Eric Karstens

Category: European Policy

  • More than meets the eye: The EU as a funding source for journalism

    The European Union is entangled with journalism in so many ways that it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. That’s because journalism only appears on the label of very few programmes, but can well be an ingredient or theme of many others.

  • Innovation and social purpose: Public and philanthropic support for European journalism

    The three general-purpose news outlets with the greatest agenda-setting power over European politics – the Financial Times, The Economist, and the BBC – will very soon be based outside the European Union. What could the EU and European philanthropies do to nurture a supranational journalism landscape that might replace them?

  • Communicating Europe: The State of Play

    Europe is making headlines. In the current decade, there has in fact been a surge in media attention for EU-related topics. What previously appeared next to impossible in most Member States, front-page stories involving the European Union in mainstream news outlets, has almost become a matter of course. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not unequivocally favourable.

  • An introduction to the European Union

    The constellation of Council, Commission, and Parliament, all with their different tasks and characteristics, has proven to be a powerful mechanism to reach consensus even on highly contentious topics, and imposes well-functioning checks and balances on the European Union. That this is hard and takes time goes with the territory.

  • Why Google’s Digital News Initiative might fail

    The European journalism sector needs a boost to catch up with the technological skills as well as the contents-related prowess of the globalised competition. But will Google’s Digital News Initiative really help?

  • How the EU can help journalism

    Why is the European Union so ineffective when it comes to supporting press freedom and media pluralism? And what could it do within the limits of its current competences to foster journalism? It all boils down to one word: CONNECT.

  • A critical mass for Public Service Media freedom in South East Europe

    Conventional wisdom has it that Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) can hardly be more forward than the society it serves, which spells problems for PSB in many Western Balkans countries. But in actual fact in can be at least slightly ahead – provided that it has the international and multi-lateral backing necessary to rise above everyday obstructions.

  • The EU, its neighbours, and journalism revolution

    The transition to a free and democratic media system in formerly authoritarian countries may be almost as difficult for the revolutionaries themselves as it typically is for the former mouthpieces of defunct regimes. Can the European Union help?

  • The art of EU procurement

    The EU has masterminded the very rules of public procurement, but it is also one of the largest tendering authorities itself. The scope of design of tenders is such that it may make or break entire companies and organisations, and affect the implementation of public policy beyond the specific objectives of any individual tender.

  • The EU’s Digital Agenda (part III): Stakeholders Day

    Perhaps there just are no stakeholders of the Digital Agenda as a whole, only stakeholders of a number of particular Digital Agenda subsections. Is the Agenda therefore too encompassing a policy after all?