An in-depth look at the most important media funding programs proposed in the new EU budget

Early drafts of the AgoraEU program, the Global Europe instrument and the European Competitiveness Fund are out. Here is what we think they mean for the future of media funding.

Summers end abruptly. In Hungary, the 20th of August is St Stephen's Day, a bank holiday featuring military parades, fireworks, and almost invariably an evening thunderstorm that signals the merciful end of peak heat and the turn toward autumn. Ten days ago I was living my best life perfecting the eating-napping-board games-snacking-sleeping cycle at a friend's house on the north shore of Lake Balaton, mostly watching someone else grill sausages while I focused on the consumption side of the equation.

The past 48 hours, by contrast, involved parsing 200+ pages of EU policy proposals and legislative annexes, trying to extract meaning from what I have to admit is not the most engaging prose.

So while I had originally planned to write something whimsical yet thoughtful about how HBO's The Newsroom managed to misunderstand nearly everything about journalism and media economics (a topic that deserves proper treatment), we're instead diving straight (back) into MFF negotiations and what the next seven year EU budget means for media funding.

I hope you are back from your vacation too.

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If you are new to the EU budget negotiation process, start here:

• We need to change the way journalism is funded in Europe

• How to persuade the EU to spend hundreds of millions on journalism no one seems to care about?

• The Motion, the Myth, the Multiannual Framework

• The new EU budget promises a big boost for journalism. It’s probably too good to be true.

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The European Commission has released regulatory proposals for the three funding instruments I consider the most important for journalism and the information ecosystem both inside and outside the EU: AgoraEU, Global Europe, and the European Competitiveness Fund.

While I'll present some early analysis of these proposals, I've also created a public Notebook(LM) with all the relevant documents uploaded, so you can ask it questions about what's relevant for your specific situation. I ran a few tests along the lines of "I'm running a small, non-profit newsroom in [COUNTRY]. What type of support would I be able to get under these proposals?" and it returned decent results. That said, these are early drafts of legislation that remain quite vague in many areas, and AI tools can get things wrong so double-check before taking out a bank loan based on a chatbot's funding promises.

But back to my non-AI enhanced analysis.

Our favorite Agora(EU)

Under AgoraEU, which primarily covers spending inside the EU, the budget for the MEDIA+ strand would more than double from 2028 compared to the status quo, jumping from €1.4 billion to €3.9 billion. Before you start researching yacht brokers with newfound dedication, remember that the MEDIA+ strand splits between two objectives: "Audiovisual" (covering movies, video games, etc.) and the "News" objective that most of you should find relevant. This presents the first challenge: we don't yet know how the Commission would divide the nearly €4 billion between these two objectives, but the European movie and electronic entertainment industries will certainly fight for their share (as they should).

The proposal promises less bureaucratic funding.

"To simplify implementation and reduce administrative burden for beneficiaries, the use of simplified forms of funding (including financing not linked to costs and lump sums) will become the standard form of contribution for reimbursing grants."

This sounds promising. I suffer not so much from PTSD but from an ongoing, continuous stress disorder due to the idiosyncrasies of EU project administration. However, we need more details to understand what this actually means. For example, favoring unit costs over actual cost accounting can be something of a gamble: it might work in your favor but could also backfire depending on exchange rates, inflation, and pre-designated unit costs for whatever you're funding with EU money.

The AgoraEU proposal merges what used to be Creative Europe with the program formerly known as CERV, which mainly supports civil society organizations.

Thanks to smart and persistent advocacy by certain CSOs, CERV has some designated funding under “indirect management”, meaning that instead of money flowing directly from Brussels, local intermediaries can play allocation roles. This approach benefits the ecosystem because local organizations usually have better sight lines into local needs and can distribute resources more effectively. The same holds true for thematic areas where some sectoral organizations may be well-positioned to make funding decisions.

Unlike CERV, the main journalism support programs currently operate under “direct management“, so most decisions happen in Brussels with the Commission monitoring programs and spending directly. I would personally welcome some indirect management, but the current proposal remains unclear about which strands and objectives would fall under what type of decision-making. The Commission does acknowledge the positive role of regranting (known in EU speak as FSTP - financial support for third parties), which I consider critically important. The EU understandably prefers distributing money in larger chunks (hundreds of thousands or millions), and regranting serves as the primary mechanism enabling smaller organizations to receive modest amounts (tens of thousands) through intermediaries like Journalismfund EU or the IJ4EU initiatives.

What's mostly missing from the text proves equally interesting.