Several EU member states backed the push for the EU to fund the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in response to Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at dismantling the Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

“There was really a push from the foreign ministers to discuss this and find the way, so this is the tasking to our side, to see what we can do,” EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on March 17 after the EU foreign ministers summit.

Following the summit, Czech Minister for European Affairs Martin Dvořák published a joint statement of 10 EU member states, including Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden, which back the push.   

The statement reads that “we declare our readiness to work together to find and secure appropriate financial resources that will allow RFE/RL to continue its important mission. European funding would ensure the stability of this key media institution and enable it to carry on providing critical and independent reporting.”

On March 17, the Czech branch of the International Press Institute (CZ IPI) also called on Czech parliamentary parties to bridge funding of RFE/RL.  

USAGM is the parent organisation funding RFE/RL as well as the largest US international broadcaster Voice of America (VOA). Both broadcasters came under verbal attacks from tech oligarch Elon Musk and US Presidential envoy Richard Grenell as allegedly “left-wing radicals” as part of the Trump-led overhaul of US public administration.  

In the latest development, RFE/RL sued the USAGM in an effort to block the termination of the funding.

Trump’s axeing of USAGM finances was loudly applauded by the Russian state propaganda, including the Russia Today and Sputnik media boss Margarita Simonyan, who described it as an “excellent decision,” while her colleague, propagandist Vladimir Solovyov sent a message “die, bastards” to RFE/RL journalists.

In March 2022, Vladimir Putin’s regime declared RFE/RL an ‘undesirable organisation’ in Russia after the broadcaster refused to comply with the country’s ‘foreign agents’ law. Russian authorities began bankruptcy proceedings against RFE/RL, forcing it to suspend operations inside Russia.

RFE/RL provides news reporting in 27 languages across 23 countries in which press freedom is under threat, including Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Caucasus.

Other countries include Iran, Pakistan and the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, while its reporters were also instrumental in documenting the war crimes committed by Russian armies in the occupied parts of Ukraine. In recent years it also renewed operations in Hungary in response to the deteriorating media situation there and is active also in the Western Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania.   

RFE/RL headquarters were relocated to Prague from Munich in 1995, not long after the collapse of the communist rule in then Czechoslovakia and other Central European countries. It has traditionally enjoyed the backing of the GOP, while communist authorities despised the RFE/RL broadcasting, viewing it as right-wing.

Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the US Congress to protect the USAGM, stating: “it is outrageous that the White House is seeking to gut the Congress-funded agency supporting independent journalism that challenges narratives of authoritarian regimes around the world.”