Thursday 21 February marks the one-year anniversary of the brutal assassination of Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. Yet justice has not been brought for these murders. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Transparency International invite you to join us for a vigil outside the Residence Palace in Brussels at 1 pm to honor the bravery of Jan Kuciak and to make clear that the pressure on Slovak authorities to investigate this double murder will be kept up. Despite undeniable progress in the investigation, the…

The EU is poised to take a momentous step and adopt a new directive to protect whistleblowers across Europe. This could have a dramatic impact on the capacity and ability of whistleblowing to work in all our interests. We know that protecting those who speak up in the public interest saves lives, protects our environment, reveals and stops corruption, and stems the huge financial losses to business and governments that result from failures to address wrongdoing. It is vital that an EU Directive on the protection of whistleblowers protects the free flow of information necessary for responsible exercises of institutional…

After months of speculation, EU institutions last night agreed the wording of a proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which risks journalists being deprived of their authors’ rights and denied ‘’proportionate remuneration’’ for the work they do. The new proposal does introduce the principle of an appropriate and proportionate remuneration for all authors, including journalists, place transparency obligations on publishers and open up the possibility of alternative dispute mechanisms which could avoid lengthy and expensive court cases. It also allows authors to be represented by their unions in that process. The International and the European Federations of…

Update (16.04.2019): the European Parliament approved the directive in plenary session with 591 votes in favour, 29 against and 33 abstentions. The Council of the European Union adopted on Friday 25 January its general approach on the protection of whistleblowers. The trilogue between the three European institutions has started with the aim to find a compromise before the next European elections. The political agreement between the 28 Member States determines under what conditions whistleblowers can report breaches of EU law to be granted protection against retaliation. It foresees that a whistleblower must, as a rule, first make a report inside his/her…

The Council of the European Union will soon adopt its general approach on the directive on the protection of whistleblowers. Ahead of this crucial political agreement among the Member States, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) would like to insist about the importance of granting the widest protection to whistleblowers, including persons choosing to turn to the media to blow the whistle. The adoption of a directive which would penalise whistleblowers acting as journalistic sources would be damaging to democracy. That is why the EFJ republishes the open letter co-signed by the European Broadcasting Union, ENPA, EMMA and News Media…

The Hungarian public media MTVA became on Monday 17 December the focal point of the protest movement that started last week in the capital against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, over the passing of new bills, including the so-called “slave law”. According to media reports, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside state public broadcaster MTVA headquarters. About ten opposition members of parliament (MP) entered the building with the aim to read the demands of the protesters live on air. The requests included the overturn of a controversial labour law, the annulment of the judicial reform and a call for more independence and objectivity…

The damaging effects of media ownership concentration in Europe was the topic of the Newsocracy conference held in Prague, Czech Republic, on 14 December, organised by the European Centre of Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). The conference highlighted the importance to develop both transparency and pluralism in media ownership to guarantee media as a public good. “The conference turned out to be a wake up call. Experts showed how the lack of transparency in ownership influences media policy in many European countries – in the EU in general, in Central and Eastern Europe in particular”, said European Federation of Journalists’ (EFJ)…

Spanish police officers raided the headquarters of Spanish news agency Europa Press and newspaper Diario de Mallorca, on 11 December, to confiscate documents and personal devices of several journalists. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ and EFJ) joined their Spanish affiliates, FeSP, FAPE and CCOO, in condemning the police operation, which is a serious violation of the right of journalists to protect their sources. This right is a fundamental pillar of press freedom and is protected by the 20th article of the Spanish Constitution. Its violation is an attack on the free exercise of journalism. According to Europa…

On behalf of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), EFJ (the European Federation of Journalists), EMMA (European Magazine Media Association), ENPA (the European Newspaper Association) and NME (News Media Europe), we would like to strongly encourage the Members of the European Parliament and the Council representatives to ensure that the proposed directive on the protection of whistleblowers, which is currently being negotiated in both institutions, guarantees a robust protection for persons choosing to turn to the media to report unlawful or wrongful acts. The draft directive, as proposed by the European Commission in April 2018, falls short when it comes to…

Members of the Labour Rights Experts Group (LAREG) of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) convened in Brussels on 31 October 2018 to discuss the latest improvement and deterioration of labour conditions for journalists and media workers in Europe. Journalists’ unions and professional associations of Germany, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia were represented. For the third year, the enlargement of the existing LAREG to participants from the Balkans and Turkey transformed the EFJ’s expert group into LAREG+, bringing together twice a year representatives from both sides of Europe. The pairing is possible thanks to the EU-UNESCO-funded project…

In the frame of the EU tripartite negotiations on the Copyright Proposal, the IFJ and the EFJ call on EU institutions to stand up for journalism by safeguarding journalists’ fair and proportionate remuneration from the new neighboring right and strengthening the Proposal’s transparency provisions. Following the approval by the European Parliament on 12th September of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) – a major step forward in protecting authors’ rights- EU institutions, namely the Council, the Parliament and the Commission, have now entered into their final phase of negotiations through a trilogue that should last until…

The European Federation of Journalists invites you to join the silent vigil organized by Daphne Caruana Galizia‘s family and friends in Brussels. Here is their invitation to us: On 16 October 2017, the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in broad daylight in a car bomb outside her home in Malta. Daphne was investigating and exposing cases of corruption at the highest levels of government. Since then, three suspected contract killers have been apprehended but there is still no trace of who sent them and why — and it is not clear whether enough is being done to find…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is very worried about the deteriorating medical condition of Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetić who has been on hunger strike since 6 September 2018. Domagoj Margetić is a journalist investigating crime and corruption in Croatia and is editor of „No censorship“ show at TV Mreža. Over the last several years, he has reported many death threats, attacks against his property as well as physical attacks, one of them qualified as attempted murder. According to the Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA), Margetić and his family have suffered intensified pressures since August 2018, such as blackmailing and death threats, which triggered…

The European Commission published on 23 April 2018 a proposal for a directive on the protection of persons reporting on breaches of Union law. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomed this initiative, while warning that the legislative text doesn’t fully meet the criteria to establish a robust protection against retaliation for whistleblowers at the European level. In a brochure published in September, Quentin Van Enis, a legal expert specialised in media, lecturer at the University of Namur and member of the Belgian press council (CDJ), analysed for the EFJ the draft directive from the journalists’ perspective. The author highlighted the…

Freelance journalists in Belarus face increasing threats, pressure and censorship and this is a concern Europeans should share, said Belarussian journalists Larysa Shchyrakova and Volha Chaichyts at a press conference held in Brussels, on Tuesday 18 September. The event was jointly organised by the International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) together with their affiliate the Belarus Association of Journalists (BAJ). Larysa Shchyrakova and Volha Chaichyts are two Belarusian freelance journalists, working for Belsat TV, a ten-year-old television channel based in Warsaw, Poland. During the conference, the two female journalists exposed several problems they face in their country that they…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) expresses deepest concerns regarding the insults and death threats targeting Dino Jahić, the editor-in-chief of the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS). The EFJ joined the Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ safety in calling on the Serbian and Bosnian authorities to stop discrediting journalists and respect media pluralism as well as freedom of speech. The smear campaign against Dino Jahić started on 21 August 2018, when Milorad Dodik, president of  the Serb-dominated entity in Bosnia (Republika Srpska), accused during a press conference Dino Jahić of drawing on huge…