If the EU is to support media freedom, its members must lead by example

Antoinette Nikolova is director of the Balkan Free Media Initiative.

After months of silence in the face of unprecedented anti-government protests in Serbia, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen finally rebuked Belgrade for its failure to deliver on EU reforms. She called on Serbia to “take decisive steps towards media freedom, the fight against corruption, and the electoral reform.”

The reprimand was long overdue.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić — a former propaganda minister — has spent a decade consolidating his party’s grip on power, forcefully asserting control over the country’s media. And in October 2023, the Serbian government passed two controversial laws allowing state-owned companies to enter the media space, removing protective restrictions put in place after the Slobodan Milošević era.

The laws compounded a media environment already crowded by government influence, while the EU ignored warnings from media associations that foresaw their antidemocratic impact. It took an unprecedented escalation — mass protests against Vučić and his government, as well as physical attacks on the country’s few remaining independent journalists — for the EU to break its silence.

In theory, the reform agenda imposed by the EU accession process should have given the Commission some leverage. Yet, in recent years, several EU candidate countries including Serbia, Turkey, and Georgia have engaged in some of the most egregious crackdowns on independent media.

And it is rather unsurprising these countries believe such measures won’t hamper their path to membership, as several EU countries have been doing the very same.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, for example, sued the EU in the European Court of Justice last year over the passage of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) — the EU’s first attempt at harmonizing laws protecting media pluralism and independence. The case argues that the act exceeds the EU’s powers and meddles in the sovereignty of its member countries.

Meanwhile, in Slovakia, populist leader Robert Fico dissolved the public broadcaster RTVS and established a new entity, STVR. The move allowed for a leadership overhaul and greater control over editorial content.

But it’s not just Orbán and Fico — the EU’s longstanding provocateurs — who are setting a bad example. Some of the bloc’s most influential members are also moving in the wrong direction: According to a report the Civil Liberties Union for Europe released in March, several EU member countries are backsliding when it comes to freedom of the press.

The report singled out Italy for “unprecedented levels of political interference” in the country’s public broadcaster. And it labelled Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government as one of the EU’s five worst offenders on media freedom.

Meanwhile, recent moves by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appear to be straight out of the Vučić playbook: In July 2024, Sánchez announced media law reforms aimed at countering “pseudo-media,” but the result exploited the EMFA to limit which organizations qualify for public funding. Then, last year, the government acquired a 10 percent stake in the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica and replaced its CEO with a government loyalist. According to media reports, it is now using this position to influence shareholder votes in Promontora de Informaciones SA (PRISA), the owner of Spain’s largest newspaper El Pais, to replace its leadership and launch a pro-government television station.

EU members with a tendency to control the media and steer the political narrative will be closely monitoring how the bloc responds to the EMFA’s selective implementation in troublesome countries like Hungary and Slovakia. It’s expected the bloc will initiate infringement procedures, most likely using Orbán and Fico as examples to deter other European leaders like Meloni and Sánchez from interpreting the act to suit their own agendas.

In light of the new threats facing European values, media freedom is increasingly being viewed as a security issue. But without a clear, strong culture of media freedom within the EU’s borders, the bloc cannot hope to keep the misinformation, bad actors and authoritarianism from outside those borders at bay. And if the EU is to influence the likes of Vučić and other aspiring autocrats in EU candidate countries, its key members must lead by example.

Serbia’s protestors see the EU as a beacon of hope for democracy. The bloc cannot afford to let them down.