By Tanja Kerševan (University of Ljubljana)

The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) was welcomed as a long-overdue turning point in safeguarding media pluralism in Europe, following decades of efforts by the European Commission to establish common guidelines for regulating media ownership concentration in the EU. However, as EMFA’s implementation is underway, with key provisions set to apply from August 2025, the real challenge is becoming clear: Can rules on media ownership reliant on national compliance keep up with a digital world dominated by tech giants? And with U.S. platforms increasingly challenging EU regulation, is the entire package of digital laws from von der Leyen’s first mandate already on shaky ground? These questions expose deeper struggles that undermine the EU’s digital regulatory ambitions: its lack of digital sovereignty and its challenged capacity to effectively leverage power against dominant actors—whether Big Tech or geopolitical allies turning rivals.

A Regulation Outpaced by Digital and Geopolitical Realities

For years, the EU relied on competition law and national regulations of media concentrations—an approach that proved inadequate to protect media pluralism. Meanwhile, digital platforms reshaped news consumption and advertising revenues, diverting profits from media outlets and gaining control over news distribution through financial influence, regulatory pressure, and algorithmic gatekeeping (Schiffrin 2021). This shift not only undermined journalistic independence and democratic accountability but also contributed to market consolidation, further weakening media pluralism. By the time the EU introduced Article 22 of the EMFA, aimed at harmonising national rules on media market concentrations, digital giants had cemented their dominance over content distribution (Ong & Toh 2023), leaving policymakers to regulate markets already shaped by platform power (West 2024). As a result, even with stricter and somewhat harmonised national-level regulations for media publishers, global platforms will continue to control what audiences see, read, and engage with.

Given these structural imbalances, skepticism has emerged about whether Article 22 is adequately equipped to counteract the deeper transformations reshaping the media landscape. Seipp (2023) warned that regulation would fall short unless it tackled concentration trends driven by datafication, digitalisation, and the platformisation of the media ecosystem. While acknowledging that the final text of the EMFA has made some progress in adapting to these shifts—extending the media pluralism test to mergers involving at least one digital intermediary or one media service provider—Carlini and Parcu (2024) emphasise that Article 22 remains limited in scope, as it only applies to mergers and does not address existing concentration in the media market.

Too big to regulate?

As the EU prepares for the enforcement of Article 22 of the EMFA, U.S. tech giants are signalling their resistance to the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), which complement the EMFA by addressing platform accountability, competition, and market fairness in the digital ecosystem. Elon Musk has openly challenged the EU’s approach, particularly after the Commission initiated infringement proceedings against X over the spread of toxic content (Goujard & Scott 2023). Recently, Mark Zuckerberg discontinued fact-checking in the U.S. and is counting on support of the U.S. president to counterbalance pressure from the European Commission for its EU operations (Pollet 2025). The EU regulatory concerns, however, are not limited to social media. Just as the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) comes into force, Google has withdrawn its commitment not to use AI for developing weapons and surveillance tools, raising further questions about the EU’s ability to curtail global tech power (Kollewe 2025).

If the abolition of fact-checking occurs also in the EU, it could constitute inadequate risk management for very large online platforms (VLOPs) and even a breach of their duty of care, exposing them to sanctions and regulatory scrutiny under the DSA. If a VLOP is found to lack an adequate fact-checking mechanism, it could face a compliance order to remedy the violation and a financial penalty of up to 6% of its global annual turnover.

Even so, reining in digital platforms in Europe—once more willing to comply with EU frameworks before the new U.S. administration took office—will not be easy. And not just because of lengthy procedures that can be stalled for years through legal and procedural manoeuvres. If anything, EU regulation is characterised by complexity and abundance of procedures. The EU does have more radical and swift options at its disposal, such as those it employed in the communication sphere following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, it may be reluctant to use them, fearing repercussions. This concern is far from hypothetical: Even before taking office, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance threatened to withdraw U.S. support for NATO’s defense of Europe against Russian aggression unless the EU eased its regulatory pressure on Musk’s platform X (Kilander 2024). And while we speak (write), this has already taken place, although not directly linked to EU digital regulation, but rather as part of a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy.

In a not-so-distant past, Meta has pulled news content from Facebook in Canada and Australia in response to regulatory efforts. In Canada, where a law forced platforms to pay publishers for content, Meta simply shut down news sharing altogether. Despite Meta’s decision to block news content in response to the Online News Act, the Canadian government proceeded with the legislation. The act mandates that tech giants compensate news outlets for their content. Meta’s refusal to comply led to a significant reduction in news visibility on its platforms, but the government refused to amend the legislation (Shakil & Ljunggren 2023). In 2021, Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code was adopted to ensure that digital platforms pay news publishers for content. Initially, Meta restricted news content but later negotiated agreements with Australian publishers. However, in 2024, Meta did not renew these deals, leading the Australian government to consider additional measures to ensure compliance and fair compensation for news content (Roberts & Doran 2024).

A similar scenario in the EU could disproportionately impact smaller media outlets that rely on social media traffic. If Meta, Google, and others find compliance too costly, they could limit European news visibility overnight—ironically reducing media pluralism instead of protecting it. This risk is particularly acute with increasing economic and security pressures. If trade tensions escalate, platforms may feel further emboldened to resist EU regulation, testing the limits of enforcement and undermining the broader credibility of the EU’s digital policy framework.

National-Level Fragmentation

While global digital platforms extend their dominance over content distribution, EU member states’ regulators must navigate the dual challenge of safeguarding local media diversity while ensuring compliance with EU regulatory frameworks. Variations in market size, regulatory structures and resources make uniform solutions unviable. The EU has set regulatory principles, but enforcement falls to individual member states, making EMFA’s effectiveness reliant on national implementation. Though the law promised guidelines, a clear timeline is missing, leaving uncertainty as to when the European Commission will publish them, and if enforcement remains inconsistent across countries, it could weaken EMFA’s ability—and its goal—to prevent regulatory fragmentation.

Slovenia, a small EU member state with a highly concentrated media market, exemplifies some challenges. Its outdated regulatory framework, dating back to 2001 and currently under review, contains ownership restrictions tied to abandoned distribution models. The EMFA could finally enable the transfer of media concentration assessments from the government to the national regulator, responsible for the media and digital services, overcoming past legislative failures. The proposed Media Act (ZMed-1), now in Parliamentary procedure, designates Slovenia’s converged regulator, the Agency for Communication Networks and Service (AKOS), as the authority responsible for the media plurality test. However, the bill largely focuses on procedural aspects, leaving substantive criteria to secondary legislation, reflecting the Ministry of Culture’s reluctance to define them in the law itself.

The AKOS draft methodology and criteria for assessing media plurality impacts, annexed to the materials for parliamentary debate, remain general and non-quantitative, leaving room for discretionary interpretation. Without measurable benchmarks, enforcement risks becoming inconsistent and legally contested. Moreover, the proposal fails to address the dominance of platforms in news distribution and advertising. Another significant issue is data availability. There is no systematic approach to media market data collection, and international research on media consumption, audience reach, and distribution technologies often bypasses Slovenia. National assessments of the media landscape from a media pluralism perspective are rare and inconsistent. As a result, discussions and policy papers frequently rely on the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) as their primary reference.

These regulatory and structural weaknesses in Slovenia reflect broader challenges across the EU, where the effectiveness of EMFA enforcement will depend on how well national regulators implement and coordinate their approaches. The EU’s fragmented regulatory landscape, which will be difficult to overcome despite the coordinating role of the European Board for Media Services, risks turning EMFA enforcement into a patchwork of national policies, ultimately weakening its impact in addressing the problems of digital-era media concentration. 

The Battle Ahead: Can the EU Hold the Line?

To conclude—while fully acknowledging that thoughts and reasoning in the current turbulent geopolitical context may become outdated faster than they can be articulated—the EMFA represents the EU’s most ambitious attempt yet to regulate media markets. However, its success depends not only on whether enforcement can keep pace with a rapidly evolving digital landscape and reduce regulatory fragmentation, but also on whether it can address the deeper structural dependencies that shape the European media ecosystem.

With Big Tech’s growing resistance, now bolstered by political influence and the prospect of U.S. trade measures, the battle for media pluralism is entering a new phase. This phase will test whether the EU can assert regulatory control over digital gatekeepers while also regulating media in a meaningful way—not merely because media publishers are easier to regulate than platforms, but to ensure their sustainable existence and development in an increasingly hostile environment, where they face far stronger and largely unregulated competitors.

Yet, time is not on the EU’s side. Even Germany and France, forerunners in digital regulation with policies such as the ‘Netflix tax’, NetzDG, and Avia Law, are under mounting political, economic, and constitutional pressures. As geopolitical tensions rise and digital platforms act with growing confidence, the question remains: Can the EU move beyond regulatory ambition to effective enforcement, or will it retreat under geopolitical and economic constraints? This challenge is further compounded by internal fragmentation, as uneven enforcement at the national level could weaken the overall impact of EMFA and related regulatory instruments.

But the real challenge extends beyond enforcement. The key question is not merely whether the EU can regulate digital platforms, but whether it can establish its digital infrastructure to reduce dependence on foreign corporations. Information sovereignty is not just a legal issue but a strategic essential shaping the future of Europe’s media space. Without its digital services, independent distribution channels, and financial models, the EU risks remaining a regulator in name only, constrained by structural dependencies on foreign monopolies rather than shaping the foundations of its digital presence.

References:

Carlini, R. & Parcu, P. L. (2024) How article 22 aims to tackle market power in the platformed media environment. A critical test for European media. EMFA Observatory, 18 December 2024, https://cmpf.eui.eu/how-article-22-aims-to-tackle-market-power-in-the-platformed-media-environment/  

Goujard, C. & Scott, M. (2023) X vs. EU: Elon Musk hit with probe over spread of toxic content. Politico, December 18, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musks-x-probed-by-eu-for-failing-to-curb-toxic-content/ 

Kilander, G. (2024) JD Vance says US could drop support for NATO if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms. The Independent, 17 September 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-elon-musk-x-twitter-donald-trump-b2614525.html 

Kollewe, J. (2025) Google owner drops promise not to use AI for weapons. The Guardian, 5 February 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/05/google-owner-drops-promise-not-to-use-ai-for-weapons 

Ong, B. & Toh, D.J. (2023) Digital Dominance and Social Media Platforms: Are Competition Authorities Up to the Task? IIC 54, 527–572, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40319-023-01302-1 

Pollet, M. (2025) Fact-checkers under fire as Big Tech pulls back. Politico, 25 January 2025, https://www.politico.eu/article/fact-checkers-under-fire-meta-big-tech-censorship-mark-zuckerberg-donald-trump/ 

Roberts, G. & Doran, M. (2024) Meta won’t renew commercial deals with Australian news media. ABC, 1 March 2024, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-01/meta-won-t-renew-deal-with-australian-news-media/103533874 

Schiffrin, A. (Ed.). (2021) Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms, and Governments Control the News. Columbia University Press.

Seipp, T. J. (2023) Media Concentration Law: Gaps and Promises in the Digital Age. Media and Communication, 11(2), 392-405. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i2.6393

Shakil, I. & Ljunggren, D. (2023)  Meta to continue blocking Canadian news despite new C-18. Global News, 1 September 2023, https://globalnews.ca/news/9934703/facebook-meta-news-blocking-canada-regulations/ 

West, T. (2024) WARC: Amazon, Google and Meta dominate global ad spend in 2024. Marketing Beat, 22 August 2024, https://www.marketing-beat.co.uk/2024/08/22/warc-ad-spend-global-report/