The European People’s Party,

Building on the EPP Political Assembly Resolution of December 2025 on protecting women in politics and public life;

Reaffirming that media freedom, pluralism and journalists’ safety are foundations of European democracy and the rule of law;

Deeply concerned by the 2026 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, which documents a widespread decline across Europe and Central Asia, erosion of safeguards, weaponisation of legislation against media and inconsistent implementation of the European Media Freedom Act;

Alarmed that, according to the RSF assessment, press freedom is deteriorating across the Western Balkans,while political pressure, media ownership, abusive lawsuits, surveillance, restricted access to information and threats against journalists persist in EU Member States;

Recognising that women journalists face both threats and gender-specific violence, including threats of rape and murder, stalking, doxxing, misogynistic disinformation, harassment and AI-generated deepfakes;

Alarmed that 75% of women journalists surveyed by UNESCO and the International Center for Journalistsexperienced online violence; and that UNESCO’s 2025 World Trends Report recorded 24 women journalists killed between 2022 and 2025 and found that 41% had endured verbal or physical sexual harassment;

Expressing concern over the death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna in Russian custody following torture and ill-treatment, and the imprisonment of Georgian journalist and 2025 Sakharov Prize laureate Mzia Amaglobeli;

Paying tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia, assassinated in Malta on 16 October 2017 after exposing corruption, money laundering and organised crime. Her murder was an attack on European democracy. Almost nine years after her assassination, full accountability for her murder remains unresolved. The EPP calls on the Maltese authorities to pursue every lawful avenue to establish the truth, hold accountable all those responsible for commissioning, enabling or concealing the crime, and implement the independent public inquiry’s recommendations;

The EPP Political Assembly:

1. Condemns all physical, psychological, sexual, legal, economic and digital violence against women journalists and media professionals;
2. Calls on national authorities to investigate every threat and provide police protection, legal assistance, cybersecurity support and protection for families where necessary;
3. Calls for training for police, prosecutors and judges on gender-based online violence, stalking, doxxing, deepfake abuse and links between online threats and physical attacks;
4. Calls on online platforms to fully comply with their obligations under the Digital Services Act effectively and act rapidly against threats, coordinated harassment and sexual deepfakes, while preserving evidence for prosecution;
5. Condemns strategic lawsuits, politically motivated investigations, surveillance, restrictive legislation and discriminatory public advertising used to silence independent media;
6. Calls on political leaders to refrain from stigmatising journalists and publicly condemn gendered insults, sexualised attacks and threats, including against journalists with whom they disagree;
7. Calls on EU Member States to fully comply with and enforce the European Media Freedom Act and EU Anti-SLAPP rules, and on candidate countries to align with these standards, while guaranteeing the independence of public-service media and media regulators and the protection of journalistic sources;
8. Calls on media organisations to ensure safe workplaces, confidential mechanisms against harassment, equal pay, fair contracts and equal access to editorial leadership;
9. Calls on the European Commission to include a gender-sensitive assessment of journalists’ safety in its annual Rule of Law Report and make progress on media freedom a measurable condition in EU enlargement;
10. Commits EPP member parties to protecting women journalists, defending independent media and pursuing accountability for threats, violence and intimidation.

There can be no genuine democracy when journalists are threatened into silence, and no true media freedom when women pay a higher price for speaking the truth. An attack on a woman journalist is an attack on democracy itself.