Far-Right Attacks on Public Broadcasting Threatens Artistic Freedom, European Screenwriters Warn

The Federation of Screenwriters in Europe issued a report on Wednesday documenting how attacks by the far-right on European public broadcasters are threatening free speech and artistic expression.

The umbrella group, which represents 31 screenwriters guilds and unions from 25 countries, says these attempts to defund or exert political control over public broadcasters has a direct impact on creatives, who are under pressure to self-censor if they want to get work.

In a 61-page report, entitled “Right to Write,” the Federation highlighted cases from across Europe where right-wing parties in power have carried out a “playbook” to systematically “delegitimize journalism, intimidates critics, concentrate media influence, weaponize regulators, politicize cultural bodies, and either defund or capture those public institutions that shape shared reality.”

The report cites efforts by right-wing governments in power in countries including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, to exert political control over national media by withdrawing funding, threatening to challenge or revoke broadcasting licenses and by installing loyalists in key positions of power at public broadcasters.

“Most far-right and populist parties in Europe are united in their desire to emasculate or close down public service broadcasting, or, if in power, to subordinate it to their agendas,” writes former Federation President Carolin Otto, in the forward to the report.

Many of the far-right parties across Europe, writes Otto, are trying to present and propagate a “nationalist fantasy” of “a past that never existed, of faith, family and fatherland” and are ready “to censor those stories that do not fit this frozen mythology, this static and idealized vision of the past.” Their attempts to intimate or influence public channels and funding bodies, she argues, is “an assault” on the freedom of artistic expression. Already in many cases, she notes, systems have been put in place to “limit the subjects and topics that can be addressed by writers” seeking public support, “leading to wide-spread self-censorship.”

“This is more of a warning, that we in Europe need to be very alarmed,” says Helen Perquy of Jonnydepony, the Belgian production company behind sci-fi dystopian series Arcadia. “We all see what is happening in the U.S., we never thought that a democracy like the U.S. could become what it is now.”

Already, says Perquy, European broadcasters are becoming more cautious and conservative in their commissioning, dialing back efforts to promote diversity on screen or storytelling from marginalized groups.

“I’ve been saying, the old white man is back. It’s a joke, but it’s also true,” she says.

European public broadcasters, Perquy argues, need to be a counterbalance to bottom-line commercial networks and streamers, to be “bold, diverse and let many voices in.”

Public broadcasters are the main source of funding for TV fiction production in Europe, accounting for 55 percent of fiction series commissions in 2023, compared to 31 percent for commercial broadcasters and 14 percent for global streamers. In 2023, the last year for which figures are available, public broadcasters spend around € 7.2 billion ($8.3 billion) on original European content, excluding news and sports rights. State subsidies and government tax incentives are also a primary source of film funding, with the Federation estimating that direct public funding of films accounted for 27 percent of overall production costs for theatrical life-action features in 2022, with a further 20 percent coming from tax and other incentives.

Attacks on public broadcasters proposed by far-right parties, writes Otto, is undermining “a central pillar of European audiovisual commissioning and production funding.” European broadcasters, “must be free of politically motivated interference in its work, especially when it broadcasts material critical of government or comments on problematic aspects of contemporary life.”

Material “critical of government” commenting on “problematic aspects of contemporary life” would seem to describe a good portion of the line-up at Series Mania this year. The selection Belgium series The Best Immigrant, which imagines a dystopian future following the election of a far-right, anti-migrant party in Flanders; SVT’s legal drama The Burden of Justice, about the corrupting influence of money on the Swedish justice system; and Spanish period drama Anatomy of a Moment, which traces the story of the attempted 1981 coup d’etat that almost pulled the country back into Fascism.

The 2026 Series Mania festival runs through March 27.