20. 06. 2013

Fuele: Free media as a condition for EU integration

Brussels, June 20, 2013 (Tanjug) - European Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele stated on Thursday, at a conference on free journalism in Brussels, that free media are one of the main conditions for EU integration of candidate countries.

Strong democracy is a condition for accession and the freedom of the media is the best indicator of the strength, Fuele said opening the conference entitled Speak Up on the freedom of the media in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

The conference organised by the EU Enlargement Directorate gathered over 400 reporters, politicians and public servants from the region and the EU.

Fuele expressed fierce criticism of the Turkish government over the censorship during the protest in Istanbul, adding that this caused a deafening silence in the media.

The commissioner said that the Commission marked freedom of the media in EU hopefuls as a top priority because this point is included in Chapters 23 and 24 which are the first ones to open during the negotiations on EU accession. This is the new approach we struggled hard to win, Fuele said.

Speaking about the media in the Western Balkans, Fuele warned against a large number of unsolved attacks on reporters.

He commended the country on forming the commission in charge of solving the cases of murder of reporters in Serbia and qualified this as a step in the right direction.

Fuele also said that public services in the Western Balkans are still too dependent on politicians.

Public services need to be financially and politically independent with transparent funding rules, the commissioner said.

At the end of the introductory speech, Fuele voiced criticism of the reporters in the region who, according to him, are producing low-quality items and lack an auto-regulation mechanism.

The media community in the Western Balkans is fragmented and polarised, which makes it difficult to defend the freedom of the spoken word, Fuele said.