via Unsplash
The International Press Institute (IPI) launches a new report series documenting media capture developments in eight European Union member states to assess how they meet the standards of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA).
IPI produces the annual Media Capture Monitoring Report series jointly with the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC). The series is part of the organisation’s long-term work identifying and countering the capture and control of media in Europe. The project is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism that tracks, monitors, and responds to press and media freedom violations in EU member states and candidate countries. It is co-funded by the European Commission.
This is the third iteration of the series covering eight EU countries: Bulgaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain.
Each country report assesses the four safeguards in the EMFA that bear most directly on media capture: the independence of public service media, the independence of media regulators, protection against the misuse of state funds to influence the media, and transparency of media ownership and safeguards for media pluralism.
The 2026 edition follows the EMFA’s first year of full application, from 8 August 2025. Written by national experts and edited by MJRC and IPI, the reports track what has changed since the 2025 baseline assessment and identify the problems that remain.
IPI and MJRC will expand the series to all 27 EU member states, creating a major new EMFA implementation monitor.
The reports are a resource for media rights organisations, civil society groups, policymakers, and advocates working to monitor and strengthen media freedom across the EU.
Since its founding in 1950, IPI has tracked and documented threats to the free press all over the world. IPI closely monitors actions by governments and their allies to censor, capture, and control the press — and uses this data as the basis of its work advocating for the rights of journalists and the free flow of independent news and information wherever these rights are threatened.
Read more on IPI’s hub page.
