Strasbourg, 18/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament deplored attacks against the freedom of the press in Russia and pleaded in favour of the immediate and unconditional release of "too many journalists arbitrarily held" in the world, by approving a resolution tabled by the Socialist, Liberal, Greens/EFA, United Left/Nordic Green Left groups in Thursday afternoon's emergency debates (100 in favour, 6 against and 4 abstentions).
Plenary upheld a "recital" expressing its concern at the "concentration of media ownership that threatens the press in the Union too", but rejected two passages in which it would have called on the governments of EU Member States to: "scrupulously monitor conflicts of interest in Europe" and the "ambiguous relationship between editorial integrity and the owners and financiers of the media world" (53 in favour, 55 against, 2 abstentions); - open a broad debate on the "economic and financial organisation of press companies" (52 in favour, 53 against, 2 abstentions): the latter appeal was also addressed to the "European authorities".
During the brief debate, German Green Ilka Schroedter and Dutch Socialist Max van den Berg placed emphasis on the need for freedom and pluralism in the press to be guaranteed not only in developing countries and countries candidates for EU membership but also in the European Union itself. We are seeing a worrying phenomenon of ownership concentration of the media within the Union too, said Mr. van den Berg, adding: "I shall not mention names, but the Socialist Group intends to take initiatives to fight in favour of pluralism". The UDF member, Philippe Morillon replied by stating that his group, the EPP-ED, had been among those that had taken the initiative of such a resolution, on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day, on 3 May; "unfortunately, this idea was quite simply swept aside by the initiative of other groups who rekindled a political dispute against one of the members of our group who has become the head of government of one of the Member states", he added, announcing that his group would no longer back the resolution. Mr. Fiori, member of Forza Italia, also rose up against what he called "a poisoned policy", whereas the member of Democratici di sinistra, Demetrio Volcic, referred to the "conflict of interests" asking: when the Prime Minister and theowner (of important media) "are one and the same, what do we do?". Spanish MEPs Sanchez Garcia (Liberal Group) and Hernandez Mollar (EPP-ED Group), for their part, recalled that a Basque journalist, Mr. Landaburu, had been seriously injured during an ETA attack, just after last Sunday's elections in the Basque Country, and Commissioner Gunter Verheugen noted that it was a question of the brother of the Director General for enlargement in the European Commission, Eneki Landaburu. Furthermore, Verheugen did not linger on the problem of press concentration in the EU but, whereas he stressed that freedom and plurality of the press were indispensable, he limited himself to sketching measures the EU had taken in this field in the world as a whole (he cited in particular a large project in Asia and Africa aimed at helping journalists arrested because of their activity as well as their families).