Today the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ),
the European group of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) voiced
its opposition to the government’s plans to integrate journalists working in
public broadcasting and National News Agencies in the payroll of civil
servants.
“Working in public media does not mean that you are a
civil servant, quite the contrary: journalists are accountable to the public
and they need to be independent politically and economically from the
government,” said the EFJ President Arne König. “It would be a very bad signal
for journalists’ credibility and independence if a member country of the European
Union would merge journalists with the rest of the public sector.”
The Greek
government, under the pressure of international and European monetary
institutions, wants to integrate all employees of the public media in a single
unified payroll for all the public sector. This means that journalists employed
by ERT (Greek Public Television) and ANA-MPA (Athens – Macedonian News Agency)
would be considered as civil servants, but also that they would not be covered
anymore by their current collective agreement .
“We feel that
our ‘classification’ to the status of a civil servant is detrimental to our
role as independent journalists,” say the EFJ affiliates, the Journalists Union
of Athens Daily Newspaper and the Journalists’ Union of Macedonia and Thrace
Daily Newspaper. “Journalists working in public media need to have the
guarantee of their freedom to report independently in a time when the Greek
audience requires honest, level-headed and unbiased information. This freedom
is also ensured through the current National Collective Agreement for
journalists.”
The EFJ asks
Elias Modsialos, the Government’s Spokesman and State Minister responsible for Press Matters,
to take these views into account and it reminds Greek authorities that the
independence of public broadcasting is recognised by the Council of Europe and
by binding EU case-law.
For more information, please contact EFJ on + 32 2 235 22 00
The EFJ represents more than 260.000 members in over 30 countries