Author: Lucie Sýkorová, HlidaciPes.org
Today, Friday 8 August, most of the provisions of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) come into force. The new rules are groundbreaking and regulate, among other things, the transparency of media ownership, the provision of state advertising and the use of spyware against journalists.
According to this law, Member States are obliged to respect the editorial freedom of media operators and avoid any interference in editorial activities. Media must guarantee that editors and editors-in-chief are free to make editorial decisions, but within the editorial line of the media operator in question.
They must also ensure transparency in the ownership of the media. The European Parliament tried to push through a ban on media ownership that would apply to heads of state, prime ministers or ministers, but it failed in the trialogue.
EMFA also regulates the conditions for the allocation of state advertising to the media. Public administrations and state-owned enterprises will have to publish information annually on which media outlets they have paid for advertising and how much. The transparency and objectivity of audience measurement, which has an impact on media advertising revenues, will also have to be increased.
Media operators that receive public funds from third countries (for example for advertising) will have to submit an annual report to the national regulatory authority. The report must state exactly from whom and what the total amount the media operator has received.
“The media is not just a business like any other. In addition to its economic dimension, it contributes to education, cultural development and the inclusiveness of society and protects fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and access to information. With this draft law, we are reaching an important legislative milestone that is intended to ensure the diversity and freedom of our media environment and journalists and to protect our democracy,” said German MEP Sabine Verheyen last year after the proposal passed the European Parliament in a more stringent form than the original Commission text.
Verheyen was responsible for the law at the time as Chair of the European Parliament’s Culture Committee. In the current parliamentary term, she has created a working group that wants to monitor the adaptation of EMFA into national legislation.
A missed opportunity?
The law was initiated in 2022 by then Vice-Commissioner Věra Jourová, and her team prepared the draft text for the European Commission.
“We will see whether the European Media Freedom Act will be the legacy of Ján Kuciak, Daphne Caruana Galizia and all those who sacrificed their lives for media freedom,” Jourová said at the time. According to her, it will depend primarily on how the law is enforced in individual member states.
During the preparation of the law, European legislators had to deal with a number of contradictory suggestions, including from professional organizations. While publishers mostly feared excessive regulation, journalists and organizations active in the field of media freedom, on the contrary, called for stricter formulations. Some even called the resulting form of EMFA a wasted opportunity.
Věra Jourová disagrees with this criticism. “I think this criticism is somewhat superficial in the sense that it overlooks the way in which legal interpretation is carried out. EMFA must be in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the general principles of European law. From this perspective, for example, the protection provided to journalists by Article 4 is actually stronger than it seems,” she told HlídacíPes.org.
According to her, it must be interpreted in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter, which means not only taking into account the case law of the European Court of Justice, but also the case law of the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 10 of the EU Convention on Human Rights.
“In addition, it must be in accordance with the principle of proportionality, which also means stronger protection than one might think when reading Article 4 itself. Anyone who takes the time to read this case law will understand that the guarantees of Article 4 are very specific and far-reaching,” Jourová added to HlídacíPes.org.
Article 4 of the EMFA sets out guarantees against the use of spyware against the media, journalists and their families. It also stipulates that a journalist must not be forced to reveal his or her source. However, it was this article that received critical and disappointed reactions from journalists and some organizations after the final version of the law was approved. This point was also considered the biggest bone of contention between lawmakers during the final negotiations, the so-called trialogue.
Protection against spies
Critics of the final version of Article 4 fear that governments may misuse this provision in the name of national security and that it will be easier to deploy spyware on journalists. Věra Jourová has now refuted these concerns.
“I do not think this is the correct interpretation. Article 4 lays down a very intensive set of provisions for the protection of journalists. The last paragraph of this article, which some have misinterpreted as an exception for national security, merely repeats what is already stated in Article 4.2 of the EU Treaty, so nothing changes in this respect. In their declaration issued after the adoption of the EU Treaty, the Member States state that when personal data protection rules apply to the area of national security, particular attention must be paid to national interests. This means that EU law generally applies to the area of national security, otherwise this declaration would have no meaning,” Jourová told HlídacíPes.org.
She recalled that the French Ministry of Defence had tried to push through amendments to the EMFA that would have changed this, but had failed. “This is further confirmation that there is no exception for national security in the EMFA.”
Article 4, among other things, obliges states to appoint an independent authority to help ensure that journalists’ rights are respected during investigations.
“I see the role of this authority primarily as a kind of privacy protector, upholding the rights of journalists who have not yet been informed of the investigation at that moment,” says the former European Commissioner.
Jourová further notes that European law is also not blind to the needs of intelligence services.
“The EMFA does not mean that intelligence services will not be able to investigate a journalist who may in fact be a spy posing as a journalist. The legislator had to find a balance between the protection of journalists and the legitimate needs of states to investigate serious crimes. However, the request for a blanket exemption sought by the French Ministry of Defense was rejected during the negotiations,” she explains.
“EMFA has set out a very structured and clear way in which national judges must conduct their analysis, comply with the rules and, where appropriate, refer preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Thanks to the EU Convention on Human Rights, many guarantees already existed, but they were not effectively enforced in practice. Article 4 of EMFA therefore joins this debate and also brings European enforcement tools that can really make a difference,” said Jourová.
Article 3, unjustly overlooked
Article 3 came into force last autumn. It requires member states to ensure “a framework for the protection of citizens’ right to access pluralistic, editorially independent media content”.
Although this article has so far been overlooked and neglected by most analysts, it could play a crucial role in cases of violations of media freedom by political authorities.
Luigi Malferrari, a member of the European Commission’s legal service who participated in the drafting of the law, also pointed this out.
“It has been argued that Article 3 of the EMFA does not create a subjective right. However, it is arbitrary to assume, without any objective criterion, that some rights in the EMFA are subjective while others are objective. To deny the existence of a right for individuals under Article 3 of the EMFA despite the clear title and purpose of this provision is untenable in proper legal exegesis,” he writes in an essay in which he also discusses Article 4 of the EMFA at length, and continues:
“Furthermore, it cannot be convincingly argued that Article 3 can only be invoked in combination with another provision of the EMFA; in fact, there is no trace of this in the text of the EMFA and, moreover, Article 3 itself entered into force on 8 November 2024, so its use on its own must have certain legal consequences; in EU law, where different interpretations are possible, preference must be given to the one that preserves the normative value of the provision,” he writes.
Joint self-regulation of the media
Article 18 is intended to protect journalists and media outlets from arbitrary deletion of their work by social networks or platforms such as Google or Meta. If a platform wants to delete content from professional media that it considers harmful, it must notify and explain it to the media operator 24 hours in advance.
The obligation to remove content that spreads disinformation or is illegal is set by the Digital Services Act (DSA), the last part of which entered into force last February.
In this sense, the EMFA law is intended to supplement the DSA and ensure that technology giants primarily assess the content of recognized news media responsibly.
In disputed cases, the new law requires platforms to consult their decisions with a national regulator or self-regulatory body.
“No one can be the arbiter of truth in Europe, but at the same time we do not want Facebook, for example, to delete posts by professional journalists,” explained Jourová.
Preparations for joint self-regulation are reaching their peak in the Czech media market these weeks. The signatories to the so-called Ten Commandments, which is a summary of ethical principles, are all major professional organizations and public media.
After signing the joint memorandum, professional organizations should be partners for large platforms and for the state in all points where EMFA mentions the role of self-regulation.
In February, the regulatory authorities of the member states nominated members to the new Media Services Board, which is a new body established within EMFA. It is intended primarily to be a new advisory body to the Commission.
In the case of the Czech Republic, a member of the Board was nominated by the Radio and Television Broadcasting Council (RRTV), which is the only member of the current European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA). The new Board replaced this platform.
Every four years, the Board will issue a report on the state of media freedom in all EU member states. It will also prepare opinions on initiatives or in the event of suspicion that media freedom is under threat in any of the countries.
Czech communists also blocked it
The EMFA Act entered into force on Monday, May 6, 2024, with the effectiveness of individual articles gradually taking effect. As of today (August 8, 2025), all articles are in effect except for Article 20, which establishes the right of users to customize their media offerings.
This will mean an obligation for manufacturers, developers and importers of devices and user interfaces to allow users to customize their devices. This article will be in effect from May 8, 2027.
The European Parliament approved the final version of the law at the penultimate session of the previous term. At this session, a group of left-wing MEPs tried to block it at the last minute. At the last minute, they proposed voting separately on the amendments instead of on the entire text, which the legislators had already tentatively agreed on during the so-called trialogue.
Among those who supported this attempt were two Czech MEPs, Hynek Blaško and Kateřina Konečná. However, the European Parliament rejected this proposal by a large majority of 535 votes. The text agreed in the trialogue was supported in the subsequent vote by 464 MEPs, 92 against and 65 abstentions.
Since it is a regulation and not a directive, the regulation is valid for all states and individual EU member states. If states violate European law, the Commission can initiate infringement proceedings against them. This can even lead to financial sanctions from the European Court of Justice.
The law also provides guarantees for journalists. They will be able to turn to national courts if they believe that their rights under the law are not being respected.
The Czech Ministry of Culture prepared the EMFA adaptation law this year, but its approval will probably only be up to the next government.
