European Initiative for Media Pluralism Opens Bulgarian Unit

A non-governmental organization called European Initiative for Media Pluralism (EIMP) is registering a Bulgarian unit.

The NGO aims to encourage Bulgarian journalists to state their demand for dignified working conditions directly to the European Commission, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).

Bulgaria is the eight European country in which the organization supports fight against monopoly.

According to the NGO, if a petition on behalf of these eight countries is backed by 1 million signatures, the EC will be asked to create a new EC Directive or to revise the existing one so as to enshrine the severance of ties between media, business and politics in the different member states in a lawful manner on an EU level.

Giovanni Melogli from the European Initiative for Media Pluralism (EIMP) declared that their aim from the start had been to focus efforts on countries where the problem was most pronounced.

He noted that the starting point for their campaign were countries like Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, the United Kingdom and Greece.

Melogli said that the NGO had picked Bulgaria as an indicative case of the lack of media pluralism in southeastern Europe.

He also stated that the situation with media pluralism in Europe was good on the whole but it was unbalanced from a geographic perspective.