Following the support provided as part of the ‘Apply AI’ initiative, the European Democracy Shield proposal now also demonstrates support for our goal of creating access to news and information for all Europeans in their own language.

The Council for European Public Space (CfEPS) warmly welcomes this step, which represents an opportunity to create a genuine counterweight to non-European digital offerings that show no regard for democracy, European values and laws.

“The Commission has committed, as part of its support to the uptake of AI in the cultural and creative sectors, to help the development of pan-European platforms to make available real-time news and information from professional media outlets to wider audiences across the EU, in multiple languages. The Commission will also step up its support to innovative media projects providing new formats and content to audiences across the Union and beyond. In addition, the Commission will explore future pathways for the EU’s tech environment, with an initial focus on future social networking/social media platforms, supporting EU digital sovereignty.“

The Commission also refers in the footnote to its similar statement on the Apply AI Strategy from October. It states – the Commission will

„help the development of pan-European platforms using multilingual AI technologies to make available real time news and information from professional media outlets across the EU to wider audiences. AI will be harnessed to translate content for relevant channels – including broadcasting – through classification, recognition, linguistic analysis and translation of content.“

The CfEPS has been promoting a European News Streaming Platform, which makes reliable news and current affairs programmes visible in all EU languages.

CfEPS will continue to advocate that such media offerings be designed primarily in the interests of European citizens and that they take equal account of changes in media usage, the importance of European language diversity and all players in a democratically important professional media landscape (public service media, commercial and non-commercial media) in order to take an important step towards a sovereign European single market for news and information.

Only by establishing a sovereign European infrastructure for News and Information that helps establish new sustainable business models that do not seek attention at any price but focus on values of the common good can democracy, society and the European way of life be secured.