Brussels – On Tuesday, the Government Ministers of the European Union discussed the ways to keep the radio afloat of Europe after the Trump administration Detainee subsidies to the Prodemocracy media store during the weekend.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty began transmitting during the Cold War. Its programs are transmitted in 27 languages in 23 countries in Eastern Europe, Central and the Middle East Asia.
The Minister of European Affairs of Sweden, Jessica Rozencrantz, insisted on the need to ensure that “radio free Europe really continues to be an important voice for freedom and democracy, especially in those places where it is more necessary.”
“Sweden encourages all countries and the commission (European) to really analyze what we can do in terms of financing, to ensure that we continue having a strong radius Europe,” journalists in Brussels told reporters before the meeting.
In a publication on social networks, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said that the cut in financing puts “independent journalism at a serious risk in the regions where the free press was silenced, from Russia and Belarus to Iran and Afghanistan.”
Prevot warned that if the network “disappears, misinformation and propaganda will fill the void.
The departure was trapped when the administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, on Saturday began to make deep cuts for Voice of America and another prodemocratic program administered by the Government.
“The cancellation of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Radio Agreement would be a massive gift for the enemies of the United States,” said the president and CEO of the Network, Stephen Capus, in a statement in reaction to the measure.
The European Commission, the EU Executive Branch, is trying to establish what impact will have the cuts in the media financed by the United States in Europe and how it could help connect any gap.
“We know how important the access to free and fair information is,” said EU Commission of EU Maroš šefčovič to journalists after the meeting. But he added that Radio Free Europe “unfortunately is not the only one of the projects that were reduced.”
“We are doing (a) an integral evaluation on where the financial support of the USA was arrested.” He said, to determine “how can we help, what can we do”?
On Monday, the head of EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, recalled the influence that the network had on it while growing in Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union when I was a girl.
“It is sad to know that the United States is withdrawing its funds,” Kallas told reporters, after presiding over a meeting of EU foreigners.
“Coming from the other side of the iron curtain, it was actually (from) the radio that we obtained a lot of information,” he said. “Then, it has been a lighthouse of democracy, very valuable in this regard.”
But Kallas said that finding “funds to fill the void that the United States leaves” would not be easy. “The answer to that question is not automatically, because we have many organizations that come with the same request,” he said.
The Czech Republic, which has organized Radio Free Europe for a quarter of a century, although its corporate headquarters is in Washington, is leading the impulse to keep the network alive. Kallas said that “there really was an impulse from foreign ministers to discuss this and find the way.”
