise to the surface as invisible on every connected device that you and I are using to access news and other trusted media content. So very much looking forward to that discussion and very much looking forward to strengthen the ability of people in Europe to easily access, find, discover, recognize media for what it is on whatever device in Europe. Many thanks.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. I will now give the floor to the members. Please indicate, first of all, if you want to ask some questions. And if, and please keep your question to one minute, so we can have a real conversation. We want to hear them more than we do.
And please also indicate who you are asking your question to. I know that Mr. Gaiquet needs to leave at 10:00. So if you have a specific question for him, indicate it, and we will start by him answering. Who asked for the floor?
Veronica? Alright.
Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová
Thank you, chair. So I actually do have a question for Mister Gekir, so I'll start with that. Given the proposed increase in funding, and you were mentioning the Agora EU, but also we know that there's the current pressure on the EU budget. So maybe if you could give me your opinion. I know it's more of a political decision, obviously, but I want to hear your input.
I am a shadow for the Agora EU file here in the European Parliament. So where should the EU support for media be most concretely targeted? So, is it innovation? Is it the visibility of trusted news? Is it local and independent journalism?
Is it media literacy or the protection of journalists? Because we're gonna have to find the priorities, and we're trying to set them up. So if you can maybe give me your opinion where this would be most useful. And then I have another question for Mister Pitea. You were talking about highlighting, and you were highlighting combating disinformation, which I agree with.
However, during the preliminary negotiations on the Agora EU with the media companies and media stakeholders, they often express concern that they don't want to fight this battle against the disinformation sector. They say they have their safeguards. They can do it well by themselves. They somehow don't want to be put in the same basket as the disinformation fighting organizations. So, do you hear this concern as well?
Have you come across? How do you address this concern? Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Kunk.
Alice Kuhnke
Thank you so much, and thank you to the guests. And I will really try. I have a lot of questions. Well, you can ask.
Many questions. No worries.
Alice Kuhnke
So I start. And also from an Agora EU perspective, I am the rapporteur. So how to the, I think it's first to the commission, Mister Abamote and maybe mainly Mister Gibson. How to distinguish between disinformation and different interpretations of facts? Who should also assess the difference to fight disinformation?
The media, the state authorities, courts. And then another question to the same person: what is the role of the digital platforms in view of amplification? Should we trust them to fight disinformation, bearing in mind that it might entail restrictions on the freedom of expression? Or, should it be left to the state authorities and the courts? Do we need harmonization of the rules at the EU level, as currently each member state decides itself which information can and cannot be published on digital platforms?
The DSA just describes this procedure. And also to the European Commission, when.
Alice Kuhnke
You plan to follow up on the recommendations of the PIGA committee? And to Paula Gori, which concrete recommendations would you have, if any, to foster information integrity through the Agora EU program? And then again to Mister Gibson, you mentioned that, unfortunately, the campaign to set up the focal points ends the next year. Can you elaborate more on this and what, in your view, needs to be changed? And then one more question.
When you speak with journalists from all over in all the member states, they describe a reality where self-censorship is a concrete and devastating reality in their work, in how they conduct their work. What is it that we have not done? What is it that is missing in our tools to be able to stop this? Thank you. Thank you, Alice Keitano.
Thank.
Gaetano Pedulla'
You, chair. I would prefer to speak in Italian for issues this complex nature. And apart from paying tribute to the incredible work which you've been doing on this chair, I have a question for Mr. Abamonte. Now we have EMFA, and we have the anti-SLAP provisions, which are very often not applied.
And Mr. Gibson has explained to us that there's a lack of political will to do this. And this is exactly where we have to act, where there's a lack of political will. So one step forward could be to intimate, to make sure that the commission's existence is that people are aware of it, and produce a blacklist even before the infringement procedures are initiated. In Italy, we have a clear violation of the EMFA rules regarding Rai, which is a public broadcaster.
There isn't even a political debate as to how to adjust to the EMFA provisions. Nobody is pushing for this. Nobody is active in this area, and I think that that's very important. Now, as an expert in this sector, I am a journalist. And for many years, I was an editor of different newspapers in Italy.
There is a crisis in the written press. It is really dramatic. We've gone so far, there's no turning back. And the impact of artificial intelligence has really accelerated this whole procedure. And we, as a political group, were against public finance, public funding.
And we've heard from the commission and from President von der Leyen the commitment to defending independent information in the framework of the democracy shield. We're against this. Why? Because financing newspapers and editors in a country like Italy, but I don't think that this is just limited to Italy, would be totally pointless because of the conflicts of interest. Public funding goes to editors who have certain economic interests, which are such that they don't even need the funding, and they support newspapers and TV channels to support their economic and political objectives.
So we would run the risk of giving money to people who don't need it, whereas independent journalism would not manage to survive. So hence my question for the commission, and I leave it at that. What's the point in giving money to the editors? Surely, money should be given to the citizens directly. Mr.
Abamante, would it be possible to come up with a system which would provide European support to citizens who have subscriptions to newspapers, who pay for editorial services? Then one last point, and I really will have finished. We have a problem. Social networks now have become sores that they're a problem for everybody, for adults and for children. Now there is a solution, which is to promote European social networks, but we're not doing anything about it.
Now vice president Kurin did express some availability on the matter, but there's no initiative taken to do this. And the social networks in Europe, particularly media, should be made to point out fake news and get rid of trolls because trolls are really dangerous for users. And, they offend, they create a poisonous political debate, which is really very dangerous for the public. What is the commission doing about all of this? Thank you.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you. I will myself ask a few questions. First, I will go straight to the point, if you don't mind. First, to the commission. I would like to know the state of play of the infringement procedure as regarding Hungary.
We know that there is a new government and that the commission is going to support Hungary to go back on track. If you would be the counselor, what would you suggest to do as far as media freedom and independence is concerned? What are the first, I don't know the word in English. What are the first works that need to be done? What strikes me is that regarding EMFA, it's the only one who has been under her procedure.
I don't believe that it means that, or maybe does it mean for commission that it's the only country who does not apply it properly. So, because there is a problem of implementation. So I would like to understand there what kind of signal does it give to other member states who obviously do not do the work properly. To mister Pitea, council of Europe, you spoke about supporting member states to adopt the framework. You also spoke about the implementation.
What are the obstacles that you meet when you are talking with member states? What do you feel that are the obstacles? To Mrs. Gore from the European Digital Media Observatory, I also want to hear you, if it's possible, about the concrete measures against the risk posed by checkbox to electoral integrity. Concretely, what do you mean?
And last but not least, to Mr. Gibson. Tom, you spoke about I don't know if you know that you are very interested in the foreign agent laws. And there is a debate. I mean, there is an answer which has been given.
I don't know if it's a debate, but there is an answer which has been given, a response to the argument of saying that such merger measures, sorry, are justified in the name of transparency and foreign interference risk. And when you hear those arguments, you might agree with them. So I want to ask you what do you respond to this respond, if I may say it like this, and what safeguard do you recommend to ensure that transparency requirement do not become tools to stigmatize and restrict independent media? Because I believe that there is still a balance to be met. So here are for the question.
Try to be concise in your answer, and I will give the floor to you the same way that you received it to start with. No. I missed something. Yes, indeed. I've been reminded that I need first to give the floor to Mr.
I require the answer to the question which has been asked by Missus Sifrova. Mister Gueckier?
Wouter Gekiere
Thank you so much for the flexibility you grant us. Agora Yu, yes, absolutely crucial. The sheer fact that we have now a proposed program to fund the media is an important signal that the media matters to European economies and societies. If you ask me, missus Sifrova, what should be the focal point in the parts on news and journalism, I have two immediate answers. First of all, this is not about ensuring there are more journalists communicating messages about Europe.
Core function is here, having journalists force it in this to function well. We want to ensure that young people continue to have the expertise, have the motivation to step into the profession of journalism. We see across Europe some countries where that becomes quite difficult. So we need an EU support scheme that allows journalists to tap into more training, that allows journalists to really know what it is to do quality journalism. It seems fairly basic, but this is really important in some parts of Europe.
The EBU and its members employ tens of thousands of journalists, and we take that responsibility. But there is also an area in Europe, I think, where there is a need for additional funding. So core funding for the journalistic profession, but in addition, also the tools and innovative formats they need. So this ties in really a more industrial approach. How are we gonna make sure that we have trusted media spaces in the future?
I'll give you one example of how we at the EBU are looking into it. Our engineers have developed an own AI chatbot under human supervision, have tested it, and now three newsrooms in our membership are actually using it, relying on the trusted news, and with human oversight. So those are the two elements I would really emphasize when it comes to the news and the journalist part of the Agora EU. I hope that's clear.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. I will now give the floor to mister Abamante from DG Connect.
Giuseppe Abbamonte
Yes. Thanks very much. So, miss chair, missus chair, some of the questions were very, very broad in nature and complex, and they will require a complex answer as well. So you have to bear with me if I'm a little.
long. Not too long. I'm very sorry.
But for example, the distinction between disinformation and an opinion making, well, there is something that you will find in our initial strategy to counter this information, where with a group of wise people, we try to come up to it with a definition of this information. So disinformation is a piece of information which is verifiably false, and which is spread with malicious intent or in order to get an economic gain. So if I express an opinion, no matter how outlandish and crazy it is, but I don't do it in order to undermine a public order or get a gain in terms of increased advertising revenues, that will not be disinformation. The role of platforms on countering disinformation, well, there is really the gist of the DSA. The platforms, the very large online platforms and very large online search engines, are required to carry out risk assessments, and they have to carry out risk assessments for the systemic risks stemming from the design of the service.
For example, risk assessments for democracy, civic discourse, such as disinformation, and they have to do that once per year. The assessment of the risk is then audited by an independent auditor paid for by the platform, and also the commission has the opportunity to express its views on the matter because the risk assessment is sent to the commission. Also, if the platforms develop a new functionality, so, for example, say, an AI personal assistant which helps people navigate through the information space. It is an invented example, not a real example, and tells them how to vote. No?
So this would clearly pose a risk for democracy, public discourse. It may pose all sorts of disinformation risks, and this will be subject to a sort of ad hoc assessment of the systemic risks posed by this functionality. There is an old system of governance which is put in place by the DSA, which aims at, you know, giving teeth to all these provisions. On MFAR, so the follow-up to the PIGA recommendation, I'm not really an expert of the PIGA recommendation, but something which is important is that, you know, the difficulties that national security is primarily a member state's competence, and that's why the commission appeared to be a little bit reluctant to follow the moratorium path. As far as I am concerned, the rule which is the most relevant in this field, which is the most concrete, is article four of EMFA, which contains an anti spyware requirement, so which regulates basically the place of spyware on the journalists, not, for a number of it lists the crimes which would allow the investigators, for example, to use spyware and which is at the core of EMFA.
On EMFA and the MFAR, we are breaking new grounds. So it's something which is completely new. Is it an internal market piece of legislation, but it is at the crossroads between the internal market and the rule of law. A lot of ground is covered by constitutional laws. So we can't go there with a sledgehammer.
No one telling, no. You have to do it. You are doing we have to be very careful. Something which is important is also, and which is often overlooked, is the fact that MF, after all, is a regulation, and most of its provisions are prescriptive enough. So they could be, theoretically, so legally, they could be directly applied, and the laws colliding, the national laws, will have to be disapplied by the judges.
So that is a fact. There are some other provisions which are more vague in nature or which require the member states to do something. So the example would be the sport authority, which needs to be appointed by the member states to give support to journalists and the juries. No? And this requires an action by the member states.
On the point of Italy, well, you know, I am Italian. I'm I followed Italy. I mean, Italy is not fully compliant, but it's not in a disastrous state. I mean, they have a law on media which is relatively modern. And the main issues revolving around the compliance of Italy are not about public service media.
So it's not about the governance or the public service media, but it's more about the laws on protecting journalists that would need changing. But, again, these are very complex matters, miss Film. So it's difficult for me to liquidate them very quickly into words. So another, and that's all. The on Hungary, we have the infringement proceedings, which was launched.
What are the issues? You asked me a little bit of a crystal ball question. So what are the difficult issues? Well, the difficult issues are the governance of public service broadcasters, clearly. There is the issue of the media conglomerate, KESMA, which has escaped the merger control rules of the commission and which has created a quasi monopoly of the information in Hungary.
And then there is the issue of state aid. So opaque state aid and state aid, which is skewed in favor of media, which was favorable to the government. So these are a few issues that will have to be addressed. And I will stop here, if you don't mind.
Cesare Pitea
Thank you very much. Thank you for the questions. So I will first address the question posed by MP Sifrava. I do understand it's a very interesting question. So the question, if I understand it, is do we register a reluctance by journalists and media organizations to be associated with the cat fight against this information?
The answer is yes if the concept of fighting disinformation is couched in a certain way, which is requiring to deliver certain messages that counter the narratives that we all know are prevalent in disinformation campaigns when orchestrated by foreign actors. Of course, this is not the job of journalists. The job of journalists is to deliver information in the public interest and opinions that are free. So in this sense, of course, yes, we do register a reluctance to interventions that are couched in these terms. We do register also a certain reluctance to fully acknowledge fact checking as a journalistic practice, independent external fact checking by fact-checking organizations as a journalistic practice.
Of course, this is a very delicate matter. Fact checking is a journalistic practice. It's part of the newsroom practice since the origin of journalism. And now, for different reasons, well, it's not necessarily a practice everywhere in newsrooms, but it's for sure not a practice of those actors who do not claim to be journalists but still disseminate information. So I think here, from our perspective, the answer to this is to probably, on the one hand, make clear that the role of media encountering disinformation is linked to media freedom, to independence, to quality of their output, their processes, and therefore, hopefully, their outputs.
So support to independent media has to be understood in the context of fighting against disinformation. It has to be understood in that way. On the other hand, support to fact checking organization remains key as it remains key to ensure increased transparency, accountability of those organizations. I can give you an anecdote in a recent. I'm also Italian, a lot of Italians. Recently, in Italy, there was a very important campaign on a constitutional referendum and a content made by a web very well known historian expressing his opinions on the ongoing campaign was flagged by a news organization that is accredited by Meta as fact checker and was removed from Meta platforms.
And this classification of the content as disinformation or misinformation was very questionable. So, of course, no system is perfect, but we do need to rely on fact-checking organizations in the framework of a new way of approaching digital governance that also empowers users. So the second question by the chair was relating to the obstacles in the implementation by member states of our standards. I would say my first reaction would be that, first of all, the obstacles are different depending on the nature of the standards. Of course, when the standards deal with more structural issues, complex issues in the field of, for example, digital governance or viability of media, sustainability of media. There is a reluctance on obstacles, our objective obstacles.
These are complex matters, and no matter the good faith of the governments of member states, often they do not have the capacity to deal with these problems that need to be dealt with at a higher level, probably and through international cooperation. In some other cases and here, for example, the safety of journalist process is very telling, we have registered very good cooperation in the campaign for the safety of journalists. States have answered at different levels. It's an incremental process. Of course, there is a concern, as Tom was mentioning that action taken by states may be merely cosmetic somehow.
The campaign is not a monitoring mechanism. It's a platform for member states to share experiences, to share good practices, and to learn from each other. So the nonadversarial nature of the campaign has proven quite useful as a tool to set in motion a process towards implementing the standards. And then, of course, the ball goes back to the national field. Once at the national level, there are structures for the safety of journalists, multistakeholder structures where civil society, journalists are represented along with public authorities, law enforcement, judiciary, then an action plan is in place, and then there is a whole new process to test the effectiveness of such action.
Thank you.
Paula Gori
Thank you very much. Very happy to take the questions. So on the first question, I mean, we have the infrastructure there. The legal infrastructure is there to actually cope with this information. Let's just do one step back, which is under the EU framework.
This information is not illegal. There is no Ministry of Truth in the EU, and there is no censorship in the EU. What is not happening is the full implementation, as I was saying, of this whole system. So I mentioned the DSA, and it was mentioned also correctly by mister Abamonte. Right?
So let's translate a legal sentence into something very easy. What is asked to the platform is on a yearly basis, they have to look into themselves and see if the way they are functioning, the way they are structured, actually poses some of the systemic risks that are listed. If you read the reports by this platform, this is not a proper methodology to assess if the way that you are structured is actually posing those risks. This is still something which is very superficial. It's a lot of wording that has no concrete actions, no concrete methodology.
So we need them to be honestly very to go way more in depth. Because the point is this, if you act structurally, then you don't have the issue anymore, or you still have it, but it is very resourced, and you don't have the amplification of this information. If it's not profitable anymore to share this information, you don't have it at this scale and speed. Right? So we have to implement the DSA strongly.
So this is one thing. The platforms are not playing with the ball, and on the other side, they're so they are not respecting the law. And there is also a knowledge asymmetry. We cannot enter those platforms because they do not give access to the data, though it is mandated by the law. On the other side, there is a strong role for civil society organizations, academic institutions, researchers, independent fact checkers, and so on.
Even under the DSA, consider, for example, article 40. But this organization, they face financial instability. They are threatened by foreign actors, but also by internally. So you can see it's not that we are missing the framework. It's just that we are having a lot of problems in implementing it correctly.
So we have to go beyond, if you want, a compliance approach, which is not the one we want. We don't want just, you know, how can I say, apparent compliance? We want real compliance with the DSA. Now on the question that was asked by the chair. So the point is the following, as we all know.
The main chatbots, like the others, their models, are trained with the data that they scrape online. So the more there is slop, the more there is scrap online, the more this data are used by these platforms, are taken by these platforms to train the model. And then the model comes out with content which is misleading, which includes disinformation, which is hallucinating, and so on. Now, when it's about elections, then, of course, we have an issue. And even when such of those chatbots have rules that basically prohibit to actually come question the chatbot with questions related to elections, it is very easy to circumvent them because if you play a bit with the wording in the question, the chatbot just doesn't cope with the rule that it has.
So what we need is that, first, I think that Europe has a space here for a new market where we're just not exploiting, which is LLMs with quality data. Like the one that was mentioned by the EBU, I know that tool. It is amazing. So if the tool is actually this is a tool where, basically, the chatbot takes the information from the pub from the public service media which are in EBU. And, actually, it's even multilingual.
I spoke to the person who created that. And this is amazing because the data is quality data. The tool is trained with that. We can create a lot of other tools for chatbots. For example, during elections, we could create a chatbot that has included as data the different money political manifesto of a party.
So if a citizen wants to know, like, which is the position on a given policy, the chatbot will tell you the different parties' position they have. So we can compete with these big commercials, actually, with good quality data-trained LLMs. However, let's not forget that the commercial ones, they are the ones that are used by under Femi attacks to interfere in Europe. I just mentioned an example. ADMO found before the EP elections in 2024, we found at a certain moment, we realized there were a lot of websites that were getting opened in different members' state in their languages that were containing this information, that were opened by Russian actors.
And we were wondering why they were opening those websites, which were almost silent. No one was really they were not promoting them so much until the moment we realized that they were there in order for the LLMs to be used as data to train their models. And as you can imagine then, it comes out as an answer with this information. So on one side, we need to invest in more quality LLMs, so quality data trained LLMs. On the other side, we need to implement the DSA because if the DSA is implemented, those websites won't be any more taken by the LLM, not because the chatbots are under the DSA, because, if I'm not mistaken so far, they are not VLOPSes, but because if they are on, for example, in the index of Google or they're spread on meta and so on, should the DSA be implemented and enforced correctly, this content wouldn't then be, if you want, prioritized to go then to train the models.
I know it's a bit technical, but I hope it was clear enough.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Mr Gibson?
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes. We can.
Tom Gibson
Okay. Fantastic. I want to respond to a few of the questions, but also to some of the comments. We at CPJ don't actually cover this information. I can talk a bit about the space for journalists online.
Firstly, you know, I do want to reiterate what has been said around the risk assessment reports. I think it'd be very interesting for the European Commission to open up investigations to the DSA on how the rights of journalists are violated online. I think that there's a real disconnect between people and journalists and the risk assessment reports, and I couldn't agree more that the language put forward around safety measures very much when you read it, you think that it's all just blue skies. But in fact, it very much doesn't correlate with the levels of online harassment and problems that journalists face. So I really think that we should be shining a more critical eye on the risk assessment reports, and in particular pushing the platforms for mitigation measures.
With article four of MFER, as we know, national security was taken out, but it was the question of functioning of the treaties, the language of functioning of the treaties was reinserted, which as we know, once you look into it, is national security. That is one of the competencies of the member states. And also, that list of crimes is incredibly broad. Therefore, I do think I need to go back to the PEG recommendations. I do think that with the new government in Hungary, there is an opportunity there to call for now an investigation into the PEG report, the part on Hungary, to give some of the journalists, and I won't mention them by name because it's public hearing, but to give some of them more visibility to bring them to Brussels and to get better accountability for what happened.
I think by having better accountability for what happened in Hungary, if there is a space to now do that, that will then open up the path for a more general and informed debate in Europe about accountability. On the question of the campaign itself, yes. I mean, look. These structures are very small. Some of them, some of the focal points, they are embedded within government.
But from what we know, there is will to do more, they don't necessarily have the support. Obviously, funding is needed so that people can increase staffing where necessary, so that they have better outreach to journalists, so that they have the resources to be able to help people. And really, again, I would just go back to what I said that the recommendation, the opening up of the recommendation as part of the European Democracy Shield is good. You can open up the text and see where there are flaws, and go to the Council of Europe Standards, etcetera. But what's really needed is an implementation strategy.
And not just an implementation strategy, a way of monitoring what's going on and whether or not what is being put in place is actually effective or not, so that people can very easily see what's going on, whether or not you're inside or outside of the country, whether or not you're a journalist. And very lastly, because I know that I've probably already gone over my time. I mean, look, I mean, in terms of foreign agents laws, there's a chapter on this in the Council of Europe General Safety Platform annual report. You know, that the first so-called foreign agent law originated in Russia. They've been used by a number of countries in the Council of Europe region, including some EU member states, to silence dissent, cut off funding, and array press freedom.
I mean, obviously, at the start of any law, what press freedom groups would push for is that there's effective consultation, that there's transparency around any laws that look at registration, with very clear risk assessments to make sure that the rights of journalists, including attacks on their credibility, their ability to access information, financial resourcing, etc., etc., that all of those are given a proper risk assessment. And, clearly, the risk assessment is then linked to the will of the government to actually protect journalists and defend their space, rather than putting in place a law that would make their work more difficult.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. Are they, we are running out of time, but if there are pressures, not pressure. Present. They're always pressures. Absolutely.
Pressure. Present. Oh my god. Urgent question. No problem.
You can go ahead, but I don't think there, thank you very much to the speakers who have been participating in the first half of our discussion. We will now move to the second part of our meeting, which will focus on possible financing mechanism opportunities available for media, including in the next MFF. I will start by giving the floor for a second intervention to Mr. Abamonte, who will present the European Commission's view on this topic. Mister Abamonte, this time, you cannot go over your 5 minutes.
I can't.
Giuseppe Abbamonte
Try. Try. I'll do my utmost. Try. So the EU news media sector is under serious economic pressure.
So every year, we publish the European media industry outlook, which gives a snapshot of the situation of the fitness of the sector. And, in last year, it showed that revenues fell by 8% between 2019 and 2023 and employment by 7.5%. The digitization of the information ecosystem is changing the way people consume media content and affect their willingness to pay for news. So why should I pay if I can get everything for free? And as a result, many news organizations struggle to monetize their content.
As citizens progressively shift towards online content, we see then online platforms and AI services increasingly capture revenues from news consumption. And this threatens the viability of news media organizations, so the whole news media value chain, and its ability to develop sustainable business models. These challenges are particularly acute in some sectors, such as local media, where we have seen the emergence of a ghastly phenomenon called news deserts, so limiting the ability of citizens to get access to a plurality of information, particularly on local news. All these challenges ultimately impact media pluralism and media independence, and the 2025 media pluralism monitor has showed that there is a medium to a high risk to media pluralism in 23 EU member states. So what is our existing funding mechanism for news media?
So our support currently is scattered across several programs, including Creative Europe, the multimedia actions line, Digital Europe, that is where we get the money to fight disinformation, as well as a few pilot projects and preparatory actions with money coming from the parliament. So I will focus here on Creative Europe and the multimedia actions. So our support to news media under these programs has remained limited with an annual budget envelope of only around 35,000,000, so 20,000,000 for the so coming from the multimedia actions, and 50,000,000 coming from Creative Europe. Under Creative Europe, we have dedicated support for cross border collaborations in regranting schemes, through media intermediaries. So when you had media companies getting the money and then distributing the money downstream.
So these actions foster common solutions and standards, knowledge and skilling, skill transfers, and also cooperation networks and support to investigative and local investigative journalism organizations. Under the multimedia actions, we support news reporting on EU affairs from a European perspective. All supported news media entities operate under full editorial independence. That is important because they are required to sign an editorial independence charter when they sign the grant agreements or the contracts with us. And there is also an important gap between our current support and the high demand for the sector.
So, for example, all our news media calls are oversubscribed. So our journalism partnership, for example, call had a success rate of only 7%. So it means that only 7% of the demands could be met. So if we look at the next MFF, so AGORA EU, the media sector is consistently calling for more money, more support. And, as I said, our calls are oversubscribed, and it is why we have proposed an ambitious plan to support free, pluralistic, and independent media in the new Agora EU program for 2028, 2034.
So Agora EU brings under a common umbrella the union support to culture, media, including audiovisual, rights, and values, and building on the current Creative Europe and the Serve programs. So it includes a media plus strand providing dedicated support to the media sectors and covering the audiovisual industry, including video games and the news media sector, including, of course, the fight against disinformation. Have I already run out of time?
Giuseppe Abbamonte
Yeah. I have seen that. I have seen. Thank you. Thank you for the generosity.
So the indicative budget is, but it appears to be huge. It's 3.2 billion, but in effect, is modest. So if you do 3.2, if you take a calculator, which I did before, so it's €450,000,000 per year for the whole media sector, so audiovisual and news media, which is what the French are spending in support to the press media. So the money is still relatively modest. So the idea on the Media Plus is to provide support to independent journalism, protect and promote media freedom and pluralism, enhance the financial viability of the news media sector, promote media literacy, very important, and strengthen the detection and countering of disinformation.
I'll finish. Again, we will do our utmost to ensure that support is provided with full respect for editorial independence and explore ways of strengthening existing mechanism. The media plus strand under Agora EU will be crucial to support our democracies and, in particular, the objectives. So the shield, the proposal is currently under negotiation at the Council. The CALT and Liberal Committee are now examining the proposal jointly at the parliament.
I will stop here.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you so much. I will now give the floor to mister Blanco Fernandez, member reporter for the opinion on Agora EU program of the European Court of Auditors. Please, you have the floor.
Alejandro Blanco Fernández
Thank you very much, madam chair, dear members. So, if the presentation is okay. Next slide, please. So first, we did this opinion because it was requested by the European Parliament on 12/17/2025. Next slide, please.
So with this, in the court, what we have tried to do with 12 opinions about the next MFF, we have tried to help the legislators to help you take the decision on how the regulations would look like. So the commission just explained what is the amount of money of the Agora EU, so I could not enter there. We will just say that we don't challenge any of the MFF figures. This is up to the legislators to decide how much money needs to be allocated for every program. We just say that there is a huge increase in Agora.
That is 100 in current prices, or 77% in 2025 prices, if the comparison is taken. So the program objectives are aligned with the EU's strategic agenda for 2024-2029. Next slide, please. And as the commission already explained, these are the three main parts of the Agua Au. What did we look at in our opinion?
We looked at the legislative proposal, the result of the ex-post evaluation and the different stakeholders' consultation. So how the commission came up with this proposal and the impact assessment of the proposal. So these three elements, we took them into account before issuing our opinion. Next slide, please. As I said before, we have issued 12 opinions on the entire MFF.
So we have had to have a structure that could allow us to compare and could help the reader, the legislator in this case, to be having the same structure in all of them. So this is, so I will begin by the European added value. Next slide, please. So in all the proposals, what we have tried to measure is if there is European added value or not. But here, the problem is that, of course, there's a clear in Agora there's a clear EU added value, but the problem is that there is no definition of what European added value is.
So we can always find EU added value in every proposal. But when we use it as auditors, we need to have a sort of benchmark in order to compare if there is or not. So our main finding all over the MFF is that there is no clear definition of what is the European added value. And this, for the citizens, it will be good if there is this definition or if we stop saying that we finance only the things that have European added value because we are misleading the readers. So this is a general message that we have across the 12 opinions.
Next slide, please. So regarding the aligning of the spending objectives with the EU policy priorities, what we can say is that the objectives of the proposal are aligned, but the proposal could be improved by clearly requesting that complementarities with similar programs be identified, as only effective coordination of the programs will ensure the optimal use of funds and the avoidance of double funding. Regarding simplification, you can see that in our previous opinions and special reports, we have had that we have said, sorry, that we still reduce the number of programs. So for us, it's a positive thing that there is the merge of two programs into one, but we would like also to have more clarification on the mechanism through which synergies between the different Agora U strands will be ensured under the new funding structure. Next slide, please.
Regarding budget flexibility, as I said, there is an increase of 100 at current prices or 77% at 2025 prices compared to the current period, and this was not backed up or justified by any quantitative analysis, which for us is something that was missing in the Commission proposal. It is true that Agora EU now covers a wider range of activities with a larger budget, but this will also require stronger governance, transparent funding allocation, and effective monitoring and evaluation within a single unified framework, and this is not in the current proposal. The proposals provide flexibility to reallocate resources to and from share management programs, but, of course, it remains to be seen if this approach is going to be only used to help the share management programs to spend the total amount of money or will be used for Agora to reinforce the objectives of Agora. We consider that the proposals would require that the reallocation is duly justified in every case and only should be taken in coordination with the commission and the member states. In addition, the end of the eligibility period and the ceiling on technical and administrative expenditure are not defined, whether this should be.
Next slide, please. In performance framework, we have to say that we have found many deficiencies across all the programs or all the proposals of the different part of the MFF. So first, we know that the output and result indicators set out in Annex 1 to the proposed performance framework appear insufficient to assess the performance of all the activities related to Agora U. We also found a series of weaknesses in terms of clarity and relevance in the proposed output and result indicators. A more outcome-oriented and clearly defined performance framework, including the issuance of clear standards for data quality, reliability, and auditability, could be necessary to ensure that the program's contribution can be assessed and demonstrated.
We also reiterate a conclusion coming from previous audit work that financing not linked to cost might be the most appropriate funding mechanism in certain cases, as it is not per se performance based. Next slide, please. Regarding compliance, transparency, accountability and traceability of expenditure, in our view, improvements are necessary because the proposal lacks specific provisions on management and control systems and indicates that the default delivery mode for grants is financing not linked to cost or, where necessary, simplified cost options without expanding on circumstances where simplified cost options would be necessary. There should, however, be more clarity on the use of the funding mechanism, and the commission should assess on a case by case basis which financing is more appropriate. Moreover, the proposal should make clear the respective role and accountability and control arrangements needed at the EU and national level in order to achieve sound financial management.
Next slide, please. And finally, regarding the ECA audit mandate, we note that the proposed regulation will be implemented under direct and indirect management. We ask you, legislator, to clearly state our audit rights in its legislative proposal, including as they relate to beneficiaries in third countries outside the European Union framework. Thank you very much, and I will be pleased to answer all your questions. Thank you.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. And we have, mister Scott Griffin, executive director from the International Press Institute online.
Scott Griffin
Yes. Good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me well. Welcome. Thank you.
Yes. I'm Scott Griffin. I represent the International Press Institute, which briefly is a global nonprofit organization and a network of media professionals dedicated to protecting media freedom and supporting independent journalism. We're based in Vienna, and we celebrated our 75th anniversary last year. So I'd just like to begin today by sharing a couple of high-level priorities for the next MFF that are broadly shared by other press freedom, journalism, and journalism support organizations.
So our fundamental call really is for strategic and sustained EU investment in free and independent media, both inside and outside the EU. This is based on the principle that access to fact-based information is a prerequisite for functioning democratic institutions, effective public policies, stable, secure, and inclusive societies, and economic prosperity. So we're hoping that the next MFF will deliver long-term, coordinated investment in journalism as a pillar of Europe's democratic and digital infrastructure. Within Agora EU, this means ensuring that the overall budget increase is complemented by a proportional rise in support for independent journalism and public interest media, ensuring that they can play their full role in strengthening democratic resilience. We already heard that there, in fact, right now, what is foreseen is modest, and that so we really want to see an amount that really addresses the scale of the challenge facing independent and public interest media. Within this, also a move towards more structural long term support, in addition to prioritizing support for small and medium sized news organizations as well as for regional and local media.
Just briefly, as part of Global Europe, this also means ensuring that EU external action directly and meaningfully contributes to free expression, safety of journalism, and trustworthy information ecosystems in partner countries, which we see as a prerequisite to delivering EU global objectives and preventing the collapse of information ecosystems and the rise of authoritarianism in partner countries, which then poses systemic risks to democracy, the economy, and security more broadly. And finally, this also means designing the competitiveness fund to catalyze private and institutional investment in the media and information ecosystem, including mechanisms to foster innovation, sustainability, and digital transformation, while safeguarding editorial independence. So put simply, it's essential also that journalism and media are able to access this fund as well. There's no question that funding for media must also be accompanied by measures to foster and protect the independence of news organizations. IPI has led extensive research into the threat to press freedom from state media capture, which includes the use of state funding to distort and manipulate the media market, and undermine media pluralism and independence.
I'm sure many of us are aware of this. The mechanisms in question include the discriminatory allocation of state advertising to nurture propaganda media and to starve independent news organizations. It can also include the capture of public service broadcasters by using state control of these broadcasters' budgets as a weapon of pressure. Both of these are just examples of ways in which state funding to the media can go wrong, all of which came together in Hungary, which has also been discussed today, and we can come back to. Obviously, MFLA provides tools to combat these practices, which, however, the effective implementation of these tools depends on the existence of a robust civil society.
I just wanna end this very brief intervention by highlighting how public investment and independent journalism does work and can work. So my organization, the International Press Institute, knows this firsthand. Since 2018, the commission has supported the IJ4EU fund, which IPI leads in partnership with the European Journalism Center and the European Center for Press and Media Freedom. During this period, IJ for EU has provided more than €6,000,000 in grants to cross-border investigative journalism in Europe, which in fact is just a fraction of what is requested through our application process, which underscores the immense need across Europe, in particular for investigative journalism. But the funding we have provided has enabled hundreds of journalists across Europe and beyond to collaborate on really high-impact stories of public interest, ranging from corruption to environmental destruction to algorithmic accountability.
It's generated more than 2,500 publications and broadcasts, reaching tens of millions of people through a vast range of outlets. And just to end by saying here that in addition to the robust financial support for investigative journalism, I j four u act actually offers a tried and tested model for channeling public support to journalism without compromising editorial independence. We have strict firewalls in place to guarantee that independence, including the indispensable role played by intermediary organizations, and ensuring that all grant recipients are chosen by an independent jury. All of this has been the subject of peer reviewed research, for instance, which has confirmed that IG for you offers a gold standard for protecting editorial independence in publicly funded donor programs. So thank you very much.
Looking forward to the further discussion.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you. I will now give the floor to the members who are here present to ask questions. Please indicate to whom precisely you asked the question, Alice.
Alice Kuhnke
Thank you. And first, thank you again for our guests of many of the you I have met in the work with Agora EU, and I think it's so great with all the knowledge that you have and that you provide us with the work that is being done. So my questions are, it's for the commission, mister Avambo. It is, of course, great that a specific fund for media freedom and news media that has been missing, as you said, is now on the table. And I applaud this, especially as a rapporteur.
But, however, there is no earmarked envelope indicated for this objective in your proposal. So in your view, taking into account the different and current funding streams that exist to support the objective of strengthening media freedom and news media, what is approximately the current EU financial envelope? Has the commission done any calculations or estimations? And to support these objectives in the next funding cycle, what would be sufficient funding allocation for the news objective in Agora EU to cover these needs? And then also another question.
You mentioned that media outlets have to sign an editorial independence declaration. How is the commission assessing them to ensure that they are independent? What are their requirements? Thank you.
Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová
Thank you, Veronika. Thank you, chair. And I have a question for Mr. Abamonte. It's not directly related to Agora EU, but it is about funding as well. Because we have talked about here also in this house about the AI-generated summaries of the news articles that come up on the upper level.
So what it means for the monetization or for financing of the media organizations is that you don't even click on the website, which can then be monetized. Sometimes it ranges from 30% fewer clicks to 80% fewer clicks. So it's not a new issue. We've been talking about it, but it really raises serious concerns for media pluralism and for the democratic information space. So how do you see that?
Is it a systemic risk in the eyes of the commission under the digital services act, particularly when we come to citizens' exposure to diverse and reliable information? How will the commission ensure the use of journalistic content in such a system respects media pluralism and article 11 of the charter? And are you assessing as the commission whether these practices reinforce the gatekeeping power of dominant platforms, which we've been talking about for the past two hours, if you could be a little bit specific on this. Thank you.
Thank you, Gaetan.
Gaetano Pedulla'
Thank you, chair. I have a question for mister Appamonte, which he didn't reply to earlier on, but he actually did in the second round. The question of the funds made available for the sector. Now there are very few resources available if you compare this situation with the emergency we're living through. And I think that we should ask the Commission and President von der Leyen to be consistent.
When she says that the Democracy Shield, that financing, editors is a priority, well, that's all very fine. But then the funds have to match what she's saying and her commitments. Could I go back to what Mr. Bamonte was saying about the new avenues to be explored by the commission regarding the funding. Now the funds contribute to the usual people who do not favor independent information.
And the funds therefore end up being counterproductive, and producing the exact opposite of what the commission wishes to achieve. And that's why I would like to propose a huge revolution, and the citizens are the people who should really be given the money. So in other words, if a citizen takes out a subscription, pays for a subscription to a source of information which is believed to be information or they believe to be independent, well then they should be rewarded for doing this. So if these funds are given directly to editors, such as the situation is like at the moment, performance is essential. At the end of the day, we're financing our enemy.
We're not financing people who are helping to disseminate free, independent information. So I hope that among the new avenues to be explored by the commission, it will also envisage the possibility of giving citizens funds. That's a way of making citizens feel closer to Europe, not the programs that really create more of a gap than anything else.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you. I understand that everybody could react to this. I have myself a question just to go a bit further, to Mr. Blanco Fernández. In your thank you for the presentation.
Would you be so kind to send it to us so we can give it to because we tried to take picture, and then it was too late. So it's a slow reacting time from our side. So thank you for that. So you spoke about the fact that the Agora program is increasing the funds, but it's also streamlined. I'd like to ask you, how do you assess the risk?
And you said, actually, when it's streamlined, it's somehow better because it's more simple. But there could be a counterargument saying that we could dilute the specific objective of each program, and we would lose also the expertise previously developed under the different instruments. So I would like to see how you make this balance. I suggest that I give the floor to all of you one last time. So we are at $10.51, so I give you two minutes and a half each.
Sorry. Yeah. So you also have the opportunity, mister, because mister Griffin didn't receive a question directly, but maybe he wants to also react on what has been said. Mister Abamante.
Giuseppe Abbamonte
Thank you. And thank you for the two minutes because some of the questions are very difficult to answer as well. So the first issue is the choice of not having an allocated envelope is a political choice, which is a little bit beyond my pay grade. But more importantly, it's also a strategic choice because one of the reasons behind the merger is the fact that we should be able to enjoy more flexibility. So more flexibility in the spending of the money.
So say that there is an absolute emergency stemming from the spreading of a disinformation campaign during a very important election. It will be possible, in this case, to shift the money from one section of the program to another one in order to face the emergence, something now that is impossible because of the rigidities of the program. The second question that you asked, so how do we go about ensuring that the declaration of independence is honored by the person? So, what are the criteria? So the criteria are the good standards of journalism and also which are set out in MFAT, in article 4 of MFAT.
And very often, we ask an independent entity. For example, in the case of Euronews, we ask the Observatorio di Pavia, which is specialized in this, to check and monitor that the reporting of Euronews, all the editorial work of Euronews complies with good journalistic standards. So this is how we go about it. On the AI and
Giuseppe Abbamonte
AI and copyright, and it is an extremely complex issue. It is an old issue which we dealt with in a pre AI world in the copyright reform, where you had the problem of the aggregators, no, of news, basically, which aggregated the news and the people who would not click through the snippet. So they will read the snippet, just the snippet, and then move on. And so, basically, the traffic was not diverted to the site of the newspapers, of the press publishers, and that's why we gave them neighboring right. This is an issue which, of course, may give rise to problems or to issues under the DSA, but that will also be addressed in the context of the copyright reflections.
So now, on copyright, we are launching a call for evidence. And one of the topics we are reviewing is the existing copyright in the DSM directive, launching the call for evidence, and one of the topics will be exactly the relationship between copyright and artificial intelligence. And I can't speak too much about it because otherwise, I will be too long. On the issue of giving the money to the citizens, with the greatest respect, but this would breach completely the principle of subsidiarity. I mean, the money that we have is extremely tight, and we are not well placed to give the money to first of all, we don't have enough money and to give you know, to fund basically half a billion citizens across the EU.
So these are programs that, in my opinion, have to be funded, implemented by the member states. What we do, and this brings me to the added value, is to fund issues which the member states alone do not. For example, funding co-productions in the audiovisual sector, partnership between media companies and, across frontiers, and funding the media activities or investigative journalists in areas where the bar these media deserts emerging and so on and so forth. And this is very, very important because it's a sort
Giuseppe Abbamonte
Judicious spending, sorry. Yes. Judicious spending of our limited budget, which will bring about the maximum, in my opinion, added value. I will stop here. Did I do something wrong?
How many minutes?
Sophie Wilmès
I'm very sorry. I spent two hours, and I'm prone to giggling when I am tired.
Sorry. Sorry.
Sophie Wilmès
It has nothing to do with you. We were commenting on a message that we both received from a colleague.
Oh, no.
Sophie Wilmès
There's nothing to do with you, and I'm very sorry. It's very awkward, but it happens. It does happen. There are videos of me as a minister crying my ass while I was defending the budget and not sleeping. It's normal.
So I'm very sorry for that. Mister Blanco Fernandez, thank you. My apologies. No.
Alejandro Blanco Fernández
No. No. No. No need to apologize. Thank you very much.
So I would say that your question is the pertinent question. So when we talk about simplification, the reduction of the number of programs cannot be an objective per se because you have to ensure that the policy objectives are still implemented. And this is something we have taken into account very seriously in our opinions. And this is why we say that there has to be synergies and there has to be an explanation either for the increase of funds or for the proposal as a simplification one. Because if you can freely move the money from one side to another, but you justify the amount of money because two are together, then there is no transparency on how the decisions are gonna be taken, and there is no clear rules on how you will allocate the money without the budgetary, sorry, without the approval of the budgetary authority or without the approval of the parliament in this case.
So this is what we took into account when we did the proposal. This is what we are taking into account for every proposal. And, yes, there has to be some sort of elements in the final decision that the legislators approve that will create or reinforce the protection for each of the strands and that they reinforce the transparency and the role of the European parliament when this sort of moves from one strand to another are taking place. So I would recommend that you, as legislators, correct all these elements in the proposal in order to avoid that there is this sort of lack of certainty. And, yes, to conclude, this is why we decided to do these 12 opinions and to present them in such a clear way because we want the legislators that they are warned before they take the final decision, before they approve the final draft of the legislations in order to correct these things before the final draft is approved.
So if you have any doubt or you want to consult with us any of your proposals, we are open to discuss with you and to try to reinforce or to make the proposal stronger.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you very much. Thank you. Mister Griffin, I don't know if you're still with us.
Scott Griffin
I'm I have ceded my time because I know that most of the questions were not for me. I would just conclude by thanking you again. And just to pick up on one of the points from the commission about the added value of supporting parts of the sector that cannot be funded through the market alone. And one of those is precisely investigative journalism, and there's a real market failure there, if you want. And it's also these areas of the sector which urgently need support, I think, as part of the next MFF.
And so I think this is also one of the strong messages that we want to send in this conversation. So everything around news deserts, local, regional media, and investigative journalism as well. So thank you very much for today's meeting.
Sophie Wilmès
Much to all of you against my apologies for this, but then it's better than crying. Right? So, although I'm crying. So thank you so much. It was very interesting, and I'm sure that the reporters who are working also on the issue got very substantial information from our exchanges, and I wish you a great day.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
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