Three hundred and fifty radio programmes about the European Union may disappear on 7 March 2017. The gap between the EU and its citizens is widening day by day, but the Euranet Plus network is currently facing the threat of closure due to failure to renew its contract.
The director of the Euranet Plus European radio network, Erlends Calaburg, told this newsletter that they had had to fight each year for EU financing for the past ten years and on 7 March 2017, Euranet’s second contract comes to an end and there are no plans to replace it.
A decade-long battle
The Euranet Plus network is made up of 18 public and private radio stations, including RTBF (Belgium), Radio24 (Italy), BFM Business (France), Radio Romania (Romania) and Polskie Radio (Poland). It is financed by the EU budget, winning its first public tender contract in 2007 worth 6 million annually over the period 2007-2012. It then won a second call for tender in 2012 for 2012-2016 for a similar budget, €6.1 million a year, but despite winning agreement in principle for this annual sum, they still had to fight each year to receive the money, explains Erlends Calaburg, adding that this meant that in effect he had been forced to become a lobbyist rather than a journalist.
Despite all the requests from Euranet Plus, the European Commission is refusing to automatically renew aid noting that the contract signed with Euranet Plus in 2012 stated that three renewals were possible ‘until March 2017.’ The Commission says the multimedia budget (budget line 09.05.05) was cut back in the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2014-2020 (a reduction of more than 20% on the 2007-2013 figure) and is not big enough to continue with current action. The Commission also says that the contract signed with Euranet in 2012 was extended through amendments in 2014 and 2016, but for 2017, the European Parliament and Council agreed to increase the budget for multimedia action (covering Euronews and Euranet Plus) by €3 million (taking the annual budget to €22.6 million, Ed.). The Commission spokesperson explains that the Commission backs this increase and will allocate the budget as soon as possible.
Uncertainty for 2017
Erlends Calaburg is unhappy with this amendment to the budget for 2017, saying that it is far too small, especially when you consider that Euronews gets 25 million euros each year. Calaburg, a former managing director of RFI, tells us he is in the process of closing down the network because it is highly uncertain that Euranet will participate in the next call for tender given that the money available for 2017 is restricted and there is a lack of political will. He explains that 350 programmes in total and several permanent jobs are at stake.
In response to our questions, the European Commission says it does not want to encourage one medium over another, and there isn’t any favouritism because the two actions are fundamentally different. The Commission says that for Euronews, it is using a framework-agreement on stable and robust financing recognising Euronews’ general mission of EU interest in the field of news since the TV chain is the only one to produce news on European issues from a pan-Europea perspective. For the radio network Euranet Plus, the Commission’s action is based on a competitive call for tender for producing news about European affairs and Euranet Plus submitted a winning tender in 2012. This contract could only be renewed thrice until 2017, but no later, explains Commission spokesperson for the digital single market Nathalie Vandystadt.
‘It makes no sense journalistically or politically,’ says AJE-France
The French arm of the Association des Journalistes Européens (AJE-France), says this threat is similar to the case of Presseurope.eu, a news website that translated the most interesting press articles from across Europe into ten languages and which, despite its success, had to close down when it lost its contract with the European Commission on 31 December 2013. AJE-France says stopping Euranet Plus ‘makes no sense journalistically or politically’ in the current context, ‘where the leaders of the EU lament the little attention paid by the media to EU current events and where information on European issues appears more important than ever in this period of crisis (…) and suspicion.’
According to a large poll coordinated by "Union européenne de radiotélévision, Génération What", the majority of young people in ten European countries have no trust in Europe (Portugal, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)