"Strasbourg Calling" Austrian journalist Brigitte Rambossek: The fight for media freedom is a fight for democracy

Journalist Mindaugas Laukagalis of Lithuania: We see a quite fragmented European Parliament at the moment

Mindaugas Laukagalis, Angelina Piskova, Irina Nedeva, Brigitte Rambusek (from left to right)

Photo: Rositsa Petkova

"There was definitely more tension in this session of the European Parliament." This was commented by Angelina Piskova, BNR correspondent for the European institutions during a journalist round table in the programme "Strasbourg Calling" broadcast live from the European Parliament with host Irina Nedeva.

"If we've been swimming in relatively calm waters until now, they're not so calm anymore. I wouldn't say it's so dangerous that you'll drown, but you definitely have to be more careful. It's somehow more restless. I assume it'll be the same with the next parliament," said Angelina Piskova.

"I think we saw in Monday's debate regarding the vote of no confidence in the European Commission that there is a lot of anger between the different parliamentary groups and the result of the European Parliament elections last year made this parliament more fragmented," young Lithuanian journalist Mindaugas Laukagalis currently working for the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT in Brussels told the BNR.

"Regarding the European Media Freedom Act, we are currently living in an age of great uncertainty and instability in all our countries," emphasized Brigitte Rambossek, a long-time journalist in the Austrian Public Radio ORF, currently Vice-President of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ). Since Austria's accession to the European Union in 1995, Brigitte Rambossek has been involved in European policies:

"The media has a crucial role in all of this and I like to say that the fight for media freedom is a fight for democracy. We, at the Association of European Journalists, have been fighting for this since 1962, when our organization was founded in San Remo, Italy. We are now 17 countries, not only EU members. It is really interesting for me to work with colleagues like all of them."

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Brigitte Rambossek has been involved in an initiative called "Europa Cafe" aimed at bringing the citizens of Vienna closer to EU concepts and ideas:

"We have been part of the European Union for 30 years and the euro was introduced in Austria on 1 January 2002. We were 12 countries at that time, now with Bulgaria we are 21. My experience about how to tell about the European Union, how to inform, It's rather complicated because it is a complex system. During the meetings of the Europa Cafe I always started with the sentence: The European Union is not far away, it's not Brussels. It is just a few steps to the next ministry because every minister is taking part in decisions."

Ten years ago, Lithuania joined the Eurozone. Was there opposition to the adoption of the euro?

"Ten years ago when Lithuania was just about to adopt the euro, we didn't see such processes as are now happening in Bulgaria, protests ans so on. Both the leading and the opposition parties were in principle for adopting the euro. There were of course discussions, people were afraid that prices would increase and we could see that in some sectors, but in general people were excited and now people see the euro as a very good thing for Lithuania", said Lithuanian journalist Mindaugas Laukagalis.

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