📢 Online Roundtable:“Hungarian media investment in the Balkans: a test for Europe’s media law”

📌 This roundtable will examine the gaps left by EMFA in tackling media capture - drawing on case studies from Slovenia and North Macedonia, and explore how Europe can better safeguard media pluralism and accountability.

The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) represents a major milestone in the European Union’s commitment to safeguarding media pluralism and independence. But questions remain about its efficacy in member states and candidate countries which must align with the same standards when joining the bloc.

In Southeastern Europe, weak regulation and transparency around media ownership remains a pervasive problem, undermining media freedom in the region and presenting a challenge to accession processes.

On November 20 BFMI will present its new report on the implementation of the EMFA at an exclusive event at the European Parliament. This event will be hosted by MEP Andrey Kovatchev, EPP Spokesperson for Enlargement and Southern Neighbourhood.

The President of the Italian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Hon. Lorenzo Cesa, together with the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), are co-hosting the "Defunding Disinformation: Strategies Against Toxic Content” Conference in Rome.

A high-level discussion at the European Parliament, co-hosted by the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI) and MEP Andrey Kovatchev, revealed that advertising revenues from global brands play a crucial role in funding media outlets that disseminate disinformation on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and other divisive issues in the Balkans.

To mark the launch of its second report, Social Media and the Information War in the Balkans, the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI) hosted a discussion on how the spread of disinformation on social media has helped consolidate the power of authoritarian leaders in Serbia and the semi-autonomous region of Republika Srpska, contributing to the destabilisation of the region.