Participants in the tenth edition of the Media Forum, held in Chisinau on December 8 and 9, urge journalists to closely and critically monitor and reflect in depth on the process of Moldova’s accession to the European Union. At the same time, the resolution made public on December 22 contains a series of findings on developments in the media market over the past year and calls on the authorities to accelerate the process of aligning national media regulations with European legislation.
The document notes that the alignment of the national regulatory framework for the media with relevant EU legislation needs to be accelerated, but not at the expense of public consultations. Participants also confirm that progress was made in 2025, such as the financing of journalistic projects through the Media Subsidy Fund, support for the distribution of print media, institutional cooperation to ensure accurate coverage of elections, and the emergence of good electoral practices.
According to the resolution, the amendments made in 2025 to the Audiovisual Media Services Code provide sufficient guarantees to ensure the independence of audiovisual authorities and served as an argument for the decision of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in December this year to terminate, after a period of 16 years, the state’s supervision in the case of Manole and others v. Moldova.
At the same time, participants noted that persistent problems include: the vulnerability of the information space to external interference and disinformation, insufficient support for the press in minority languages, the deterioration of the performance of the regional public broadcaster Gagauziya Radio Televizionu, and the intensification of attacks on journalists, which are insufficiently sanctioned by the authorities.
Among the main requests addressed to the authorities, highlighted in the text of the resolution, are the acceleration of the process of aligning national regulations on media activity with relevant European legislation, including the urgent adoption and implementation of a new press law. In addition, the authorities are urged to provide journalists with real guarantees of protection.
With regard to the work of journalists and media outlets, the signatories of the resolution call on the actors involved to closely and critically monitor and reflect in depth on the process of accession to the European Union. Furthermore, journalists are encouraged to transform the experience of countering hybrid threats in the media, gained during the parliamentary elections by verifying the accuracy of information in the public sphere, into good practice in their daily work.