Building a more resilient democracy and media sector: How Europe plans to recover, transform & empower
For long-time readers of our blog, it will come as no surprise that we’re EU policy nerds. Our favourite kind? Ambitious initiatives aiming for meaningful, structural changes that involve the cultural and creative sector (CCS) and make life better for European citizens.
The only issue with high-level initiatives that contain many parts, and seek to make many changes, is they tend to be (forgive us, hard-working Eurocrats) relatively dry to read, and as a result don’t get the coverage they deserve.
We won’t keep you in suspense, we’re talking about the new European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP) and Media and Audiovisual Action Plan (MAAP), two interrelated initiatives—launched in December 2020—that have set out to safeguard European democracy and bolster its media sector in a big way.
In the absence of much news analysis of these two important initiatives, we went deep into Commission press releases, strategy papers and factsheets to find out details for ourselves, and bring you the key points for our sector.
The European Democracy Action Plan
The European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP) has three big goals: to promote free and fair elections, strengthen media freedom and pluralism, and counter disinformation.
First of all, the plan makes it a priority to guarantee the safety of journalists. In practice, this will, for example, involve financial support to projects that provide journalists (especially women) with legal and practical assistance.
Beyond safety—a basic requirement for journalists to do their job properly—there are also plans to encourage pluralism in the media landscape. In recent years, the lack of transparency has also become an increasingly critical and worrying issue, so it’s very good news that the initiative envisages structures that look more closely at both media ownership as well as political ads.
EDAP is also pouring money, via structural funds, into civil society projects that focus on civic engagement, political participation and citizenship education. While balanced news coverage and communication in election periods is vital—in 2019, turnout for EU elections was a disappointing half of eligible voters (50.66%)—the aim here is to promote sustained active participation in democratic processes, so that citizens are consistent stakeholders in political decision-making.
As for addressing news consumers, the plan emphasizes measures that promote media literacy in the general public. We’ve already covered the critical challenge of disinformation, and this plan will ramp up measures to help people become less susceptible to fake news.
The Media and Audiovisual Action Plan (MAAP)
Meanwhile, the MAAP is targeting the media and audiovisual sector much more directly. The Commission’s multi-part plan sets out to help the industry:
recover from the crisis by facilitating and broadening access to finance, transform by stimulating investments to embrace the twin digital and green transitions while ensuring the sector's future resilience and empower European citizens and companies.
OK, so maybe the mission statement goes slightly overboard with familiar buzzwords, but dig just a little deeper and there are a lot of concrete measures on Europe’s media in the digital decade to come that are worth getting excited about. We’ll highlight the two that caught our attention immediately.
First, media sector organisations will be able to take advantage of a new interactive tool designed to guide them towards the best source of financial support available to them. In just a few clicks, applicants will be able to sift through major funding sources, including the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), but also national recovery and resilience plans, an exercise that until now has been relatively complex and difficult.
The plan also focuses heavily on nurturing bright, young, and most importantly, diverse talent in the media and audiovisual sector. Mentoring, boot camps and scouting programmes will all be deployed to reinvigorate the media ecosystem. And, as representation matters, the Commission will also launch a communication campaign with a strong message: typically underrepresented faces and voices belong both behind and in front of the camera. The aim here is to encourage young people from a variety of backgrounds to pursue a range of careers and projects in the AV and media sectors.
There are many other smaller proposals couched in the MAAP that we can’t wait to see happen (for example, the VR Media Lab for projects that explore new ways of storytelling and interacting!), but here we highlighted those that will end up making the biggest impact on the CCS.
But beyond what is immediately relevant for our sector, if we take the totality of these steps and zoom out a little, a bigger vision appears, one that we believe will prove vital for the EU’s survival in the current political and media climate.
“Media sector organisations will be able to take advantage of a new interactive tool designed to guide them towards the best source of financial support available to them”
Why are these action plans so important?
What our media landscape will look like and how the integrity of our elections will fare in the coming years will no doubt be largely affected by the outcome of the ongoing legal and regulatory battles between the EU and Big Tech, as well as the implementation of the new Digital Services Act.
But that doesn’t mean the impact of the work of the CCS has been undermined. Far from it. Journalists and other storytellers have always had a responsibility to narrate what goes on around them, revealing truths and putting the spotlight on thorny issues. With momentous recent changes to the sector brought about by COVID-19 and the digital shift, the CCS has an even greater role to play in the democratic process.
In this context, EDAP and MAAP are in service of a wider EU mission to ensure that the conditions under which such stories and conversations take place are safeguarded and bolstered. Only then can EU citizens navigate the modern news environment and take informed decisions, thus ensuring the continuity of our democratic systems, on both national and European level.
Our take on the EDAP and MAAP
As with Europe’s other big, bold plans (like the New European Bauhaus) the crucial determinant of success here will be how effectively the measures will be implemented, as well as Member State compliance every step of the way. The two action plans seek to make high-level changes, which will be formally evaluated by the Commission in 2023 (a year before the next big EU elections). That said, the impact should also be felt in real, tangible ways across the media and society at large.
How effectively will disinformation be filtered out of our newsfeeds? How much diverse young talent will be ushered into the pool of EU media professionals? How many (more) citizens will be motivated to vote in the coming round of EU elections?
These are all important benchmarks that will reveal the impact of the plans and determine the effectiveness and transparency of democracy in the EU.
European partners we’ve helped get funded—such as Are We Europe with their Sphera project on youth political participation—have already embraced the overarching vision of these action plans. Specifically, they’ve realised that arts, culture and the media can—and should—play a fundamental role in promoting democracy. We look forward to seeing them and many others succeed in doing just that.
Arne van Vliet is the Creative Director of TrueMotion. He’s passionate about the creative arts and specialises in finding funding for innovative creative projects that are reshaping the arts landscape in Europe.