Photo: Martin Divisek / EPA-EFE
The European Union will disburse €5.5 million to allow Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to continue its operations, the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said after a meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, the Associated Press has reported.
According to Kallas, the bloc’s foreign ministers had agreed to “short-term, emergency” relief designed to maintain a “safety net” for independent journalism and “support the vital work of Radio Free Europe”. The money will be distributed to the European Endowment for Democracy, a European NGO, which will deliver the funds to RFE/RL.
Kallas added that the EU would not be able to fill the organisation’s funding gap around the world, but that it can help the broadcaster to “work and function in those countries that are in our neighbourhood and that are very much dependent on news coming from outside”.
It is unknown whether Brussels will be willing to provide further emergency support to RFE/RL, whose immediate and long-term future has been in question since mid-March when US President Donald Trump’s administration terminated a federal grant that had funded the broadcaster for nearly 80 years.
Based on Congress’s original funding allocation for the 2025 fiscal year, RFE/RL, based in Prague, needs about $153 million (€134.84 million) annually to cover its operational costs. In her comments in Brussels, Kallas said she hoped the 27 EU member states would provide more funds to help RFE/RL in the longer term.
RFE/RL, Voice of America and other independent broadcast organisations such as Radio Free Asia have engaged in ongoing legal battles since the Trump-run US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) cut the broadcasters’ long-standing federal funding in mid-March.
Since then, RFE/RL has continued its work while furloughing dozens of employees and cancelling freelance contracts. RFE/RL previously had a weekly audience of nearly 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine and the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, though it says its funding issues have shrunk its reach.
Though RFE/RL had received its allocated funds for April, it was still awaiting the results of a lawsuit seeking to secure all the funds allocated by Congress for its operations this fiscal year, according to a 13 May press release.