Today, Tuesday 29 September at 10:00, our Dutch affiliate NVJ, the collective management organisation Lira Foundation and the Dutch authors’ union Auteursbond are calling on freelancers to demonstrate in front of Meta’s Dutch headquarters in Amsterdam. The leadership of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) will be holding a similar event this lunchtime in Brussels. Meta is using the work of freelance journalists, writers and translators to train its AI models, without consent and without pay. The Dutch organisations are preparing a collective lawsuit against Meta. Their aim is a collective agreement with AI companies that ensures fair pay, gives creators control…

A few weeks ago, a far-right anti-immigration protest turned particularly violent in The Hague, with several journalists reporting verbal and physical attacks to PersVeilig, the foundation ensuring a safer place for media and journalists operating in the Netherlands. Those reports are not isolated, they echo the monitoring of severe attacks against journalists the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has documented since the beginning of the year, thanks to its affiliate, the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ), and PersVeilig.  Amid concerns over journalists’ safety in the Netherlands, the EFJ interviewed PersVeilig safety advisor Isabella Prins, to reflect on the ongoing state…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joins its affiliate, Bosnia-Herzgovina Journalists’ Association (BHN), in warning that BHRT, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s public service broadcaster, is on the verge of shutting down, and in calling for urgent action from Bosnian and European institutions to prevent its possible collapse. BHRT has been in a long-standing financial and institutional crisis, but the situation has now reached a point where the broadcaster’s very survival is at risk. Last week, BHRT was forced to start reducing its programming due to a lack of funding, while its bank accounts have been blocked for over a month. There…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joins its Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) partners and the undersigned press freedom and free expression organisations in expressing our firm support for our colleague Massimo Moratti, the Senior Research Affiliate for the Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT), as he faces expulsion from Serbia in apparent connection with his human rights work. We urge Serbian authorities to immediately withdraw the expulsion order and allow our colleague to remain in the country with his family and continue his work. On 4 September, Serbian authorities denied Moratti’s request for temporary residence on grounds of “unacceptable security…

On 13 September, journalist Tuğba Tekerek was detained and transferred to Ankara over an article she had published in 2024 concerning the LGBTI+ movement in Georgia. Her detention is part of a wave of raids and arrests carried out by the Turkish authorities targeting LGBTI+ activists, organisations and human rights defenders. The International and the European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) join their affiliates, DİSK Basın-İş and Türkiye Gazeteciler Sendikası (TGS), in condemning the arbitrary detention and intimidation of journalists for covering LGBTI+ issues and call for their immediate release. The federations underline that LGBTI+ rights are human rights, and fair…

First legal battle won in France at a time when journalists are threatened with being replaced by the artificial intelligence (AI). On Tuesday, 15 September, the Judicial Court of Créteil ordered the partial suspension of a plan to dismiss journalists as editorial secretaries (secrétaires de rédaction) within the Infopro Digital press group in favor of AI. In total, 19 journalists are threatened with losing their jobs and 26 professional press titles published by Infopro Digital are directly impacted. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomes this decision as historic for the entire profession, at a time when the use of…