‘How far is Valletta from Rome and Rome from Athens?’ the MEP asked, arguing that attacks on journalists are sweeping across Europe. He recalled the murder of Daphne in Malta, the killing of Giorgos Karaivaz in Athens, the recent attempted assassination of an Italian journalist in Rome and the attempted kidnapping of Nikos Aslanidis by Turkish authorities.

Arvanitis warned that remembrance must not be merely ceremonial. ‘Even today her murderers have not been brought to justice, while her family continues to face abusive lawsuits, eight years on,’ he said. He added that, in Greece, one of the initiators of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize, journalist and former MEP Stelios Kouloglou, is being prosecuted by the same political forces that claim to defend press freedom. He described this as another example of political complicity and hypocrisy that now poses an open threat to democracy.

The SYRIZA MEP urged the EU to adopt immediate, institutional measures to protect media workers, including:

• the establishment of an inter-institutional structure for the protection of journalists, with early-warning and rapid-response mechanisms;
• the constitutional recognition of journalism as a fundamental pillar of democracy;
• the strengthening and immediate transposition of the European directive on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) to prevent the use of abusive lawsuits by state and commercial interests, citing cases currently affecting Documento, tvxs, The Press Project, Reporters United and the Editors’ Journal.

Arvanitis’s intervention forms part of a wider campaign in defence of press freedom. During the previous parliamentary term he organised the event ‘Journalism in the spotlight’ in Brussels, where participants called for a European institutional shield against the threats, prosecutions and attacks faced by media workers. ‘Freedom of the press is an integral part of the rule of law. Without independent information, democracy operates blindly,’ he said at the time.

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