BRUSSELS, Sept 7 /ATA/ – The European Newsroom (ENR), a joint project of 16 European news agencies, including the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA) as a full-fledged member, was formally launched as part of the European media landscape during a ceremony in Brussels on Wednesday, with attendees also including Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, Vice-President for Promoting our European Way of Life, as well as Commission Vice President Vera Jurova, also the Commissioner for Values and Transparency.
All the participants agreed that importance of setting higher journalistic standards, international cooperation in the media sector and common efforts to fight disinformation form the ENR foundations.
”Reporting on European issues poses a challenge, especially when taking into account that majority of the participating news agencies are located far from the European headquarters in Brussels,” Patrick Lacroix, CEO of Belga News Agency, said in his remarks at the ceremony.
“Our biggest goal is impartiality by sticking to the facts in the interest of the public opinion,” he added.
The CEO of the German news agency DPA, Peter Kropsch said that “it is important for the participating news agencies from the EU member states and the candidates to establish independent journalism and combat disinformation.”
“The aim of the ENR is also to allow smaller news agencies with a small budget budgets gain equal access to pan-European information like larger and better funded agencies,” he said.
”The two-year project will provide from four sorts of partnership among the participating agencies, as well as the solidarity partnership to include the Ukrainian news agency, Ukrinform,” Kropsch added.
“We have agreed to provide support to journalists in a country that is currently facing a major crisis due to Russian aggression,” he noted.
Vera Jurova, the Commissioner for Values and Transparency, said in her remarks: “More than ever, we need European news, we need to bring different perspectives together, because the challenges that we face go far beyond one single country.”
“The current war launched by Russia against Ukraine, spiking energy prices or climate change are all issues that know no borders, and to better grasp the full picture, your readers need a cross-border dimension,” the EU Vice-President Jurova stated, emphasizing the importance of accurate, reliable, fact based information.
“I very much hope that the ENR project will contribute to combating disinformation and announced, in the context, that next week the European Council will discuss a draft law on press freedom, which should allow the EC to provide tools so as to combat the pressures on the mass media – physical threats, abusive processes, political or economic pressures,” she said.
” No journalist should be spied on because of their profession. The mass-media should not be turned into a means of propaganda,” Jourova added.
“The European Commission will continue to support such projects, as unfortunately a deterioration of the state of the media has been observed in many European countries. In the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, we realized that we need strong media to preserve democracy. We cannot have quality media without protecting journalists from political, economic and any other kind of pressure,” Jurova pointed out.
Select content from the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA) started being published on the European Newsroom website since July 7.
The agencies dpa (Germany), AFP (France) head the project, with participation of other news agencies including ANSA (Italy), AGERPRES (Romania), HINA (Croatia), APA (Austria), Belga (Belgium), BTA (Bulgaria), EFE (Spain), Europa Press, AGERPRESS (Rumania), FENA (Bosnia and Herzegovina), MIA (North Macedonia, STA (Slovenia), TANJUG (Serbia), TASR (Slovakia).
The project is funded with 1.76 million euros by the European Union.
The European Newsroom is run by a consortium of 16 news agencies, covering 11 EU Member States as well as four candidate or potential candidate countries, as well as by another two agencies that later joined the project.
Each participating news agency will continue to report under its own brand and their stories will be published on the ENR website in their respective language on Mondays and Thursdays.
Once a week, ENR selects a European topic to which the agencies contribute and it is published in English.
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