The European Union significant role in the “media sector” spans from the regulation of electronic communications to the audio-visual sector1, IT, e-commerce, data protection and copyright. The EU action in this realm is consistent with the general effort to liberalize and harmonize markets throughout Europe.
Yet, as this papers notes, media should be dealt with also keeping in mind that they have sensitive and very important functions within democratic systems.Media are crucial for political accountability, constitute the basis for an informed debate and are key guarantor of the right to information.
The report examines the tension between EU competencies in market harmonization and liberalization on the one hand, and the need to guarantee media pluralism and media freedom on the other hand.
The paper is structured into 3 sections:
- Section 1 describes regulatory media intervention so far developed in Europe.
- Section 2 reports the present policy debate on media pluralism and media freedom and illustrates approaches to interventions recently put forward by the Commission.
- Section 3 proposes some ideas to ensure a greater presence of the European voice in the evolution of media pluralism and freedom in Member States
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