Articles for category: Europa

SLAPPs, Daphne’s Law, and the Future of Journalism

Media freedom has many dimensions. Whereas the EMFA deals directly with media oversight bodies and the likes, the proposed anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) directive weighs into a more niche but crucially important topic: the silencing of journalists through bogus litigation. Such bogus litigation - or SLAPPS - does not intend to „win” cases but to slowly but steadily dry out journalists financially, emotionally, and socially. Currently, the Council of the European Union and the European Union Parliament are working on their proposals of the directive. It is crucial that the Commission’s proposal will not be watered down.

15. Juni 2023

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Interaction Without Affection?

The EU's legislative activity in the area of media and platform regulation is currently unfolding at an unprecedented pace. The thematically broad EMFA builds in many places on recently adopted legal acts whose interpretation is still unclear. This leads to parallelisms and overlaps as well as unclear and convoluted references, which can only be briefly outlined here and should be clarified in the trilogue negotiations.

15. Juni 2023

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EMFA and its Uphill Battle for Media Freedom and Democracy in the EU

The European Media Freedom Act, primarily designed to safeguard the EU media market, can also serve as an important tool in preserving the rule of law in member states such as Hungary and Poland, that have experienced an alarming assault on media freedom and pluralism in the past decade. This contribution critically evaluates the potential of the proposed European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) for addressing the ongoing issues in media freedom in Poland and Hungary.

14. Juni 2023

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»A Bit of Fun. A Bit of Truth.«

The extent of (private) media regulation depends on the willingness to trade private for public power. This blogpost takes the Commission's EMFA proposal as an opportunity to question the assumptions about media, markets, and politics behind it. It finds that the Commission’s approach treats private like public media: First, it functionalizes the fundamental rights of private individuals and companies in terms of their public benefit; second, it imagines the conditions of qualitative journalistic work as those of civil servants.

14. Juni 2023

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Enforcing Democracy

On the 8th of June, the Commission announced the opening of an infringement procedure against Poland in relation to the so-called ‘Lex Tusk’ or ‘anti-Tusk’ law. The principle of democracy is the first alleged violation specified by the Commission, based on Articles 2 and 10 TEU. Although proposed back in 2020 by observers of the Rule of Law crisis (see here and here), using this combination of articles to protect democracy is an unprecedented step by the institution. In a way, this follows the successful actions brought against Poland based on Articles 2 and 19 TEU (with ‘successful’ referring to the Court upholding the Commission’s complaints). It also recalls similarities with the Commission’s decision to invoke Article 2 TEU as a stand-alone provision in the infringement proceedings against Hungary’s ‘anti-LGBTQ’ law. The Commission is now testing out the legal waters to see if Article 10 TEU can be the trigger for ‘democracy’ in the same way Article 19 TEU is the trigger for ‘rule of law’.

13. Juni 2023

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Without Enforcement, the EMFA is Dead Letter

Besides important substantive provisions, the EMFA proposal contains various mechanisms concerning the role of national regulatory authorities, the newly established European Board for Media Services (Board) and the Commission. However, this blogpost argues that the proposed tools fail to effectively improve the already available enforcement mechanisms in EU law. We offer three recommendations to improve enforcement of media law and policy in the EU, while remaining within the boundaries of the competences as established by the EU Treaties.

13. Juni 2023

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Why the Words „But“ and „However“ Determine the EMFA’s Legal Basis

Enacting a regulation, which is directly applicable throughout the EU, with such a focus would undoubtedly entail a far-reaching interference with the cultural sovereignty of the Member States, documented inter alia in Art. 167(4) TFEU and the Amsterdam Protocol concerning public service broadcasting. This requires a careful concretisation of existing obstacles to the internal market, their actual overcoming by the proposed rules and a consideration of cultural interests and traditions of the Member States. In its current shape, the EMFA, irrespective of its noble goal, does not meet these requirements. Therefore, most of the EMFA’s substantive rules do not solidly rest on a legal basis, making the proposal partly incompatible with Union law.

13. Juni 2023

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Doing Justice to Poland’s Muzzle Law

On 5 June 2023, the Court of Justice issued its fourth infringement judgment in relation to yet another Polish piece of legislation – informally known as the muzzle law – which aimed to dissuade or punish Polish judges for applying and upholding EU rule of law requirements. As anyone with any basic understanding of EU law could have predicted, the law rushed into force by Poland’s ruling coalition in December 2019 did not survive judicial scrutiny in Luxembourg. As long as the Commission fails to demand full compliance with CJEU case law and decisively address the issue of judicial usurpers, however, just chipping away at the arbitrary disciplinary changes Polish authorities have made will always fail to solve Poland’s fundamental and systemic issues.

11. Juni 2023

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Regulating the Sustainability Transition

The European Parliament’s adoption of its position on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) last week marks a breakthrough for transnational corporate regulation. At a moment when the EU Green Deal was facing open opposition from within the European People’s Party Group (EPP), rapporteur Lara Wolters (S&P) withstood lobbying efforts until the final minute and secured a majority for her report. With a strong mandate for the Parliament in the upcoming Trilogue, the EU has come a big step closer to passing the most ambitious due diligence legislation worldwide.

9. Juni 2023

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YouTube Updates its Policy on Election Misinformation

Last Friday, YouTube announced that it ‘will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections’. This development has upsides and downsides, a few of which are worth sketching out, and all of which further accentuate why the US constitutional framework regarding online platform regulation requires updating. The nature of this update requires transcending a governance approach of overreliance on expecting good faith self-regulation by companies providing these intermediaries.  

8. Juni 2023

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