Brussels delays addressing press attacks in Italy. Uncertainty looms over July adoption of EU rule of law report

Brussels – It has now been a month since the National Federation of the Italian Press and several international journalists’ unions requested the European Commission to launch an investigation into attacks on the press by Giorgia Meloni‘s government. The date on the calendar for an initial assessment was July 3, the day scheduled for the possible publication of the annual Report on the rule of law in member countries. But Brussels does not seem to be in a hurry. Adoption of the report could slip further and come only once the games for the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission are over.

In the latest indicative agenda items list at the upcoming meetings of the College of Commissioners—published on June 11—the rule of law report is still scheduled for July 3. But today (June 17), the Commission’s chief spokesman, Eric Mamer, left room for possible delays. During the daily press briefing, he explained, “The heads of the cabinet, in their weekly meeting, set the agenda (of the College of Commissioners, Ed.) based on whether the work is sufficiently advanced or not.”

The meeting of cabinet heads will be held tomorrow (June 18), and the heads of the various departments will decide how to plan the commissioners’ upcoming work and where to include the Rule of Law Report. “We will see when the College is able to adopt it,” Mamer said again. Since its launch in 2020, the Rule of Law Report has always been adopted in the first half of July, except for the first year, when it was not ready until September.

Unleashing the controversy over a seemingly innocuous postponement is not only the fact that in doing so the European Commission would show that it does not consider it urgent to analyze the media situation in Italy, as urged instead by the Italian journalists themselves and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the International European Movement (EMI), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Media Diversity Institute (MDI Global), and OBC Transeuropa. Even more serious would be to postpone the assessment if it were for the mere political gain of von der Leyen, who is one step away from re-election to head the European Commission.

According to the Politico news outlet, the report will inevitably highlight the troubling crackdown on media freedom in Italy since Meloni has been sitting in Palazzo Chigi. Some sources inside the Commission reportedly revealed to Politico that the president’s cabinet has explicitly asked to postpone the report’s release because it could hinder von der Leyen’s run for re-election. “There is visibly a desire to put the brakes on issues related to Italy and the rule of law,” is the quote from an official reported by the news outlet.

The reason is quickly stated and is to be found in von der Leyen’s attempts to secure Meloni’s approval and the support of MEPs from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)—of which the Italian premier is president—needed to be confirmed at the Berlaymont Palace. Liberal MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld immediately attacked her: “Von der Leyen has politicized the rule of law report and uses law enforcement as a commodity, to be abandoned in exchange for jobs.”

Urged by the international press, the European Commission spokesman finally replied in a testy manner, “We don’t care what people on the outside say about every single topic concerning our work; we wanted the quality of the report to be impeccable and, therefore, it will be presented when we deem it suitable for adoption.”