Hungary: RSF welcomes culture minister’s announcement that complaint against European Media Freedom Act will be withdrawn

Until now, Hungary was the only EU member state formally challenging the entire premise of the EMFA, a historical, binding legislation guaranteeing media freedom, pluralism and independence.

"We have launched the procedure leading to the withdrawal of Hungary's complaint against the EMFA at the Court of Justice of the EU," Minister of Social Relations and Culture Zoltán Tarr announced on 6 October during a meeting with Director of the RSF Prague Bureau Pavol Szalai in Budapest. RSF had been calling on Tisza, the party leading the current government, to withdraw the complaint since the campaign ahead of the 12 April parliamentary elections, which brought Tisza to power after 16 years of government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Calling the EMFA a "Brussels' censorship law" that infringes on Hungary's "national sovereignty", the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sued the EU Council and Parliament in 2024 on the grounds that EMFA had a faulty legal basis and encroached on national competences. In 2025, the European Commission filed infringement proceedings against Hungary for violating the EMFA with the EU Court of Justice. One reason was the public media's transformation into propaganda outlets by Viktor Orbán, which was enacted as soon as he took power in 2010 and which earned him a place on RSF's List of Press Freedom Predators.

Undoing Orbán's legacy

The Magyar government also addressed the public broadcasting issue at the outset of its term, in an attempt to undo Orbán's legacy. The governance and oversight of the public service outlets Hungarian Television, Kossuth Radio and the Hungarian national press agency MTI were swiftly overhauled last summer through parliamentary amendments. The newly appointed Commissioner for Public Media, Judit Grósz, then opened a public consultation on the merits of the public service. The results will be provided to the management of the public media outlets and the Independent Public Media Board. The management will be elected by the Board in the upcoming weeks. Drawing on best practice, RSF recommended in the public consultation that the Hungarian government create the conditions for the country's independent public media to produce investigative journalism and local reporting on both audiovisual broadcast and digital channels.

Pavol Szalai repeated this demand during his meeting with Minister Zoltán Tarr and Commissioner Judit Grósz, as well as in an expert debate with President of the Independent Public Media Board Judit Bayer, which was organised by the European Federation of Journalists and its Hungarian affiliates on 6 October. He asked these authorities to consult with representatives of the independent press on the future mission and funding of Hungary's public media. These outlets were generously subsidised by the government of Viktor Orbán to the detriment of private media, which have been struggling to survive for the past 16 years and face new sustainability challenges since the April 12 elections.

Hungary has fallen 51 places in the World Press Freedom Index since 2010, currently ranking 74th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 edition published last May.