Annual Report 2008: Balkans

Since Prime Minister Janez Janša returned to power in March 2020, the ruling SDS party has embarked on a multi-pronged campaign to reshape the media landscape in favour of a pro-government narrative, renewing tactics successful during previous administrations and forging ahead with new forms of pressure.

“We believe the repeated denigration of journalists, combined with the ruling party’s attempts to exert greater control over the country’s public service media, are creating an increasingly hostile climate for critical reporting which serves a fundamental role of holding the government to account.”

“The EU has sat on the sidelines for too long. Repeated inaction to stop the undermining of media freedom and pluralism first in Hungary, and then in Poland, has allowed this model of media capture to grow and spread to other Member States. The cost of further inaction is simply too high.”