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The European Parliament today approved the bloc’s new Media Freedom Act, a bid to shield the bloc’s newsrooms from undue influence from political power and foster pluralism.
Lawmakers largely backed the political deal that was reached with EU capitals in mid-December with 464 votes in favor, 92 against and 65 abstentions.
“It’s a major step in providing more protection for journalists. It’s the first European legislation in this area,” the lead lawmaker on the file, German conservative Sabine Verheyen, said at today’s press conference ahead of the vote.
The new regulation was introduced by the European Commission in 2022 in response to creeping state control over media organizations and attacks on press freedom.
The new law will ban governments from going after journalists to reveal their sources by deploying spyware on their phones, though some exceptions to the ban apply.
It will also introduce transparency requirements for media ownership and state advertising, procedures to check media concentration, as well as a new layer of protection for news outlets from arbitrary takedown decisions made by big online platforms.
“Globally, there are more and more problems with regard to media freedom and diversity. I think that, in Europe, we really need to show that the media is part of our basic democracy,” Verheyen said.
During negotiations Parliament pushed to have stronger protections against the use of spyware, still, but those efforts met opposition from EU governments.
EU countries already approved the new law in January. It will start to apply in 2025.
