Why EU gives a positive assessment of freedom of speech in Ukraine

Amid the latest events in Ukraine, including corruption allegations involving the most influential figures in the state, it is important to understand how our European partners assess the state of democracy.

Because Ukraine’s further progress toward the EU depends precisely on a realistic evaluation of the state of Ukrainian democracy.

European Pravda continues to analyse the EU’s annual Enlargement Report, as well as the shadow report prepared on behalf of the European Commission.

Read more about how Brussels assesses the state of freedom of speech and media freedom in Ukraine in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor: The country of the newscast and beyond: what EU thinks about freedom of speech in Ukraine. 

The report shows that Ukraine’s progress in the area of "freedom of expression" (EU terminology) is moderate but positive.

And the EU emphasises that it understands this assessment is made in the context of a full-scale war.

"Overall, Ukraine provides adequate legal guarantees on freedom of expression; further improvements are needed to ensure an enabling environment for the media to operate freely and independently," the European Commission report states.

On the other hand, the EU also sees attempts to restrict freedom of speech. The report reads like a signal to Kyiv: "We are watching, but we believe that you see this yourselves and will stop threats to freedom of speech."

The European Commission highlighted three key threats that could worsen the state of freedom of speech in Ukraine.

First is the law adopted in July in the second reading, which introduces administrative liability for associating a lawyer with their client.

"If the adopted law enters into force, any journalistic material, statement by civil society organisations or trade unions, or social media post concerning high-profile cases involving lawyers could become grounds for administrative penalties," the shadow report explains. The EU explicitly demands that this decision be reversed.

The second issue is that the President of Ukraine has still not signed the law granting journalists and the public access to meetings of parliamentary committees, even though Ukrainian parliament adopted it at the beginning of the year.

This is part of the broader problem of excessive government opacity during wartime.

Finally, the EU is concerned about underfunding of media-related bodies (including the National Council – the independent regulator), whose leaders receive the lowest salaries among all government institutions.

The EU also supports the quickest possible completion of the 24/7 newscast, though it does not present specific deadlines as a categorical requirement.

But why does the EU still give Ukraine a positive assessment on freedom of speech while criticising the 24/7 newscast?

The key reason is that pluralism of opinions exists within the media. And over the past year, this pluralism has grown, including on television, thanks to the public broadcaster’s withdrawal from the marathon and its continuation of independent broadcasting. Its programmes are assessed as balanced.

It is important to emphasise: issues related to Suspilne carry exceptional weight for the EU.

What matters is that Suspilne remains independent from the authorities and that the government does not create artificial financial problems for it, given that Suspilne is funded from the state budget by law.

One last important point concerns the blocking of propagandist online resources. The requirement to maintain balance remains, and the EU reminded Ukraine of this separately.

"The transparency of decisions to restrict access to internet resources should be increased to limit the potential for abuse by authorities," the European Commission’s conclusions state.