Urgent Alert: The New 'European Media Freedom Act' Threatens to Strip Away Press Freedoms (Video)

In a scathing video, Deputy Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of the National Assembly of France voiced concerns over a newly signed agreement between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the United States. According to Dupont-Aignan, the deal involves transferring personal data to America, sending shockwaves through Europe and prompting widespread condemnation.

Addressing the public with a sense of urgency, Dupont-Aignan delved into the agreement’s implications, shedding light on the “European Media Freedom Act.” This legislation, he asserts, aims to centralize authority over the press and media within the European Union, effectively eroding the autonomy of member states and undermining established press freedoms.

“At its core, they seek to dismantle national regulations and establish a European committee to control media affairs,” Dupont-Aignan stated. He expressed alarm over the potential dismantling of France’s longstanding press protections, including the influential 1881 law safeguarding freedom of the press. The proposed regulation, he contends, threatens to remove the protective shield offered by this law and replace it with a European regulation and a Media Committee with alarming powers.

Within the video, Dupont-Aignan highlighted three contentious articles within the proposed regulation that have ignited the ire of publishers and professional organizations across Europe. Article 4, he warns, grants the pretext of national security to strip journalists of their source protection, potentially forcing them to reveal confidential sources and stifling the press’s ability to freely express itself.

He then shifted focus to Article 6, which shifts the responsibility for a newspaper’s content from the publisher to individual journalists. This alarming change exposes journalists to the risk of legal action from aggrieved parties, whether they be corporations, politicians, or even supranational entities like the EU itself. Dupont-Aignan argues that this shift fundamentally undermines the press’s independence and subjects journalists to undue pressure.

Perhaps most alarming is Article 6, which Dupont-Aignan described as “stunning control” by the European Commission. This article empowers the Commission to collaborate with major tech corporations, commonly referred to as GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft), to censor articles that do not align with the EU’s stance. This potential level of censorship, he argued, marks an unprecedented infringement on freedom of the press and expression.

Dupont-Aignan decried the speed at which this controversial regulation is being pushed, alleging complicity from member states, including the French government under left-wing President Emmanuel Macron. He claimed that the French government harbors ambitions of dismantling the nation’s 1881 press freedom law and that the EU’s media regulation plays into these plans.

In a final, impassioned plea, Dupont-Aignan urged citizens to stand up against what he deemed the “end of freedom of expression in Europe.” He called for a unified effort to combat the regulation, emphasizing that this issue transcends political divides.

As this contentious agreement continues to fuel debate and uncertainty across the European political landscape, Deputy Dupont-Aignan’s words have resonated deeply with those who fear the potential erosion of hard-won press freedoms. The battle for media autonomy and the protection of freedom of expression now stands at the forefront of public discourse, while the European Union faces intensifying scrutiny over the agreement’s ramifications.