Journalism just lost a billion it never had

The new Irish proposal would cut the entire EU budget by 8% but the funding envelope for journalism programs would likely lose a lot more.

I didn’t want to ruin your weekend, but we have bad news about the EU budget negotiations.

Ireland wants to remove €141 billion from the proposed 2028–2034 budget, bringing it from €1.76 trillion to €1.62 trillion in constant 2025 prices. (The familiar €2 trillion headline was expressed in nominal prices, the EU offers several ways to be disappointed by the same number.)

This would mean an eight percent cut overall, but AgoraEU, the envelope meant to support culture, civil society, and journalism would be cut by nearly 4 times the average, 30% or €2.6 billion. This is among the largest program level cuts in the new proposal in relative terms.

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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

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

• The problem at the heart of Europe’s journalism funding debate

• What the sector actually wants from the next EU budget

• We are being outlobbied

• Eleven ideas of what news is worth to the EU

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As we warned multiple times, most recently in June, the Council was always going to push for a smaller overall budget, but the 30% cut proposed for Agora is unexpected.

What does it mean specifically for journalism? The Irish text does not tell us explicitly. It retains three priorities: culture, media, and democracy and rights, but specifies no amounts for each. Still, we ran the new Irish numbers against the various possible Agora allocations, to see how journalism funding could be affected.

Use the updated AgoraEU Dashboard to see how much money the Irish proposal would leave for journalism under different political scenarios. Link after the paywall.

Here is how it looks.