Fact Sheet: More than 5,000 press freedom violations in Europe since 2020

16.04.2025

Since the beginning of the MFRR project in 2020, the Mapping Media Freedom (MapMF) database has documented a steady rise of press freedom violations in EU Member States and Candidate Countries. In five years of monitoring, the project has documented over 5,000 attacks that have affected over 8,500 media-related persons and entities.

This fact-sheet summarises the most important data drawn from the past five years of monitoring the press freedom situation in Europe, including trends and emerging issues. Digital attacks have become especially prominent over the past couple of years, including novel types of threats such as spoofing, deep fakes, hacking or DDoS attacks. Verbal harassment – especially online – remains the most common type of attack followed by legal and physical attacks. Private individuals are by far the most common perpetrators behind press freedom attacks, followed by the police and government officials. Following the digital space, demonstrations are the second most common scene of press freedom violations – and the most dangerous workplace for journalists in Europe.

Looking ahead, there has been a concerning increase of attacks in the context of elections and reporting on environmental issues. The MapMF has also started to track Foreign Agent Laws as an emerging trend that is foreshadowing an increasingly hostile environment for press freedom in the future.