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Who will own the media of tomorrow? Today, across Europe, the news media is increasingly concentrated in the hands of big industrial and financial groups. This situation has repeatedly raised ethical questions within journalism, one of the pillars of our democracy.
As the economist Julia Cagé (member of Voxeurop’s advisory committee) and legal expert Benoît Huet brilliantly pointed out in their recent essay L’Information est un bien public, information is considered a public good. We therefore need to work together to protect it, and to ensure access to it as a fundamental right.
Alongside journalists, readers should have a say in the management of the media they consume. They also have a major role to play in guaranteeing that media’s independence.
Read also:
👉 Voxeurop, a media that belongs to its teams and readers
👉 Our manifesto for a European journalism
For these reasons, on 9 May, in celebration of Europe Day, we launched an unprecedented initiative for a European media company. We called on our readers, and all those who wish to participate in building a stronger European public space, to join our company. We offered them the chance to become shareholders of our European press cooperative company (SCE).
About 60 of them – coming from more than 10 European countries (Belgium, France, Spain, Romania, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, Poland and the Netherlands) – have already joined us.
They are not investing in Voxeurop SCE to make a profit – 100% of our revenues are reinvested to support independent journalism. Nor will they be personally influencing the editorials (none of the shareholders has the right to demand that an article be published, corrected or censored). None of them will have complete control of the company as an individual, since the cooperative principle implies one-person-one-vote, regardless of the amount of invested capital (1).
As shareholders, they will be at the heart of our company. They will participate in decisions by voting at our general meetings. They will take part in a pioneering European venture, joining a network of readers and journalists of 19 nationalities. But most importantly, they will be strengthening and supporting independent journalism.
Join our cause, and invest now as a reader of Voxeurop SCE (2)!
If you have questions, please do send us a message at shareholders@voxeurop.eu. We would be delighted to send you a file containing all the relevant information regarding the fundraising.
Who will own the media of tomorrow? For Voxeurop, the answer is clear. It belongs to its readers and to Europeans who care about a free and independent press.
If you are a tax resident in France, your capital contribution entitles you to a 50% income-tax deduction, thanks to our status as an Entreprise Solidaire de Presse d’information (Non-profit media company).
1. The shareholders, however, are grouped by electoral college based on their category, and an electoral college cannot have more than 50% of electors.
2. In accordance with our statutes, our annual subscribers who have been members for at least 12 months are given priority in this opportunity. For more information, visit our membership programme.
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It is freely available because we believe that the right to free and independent information is essential for democracy. But this right is not guaranteed forever, and independence comes at a cost. We need your support in order to continue publishing independent, multilingual news for all Europeans.
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