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On 6 December, over 200 media professionals and representatives from NGOs gathered at UNESCO to examine the state of press freedom across Europe. The conference “Press Freedom in Europe” was organized by the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), a partner NGO of UNESCO, under the high patronage of the Council of Europe, and with the support of Reporters Without Frontiers, the Permanent Delegation of Sweden to the OECD and UNESCO, the Embassy of Sweden in France, and France Télévisions.

In his opening remarks, Moez Chakchouk, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO, recalled that in recent years, the number of attacks against journalists has continued to increase, while the trend of widespread impunity persists. “Between 2010 and mid-2019, 91�鶹������Ʒ���� condemned the killing of 850 journalists,” he said, stressing how journalists suffer countless attacks on their lives, their dignity and the integrity of their work, in all regions of the world, including in Europe.

Otmar Lahodynsky, President of AEJ International, invited participants to use this conference as an opportunity to distil concrete recommendations to the relevant European institutions. Véronique Auger, President of the French chapter of AEJ, highlighted the increased challenges that young journalists in particular are currently facing in Europe.

The Conference consisted of four panel sessions. During the first session (“Europe Isn’t A Safe Space for Journalists Anymore”), Andrew Caruana Galizia, son of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was killed in Malta in 2017, stressed how press freedom and rule of law are interconnected, noting that one “cannot exist without the other”. The Head of the Europe Desk at Reporters Without Borders, Pauline Ades-Mevel, denounced how judiciary harassment has become a common way of silencing independent journalists, also recalling that Caruana Galizia’s sons still have to face over two dozens defamation claims.

In the second panel, Christophe Deloire, Secretary-General at Reporters Without Borders, spoke of the challenges posed by disinformation and invited relevant actors to tackle disinformation by addressing its root causes, rather than merely “treating its symptoms”. Eric Scherer, Prospective Director at France Télévisions, added that “Information is a common good, and having access to it is a human right”.

The third panel (“#JournalistsToo”) focused on how female journalists in Europe are confronted with specific threats, both online and offline. “Women journalists face the same wide range of attacks as their male colleagues but also experience workplace discrimination and gender-based violence,” said Saorla McCabe, Programme Specialist at the Division for Freedom of Expression and Media Development (UNESCO). The discussion included the testimony of Caroline de Haas, and of Linda Pelkonen, Finnish journalist who was the target of a coordinated campaign of online harassment. Julia Haas, from the OSCE’s Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media, described practical measures promoted by OSCE’s project.

“Thirty percent of Swedish journalists working in the public service have been threatened in recent months. These threats are an attack on democracy. We are very concerned“, stated Cilla Benko, Director General at Swedish Radio, during the final panel session focused on the new threats facing the public audio-visual media. In order to tackle these threats, Marie-Laure Augry, former Mediator at France Télévisions, stressed the importance of prioritizing media literacy.

The conference concluded with a call on European institutions and governments to adopt effective measures to protect press freedom and journalistic independence in Europe. The reminds that “a free and independent press is the best guarantee for the proper functioning of democratic institutions”. Among other measures, it calls on the institutions of the European Union:

• to address judicial harassment and ‘gag procedures’;
• to put an end to the application of exorbitant criminal sanctions, including prison sentences, in defamation proceedings in all European states;
• to ensure that measures to protect press freedom and pluralism are implemented effectively by the European Union, by expressly assigning this competency to a member of the European Commission.

The Press Freedom in Europe Conference received additional support from the Ile-de-France Region, the Robert Schuman Foundation, the Hippocrène Foundation, and VoxEurop. UNESCO promotes the safety of journalists through global awareness-raising, capacity building and a range of other actions, within the framework of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.