Public broadcasting under threat: Poland and Lithuania move to defy European rules

In Poland, the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Donald Tusk is preparingto adopt a state budget that would fund Polish Radioand Polish Television(TVP) at only 0.06% of GDP. This level is lower than the 0.09% proposed by the Ministry of Culture last year, the 0.10% of GDP allocated in 2023, and the European average, which the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) estimates at 0.12%. The EBU, along with the Polish Society of Journalists, is calling on the majority to abandon these budget cuts, which are deemed incompatible with the implementation of the EMFA - a law the government has nevertheless pledged to uphold.

This European legislation is also being defied by neighbouring Lithuania. On 27 November, the ruling coalition votedto freeze the budget of the public broadcaster LRTfor the next three years, maintaining it at 79.6 million euros. In addition, parliament has approved a reduction starting in 2029: the share of funding from income tax will fall from 1% to 0.75%, and the share taken from indirect taxes will diminish from 1.3% to 0.8%. The Nemunas Ausra party, the junior coalition partner and Trump ally that initiated these cuts - which are disproportionate compared with other areas of the state budget - justifies them by claiming LRT's services are of insufficient quality. This argument contradicts a state audit of LRT, which, on the contrary, considered that an increase in its budget was fully justified.

Hostile to journalists who exposedits leaders' links with Russia and Belarus, Nemunas Ausra has gone even further in seeking to destabilise LRT, which holds the certificateof the Journalism Trust Initiative, an international professional standard developed by RSF to denote media outlets that uphold high ethical standards. The Lithuanian parliament is currently examining a proposal that would weaken the safeguards protecting LRT's independence. The amendment would allow the supervisory body of the public broadcaster, the LRTCouncil, to dismiss the director-general with 6 votes out of 12 instead of the 8 currently required, and without any obligation to demonstrate that the director-general had acted against the public interest.

In force since last August, the EMFAprotects the "editorial and functional independence" of European public service media. It states that any decision to dismiss the management of public media before the end of its term must be "duly justified" and "may be taken only exceptionally." Furthermore, this legally binding legislation requires member states to ensure that "funding procedures for public service media providers are based on transparent and objective criteria laid down in advance" and that these media "have sufficient, sustainable and predictable financial resources."

However, according to the RSF reporton public media, published in July, more than half of the European Union's 27 member states have public broadcasters facing political and economic pressure. In central Europe, the list of countries threatening the future of public media includes - in addition to Poland, and Lithuania - Czechia. Ranked 10th in the World Press Freedom Index, Czechia is nevertheless regarded by RSF as a model for upholding the independence of public broadcasting independence in post-communist countries.