EUSR`s Opening Speech at the Third Annual Media Forum
Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished guests,
It is my pleasure to be here today with you, with an important number of media professionals from the whole region of Central Asia.
The media plays a vital role in shaping informed societies and strengthening democracy. It serves as a bridge between citizens as well as between them and institutions, ensuring transparency, accountability, and the free flow of information. By providing diverse perspectives, news outlets foster dialogue and understanding across communities. In times of crisis, it becomes an essential tool for conveying accurate and timely information. A vibrant and responsible media landscape is therefore indispensable for building trust and promoting good governance.
For you as Central Asian media professionals, this Forum offers a regional space to exchange on your situation and efforts to confront contemporary challenges head on.
AI-driven manipulation, digital threats, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are issues no newsroom on the globe is untouched by. These challenges affect your daily work, profoundly changing the work you are doing. Discussing experiences and ways to approach these challenges is important.
This Forum seeks to strengthen cross-border cooperation among journalists, fact-checkers, and civil society across Central Asia and beyond. Most importantly, it aims to empower you as the region’s media community by developing practical skills, sharing experiences and building a stronger collective voice. To help you in safeguarding trustworthy information in a fast-changing media environment.
When it comes to coverage on EU-Central Asia cooperation, our joint initiatives on infrastructure and physical connectivity tend to dominate the headlines. Yet, our cooperation also includes media cooperation. The EU works with Central Asian partners to build media literacy, boost fact-checking, and promote the ethical use of AI.
All of this aims to help sustainable and resilient information systems, which in turn underpin democracy, trust, and stability.
The EU’s work relies on partnerships with civil society and media organisations across the region. Our cooperation empowers local actors to take ownership and drive solutions in their respective communities, to ensure genuine collaboration and long-term impact.
This aligns with the EU’s overarching strategic goals of promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms, supporting open societies, and building partnerships based on shared values and mutual benefit in Central Asia.
Our broader digital connectivity initiative in Central Asia follows the same logic. Access to reliable information is essential for social inclusion in a 21st century, digitally driven society.
The initiative mitigates the current digital divide while generating positive externalities for the wider economy. Nonetheless, it is essential to recognise that while digital transformation brings opportunities, it also creates new vulnerabilities. For this reason, cybersecurity is included as a focus area in the initiative.
Digital resilience does not, however, only include protection from viruses and hackers. It also has to include resilience to the weaponisation of information.
Disinformation and influencing attempts do not stop at national borders and neither can the counter measures.
Strengthening networks among Central Asian media communities is essential to mitigating these threats and the EU remains committed to supporting cross-border cooperation, knowledge exchange, and community-building.
Concrete examples of this commitment are the EU-funded projects REVIVE and CARAVAN, implemented together with Internews since 2022.
But the value of any project ultimately depends on the people who engage with it. Central Asia is home to talented and committed media professionals who are capable of great things. To every journalist in this room: you are in a unique position to shape the future of your countries. The impact of your work is immense.
You operate in an environment that is constantly evolving, and unfortunately not only positively.
Journalists today face a wide range of challenges – external pressure on their work, sophisticated manipulation campaigns, online discrediting, and coordinated harassment.
In face of these challenges, providing unbiased reporting for the public requires courage and strong professional ethics. For that, I applaud and thank you.
Journalists’ work is vital for ensuring that citizens remain informed. In turn, informed communities are the bedrock of peaceful and progressive societies. We are, and will remain, by your side as a reliable, long-term partner for media freedom and digital resilience in Central Asia.
I am confident that this Forum will contribute to strengthening regional cooperation and collective efforts to support a safer, digital information space.
I encourage all of you to engage actively, to exchange ideas, and to make full use of the networking opportunities throughout the day. Together you are stronger than alone.
I wish you all a productive and thought-provoking Forum.
Thank you.