On Wednesday 18 November, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) approved the EU Council conclusions on safeguarding a “free and pluralistic” media sector - a copy of which was obtained by EUROPE.
The Ministers first point out that the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated “some of the main challenges that the media sector has already been facing for quite some time” - such as declining revenues and increased spending on digital advertising that is more beneficial for platforms.
They are also aware of the lack of fair competition between platforms and media service providers, who are subject to stricter responsibilities.
Member States are therefore called upon to recognise the importance of advertising for the sector and to encourage platforms to adequately remunerate media content providers and authors for the content they monetise.
Governments are also invited to support the economic viability of their media landscape, including state aid, provided that this is “based on predetermined, objective and transparent criteria, independent from any political influence”.
As for the European Commission, they suggest it should support the EU27 in this respect, but also “refine” the responsibilities of online platforms in the context of its future legislation on digital services (see EUROPE 12603/10) or implement an online portal detailing EU funding opportunities for the media sector.
The European institution is further invited to develop research on potential risks to media pluralism in the EU and to establish an annual European Media Forum, to enable discussion between relevant stakeholders.
Finally, the Member States expect the Commission to strengthen European media regulation in the light of the new digital challenges.
Controversial reliability indicators
These EU Council conclusions were very positively received by European organisations representing newspaper publishers, directors of major media companies and the media industry in general, who see it as a recognition of “the importance of beefing up Europe’s press ecosystem during a time that is critical for the sector”.
However, these organisations warn against one of the EU Council’s proposals - the implementation of reliability indicators for media and information bodies - and against the promotion of fact checkers by the EU or the Member States.
“Such indicators, which influence algorithmic decisions on a platform, could have catastrophic consequences for the availability of content and could potentially deprive large groups of society of their news sources”, they point out.
On the contrary, the EU Council believes that this would “promote compliance with professional norms and ethics” and raise awareness of “any concerns about the reliability of the information provided”. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)