European Union: Adopted European Media Freedom Act including requirement for impact assessment of media market concentrations by Council

On 26 March 2024, the Council of the European Union adopted the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which aims to increase and promote transparency regarding media ownership and introduces safeguards for editorial independence and media pluralism. The EMFA introduces, among other things, a media pluralism test to measure the impact of media market concentrations resulting from mergers or acquisitions on media pluralism and editorial independence. Member States will be required to issue transparent and non-discriminatory rules for the assessment of media concentration and require entities to notify the authorities if an acquisition could result in a media market concentration that has the potential to impact media pluralism negatively. The regulation will enter into force 20 days following its publication in the Official Journal.