It’s now up to the EU to save Radio Free Europe

To the distress of many, Donald Trump’s senior advisor Kari Lake announced the discontinuation of federal funding for several iconic news outlets administered by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), including Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty (RFE-RL) and Voice of America.

These multi-language broadcasters are not simply remnants of the Cold War, nor are they “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer,” as Lake’s disgraceful announcement puts it. The US-funded news outlets that are being effectively closed down have been key to America’s soft power in the world, especially in unfree countries.

The Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavský, whose government hosts RFE-RL headquarters in Prague, urged EU action to fill the gap left by the Americans. He tweeted: “From Belarus to Iran, from Russia to Afghanistan, RFE and Voice of America are among the few free sources for people living without freedom.”

The case for using European money to save RFE-RL is not built around nostalgia, even though I — like everyone who grew up in Eastern Europe — could come up with examples of how US broadcasting helped pierce through official narratives. And it was not just about countering communism. In the 1990s, RFE-RL represented an important counterweight to Vladimír Mečiar’s propaganda machine in my native Slovakia, just as it does now in Putin’s Russia.

In short, RFE-RL and its 1,700-person staff do vital work reaching millions of readers and listeners in Iran, Afghanistan, as well as Russia and Ukraine. “Donbas Realities” — a project of the network’s Ukrainian service — has done invaluable work documenting Russian depredations on occupied territories, which will matter not only to future historians of the invasion but also for holding Russian criminals accountable.

Lake is eager to wind down operations across USAGM quickly. That puts the ball in the court of Europeans, who do have an interest in keeping RFE-RL going. It is infinitely easier to keep an existing organization running and perhaps restructure it in the future than to build something from scratch. Wait several months and employees will leave their posts, as well as Prague, and RFE-RL will be effectively dead. Acting now can ensure a smooth change of “ownership,” while enabling RFE-RL to continue providing its vital services.

It is not going to be “obscenely expensive,” as Lake put it, either. The organization’s budget is around $140 million (£108 million) — that is less than half of what the Czech Republic spends on its own (admittedly high-quality) public broadcasting. The Czechs should not be the ones underwriting the operations alone — but it should be straightforward for them to build a coalition of the willing, hopefully including the UK, to continue RFE-RL’s operation.

Lipavský was planning to bring up the issue at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday. But even discounting the resistance he’s likely to encounter from Bratislava and Budapest (RFE-RL’s Hungarian service was relaunched in 2020 in response to Viktor Orbán’s entrenchment in power and crackdown on free press), speed is of the essence — not exactly a hallmark of EU institutions.

Of course, given RFE-RL’s and USAGM’s governance, it will be necessary to build a parallel legal structure under European law, led by European governments, which would replicate the organizational structure of RFE-RL, essentially offering every employee to stay in their post under the same conditions.

The good news is that RFE-RL’s purpose-built headquarters, completed in 2009 in Prague’s Hagibor neighborhood, is owned privately and only rented out to the broadcaster. Even if the Trump administration is intent on destroying RFE-RL outright — an idea I would not put beyond people like Lake — the Czechs and their partners have the necessary legal levers to ensure that RFE-RL’s staff can continue their work from the same location.

The damage that the Trump administration has managed to do in such a short period of time to America’s standing in the world, and to the cause of freedom, is extraordinary. Yet, it does not relieve other free nations of their agency. On the contrary, it provides a strong reason for those who have benefitted the most from the US-led international system to act with urgency to preserve its most important achievements for future generations, with or without American leadership.