Věra Jourová was 13 when she was first investigated for her political views. It was 1977 in communist Czechoslovakia and the state was cracking down on political dissidents who had signed a human rights declaration – Charter 77. Her civics teacher wanted to know what she thought of the document. Jourová’s parents were already blacklisted and she feared the wrong answer would make things worse. “It was a horror moment,” recalls Jourová, who knew about Charter 77 from the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts that her family listened to in secret. So she said nothing and saw her school marks slide.
Nearly half a century later, Jourová is one of the European Commission’s most powerful officials and seeking to protect the media in the European Union. “There are increasing threats and a very dangerous trend,” she told the Guardian.
On Wednesday, World Press Freedom day will be marked, during which global alarm about the state of media freedom is expected to be raised, and Jourová warned of the risks. Journalists are facing online and physical attacks, and are even killed for their work; public service media in some countries are pressured to become state or party mouthpieces; powerful businessmen are buying up outlets struggling to cope with the digital age, an “oligarchisation” that could endanger media pluralism, she said.
The European Commission vice-president was speaking in a week when the human rights watchdog Civil Liberties Union for Europe said abusive lawsuits against journalists were on the rise in a dozen EU countries. Meanwhile in four central European countries – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – the majority of people told the Median pollster they were concerned about media freedom, an increase on last year in each state.
The European Commission, long a powerful regulator of the free market, used to argue it had no powers to defend the free press. EU treaties left the commission with “weak equipment”, Jourová said in defence of her predecessors. But starting her job as vice-president for values and transparency in 2019, she realised “passivity might be a fatal mistake”.
“If we understand the rule of law principle as a healthy and functioning division of powers, then of course the media belong to this game.” A year ago she proposed measures to protect journalists and campaigners from vexatious lawsuits, so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps, used by wealthy individuals and companies attempting to quash investigative reporting. This was followed last autumn with the proposed European media freedom act, intended to prevent political interference in editorial decisions, ensure the independence of public service media and ban the use of spyware on journalists.
The proposal has to be agreed by EU governments and the European parliament. Not everyone is enthusiastic. The German government, under pressure from powerful media groups that dislike the plans, such as Axel Springer, the owner of Bild and Politico, argues that EU regulation could dilute national media protections. Jourová insists this is not the case, because the legislation proposes minimum standards. Even countries, with long traditions of free media, such as Denmark, should not be complacent, she suggested. “My message is no country is immune, for instance, against the appetite of politicians to interfere into the job of journalists.”
Meanwhile the European parliament’s lead negotiator on the file, the German centre-right MEP Sabine Verheyen, is seeking to weaken aspects of the proposals. She wants to protect the rights of media owners “to assume a leading editorial role”. Jourová insists the EU regulation cannot be a cosmetic change “The media sector needs a radical solution when it comes to its protection,” she said.
In contrast the Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed the various EU plans but warned that the EU shift to protect the media still needed “to be translated into meaningful action”.
The proposed media freedom act, Jourová acknowledged, cannot “undo the damage” in some member states, such as Hungary, where last year independent election monitors found that “biased and unbalanced news coverage” in favour of the ruling party had limited voters’ ability to make a choice. “We cannot unscramble scrambled eggs,” Jourová said, referring to Kesma, Hungary’s rightwing pro-government media group spanning TV companies, internet portals, newspapers and sports publications that dominates the news agenda. “But I believe that the media freedom act might have an influence on the behaviour of the states including Hungary,” she said, suggesting the possibility of EU legal action would limit future moves to control journalism.
Inspired by her own upbringing, the Czech politician also wants to support Russia’s exiled independent journalists, now labelled “foreign agents” by the Kremlin. She says the creation of Radio Free Russia will help Russian independent journalists in the EU find an audience in their home country. Rather than just a radio station, she proposes a broader set of initiatives to fund and help journalists working for the likes of the Dozhd TV station, Novaya Gazeta and the Meduza internet portal. The EU has set aside €3m (£2.65m) in seed funding to create a media freedom hub that will give grants and raise money for Russian media groups that have lost their business model. The hub, the centrepiece of Radio Free Russia, is intended to launch on 1 July – and will also help exiled Russian journalists get humanitarian visas and bank accounts.
“I believe that there might be a lot of people in Russia, who want to hear something else,” said Jourová, seated in front of a large portrait of Anna Politikovskaya, the campaigning Russian reporter murdered in 2006. It would be “a mistake” not to support independent Russian journalists on EU territory, she said.
She remembered the “horrible brainwash” of her youth, countered by secret listening to the free media. “Without Voice of America, I only would have known that Václav Havel [dissident and later statesman] and others were enemies of the people,” she said recalling the station’s jaunty Yankee Doodle jingle. “The official doctrine was very intense.”
Radio Free Russia would also help Russian journalists distribute their work in their home country, whether via VPN, satellite or the internet. “We cannot remove the fear – I know what it is to live in such a kind of fear – but we can remove the lack of information, with the Radio Free Russia initiative.”
