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What’s the new European Media Freedom Act and how will it safeguard the independence and pluralism of media services in the European Union? 

The European Audiovisual Observatory, part of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, has just published a new explainer report which unpacks the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The report was written by Prof. Mark D. Cole, Professor for Media and Telecommunication Law at the University of Luxembourg and Director for Academic Affairs at the Institute of European Media Law (EMR) in Saarbrücken and Christina Etteldorf, Senior Research Scientist at the EMR.

This extensive, yet accessible report takes a deep dive into this new piece of media legislation that is intended to ensure media freedom, pluralism, and a well-functioning internal media market across the European Union. The EMFA entered into force on 1 May 2024 and most of the new rules will fully apply as of 8 August 2025.

The author opens the introductory chapter one with an overview of the media safeguards which were felt to be lacking in Europe and which led to the creation of the EMFA as a solution. This chapter outlines the core aims of the EMFA: “to contribute to the functioning of the internal (media) market, the essential characteristics of which are democracy and the rule of law.” The authors also explain that the European lawmakers chose the form of a regulation for this piece of legislation, and therefore directly applicable as such in each European country, rather than a Directive which has to go through the variable process of national transposition.

Chapter two explains the legal basis of the EMFA. This regulation is based on the so-called internal market clause of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Its legal basis raises very fundamental questions about the division of powers between the EU and the member states. The authors outline the disagreements currently existing on this point within Europe and go on to explain that Hungary has even raised a legal action before the Court of Justice of the European Union, aiming at the annulment of the EMFA.

Chapter three describes the EMFA in a nutshell. The authors outline the regulation’s four different chapters and describe them individually.

Having summarized the basic structure of the EMFA, the authors go into more detail concerning the scope of the EMFA in chapter four. This chapter forms the bulk of the report and provides a detailed analysis of the various provisions of the EMFA in fields such as the rights of recipients and users; rules on media service providers; public service media (definition and the monitoring of the PSM provision); the relationship between platforms and media and finally shaping the internal media market in terms of concentration rules. Particular attention is paid to the crucial issue of cooperation between competent media authorities, on the one hand, and the reform of ERGA - that will in short be replaced by the “European Board for Media Services” -, on the other. This chapter shows in which areas the EMFA is expected to have significant impact for the market players, the regulators and finally the users. It also highlights the points of convergence and possible overlapping with other legal instruments of the European Union.

In the final chapter five, the authors describe the adoption of the EMFA as “the beginning of a new era of (media) regulation by the EU”. In their concluding remarks, they state that “the question of whether the EMFA gives the European Commission a new or improved tool to respond to fundamentally problematic developments in member states in the future will only be answered when the Commission applies the EMFA for the first time.”

A must-read study for anyone wishing to understand the content and implications of the new European Media Freedom Act!