Brussels, 28/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Neelie Kroes heads the Digital Strategy and is keen to preserve the freedom and pluralism of the media in the European Union. At a forum organised on Thursday 28 June at the European Parliament, on the theme of pluralism of the media and new media, the commissioner announced the launch of an extensive consultation to determine the role that the European institutions can and should play to protect these fundamental freedoms in member states. She also promised to define an orientation in this connection by the end of her mandate.
In reference to several complaints recently submitted to the European Commission regarding restrictions to the freedom of the press in certain member states (the best known case involves Hungary but there have also been cases in France and Italy), Neelie Kroes said that it was difficult to say whether there should be European Union intervention or not in such a sensitive area, which directly encroaches on national sovereignty, and that a preliminary and far-reaching examination would first be required. In the existing legal framework, the Commissioner pointed out that the Commission could only rebuke member states guilty of infringing freedom of the press but did not have the power to compel them in any way, saying: “I am quite willing to continue to exercise that political pressure on member states that risk violating our common values (…) I don't want to rush to regulation. In some cases regulation can support freedom. But if our aim is to separate the media from governments or parliaments, then the risk is that regulation does exactly the opposite”.
In order to have a firm opinion on this matter, Neelie Kroes will now be consulting a high level experts group on media freedom and pluralism, set up by the Commission and headed by former Latvian President Vaire Vike-Freiberga, as well as the Centre for Media Freedom and Pluralism, set up last year in Florence. She has already requested the opinion of different media groups (Media Futures Forum) on this point, as part of the more general framework for taking action to promote a genuine single digital market (EUROPE 10643) and will pursue discussions with their European Parliament on the subject.
She affirmed that, “some believe that the media market in Europe is too local, too fragmented, for the EU to have a role. Others believe that, as the EU is grounded in common values like freedom of speech, it should also protect those values (…) The issue of how to safeguard media freedom and pluralism is complex: it will involve reflection and hard choices (...) This is about democracy, it is about freedom, it is about Europe. No cost is too high to secure those aims”.
On the fringes of the forum, Neelie Kroes and the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, met the British actor, Hugh Grant, in the context of discussing freedom of the press in United Kingdom. According to this artist, this section of the media in the United Kingdom lacks self-regulation and there is a real need to protect the pluralism of the media in this member state. The commissioner acknowledged that although regulation in the British market was not functioning correctly, there was a real danger that excessive or inappropriate regulation could be introduced, similarly to what had happened in Hungary. (IL/trans/fl)