The European Commission has no information on the infringement of media freedoms in Ukraine, Head of the European Commission's Delegation to Ukraine Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, May 12.
"We have received reports of infringement of freedom of speech in Ukraine, but unfortunately we have no factual examples to track," he said, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine.
The head of commission said that the mass media in Ukraine is monitored by certain economic groups "and in fact, they determine the freedom of speech."
"It a pity that Ukraine has failed to fulfill its obligations over recent years, and public broadcasting wasn’t created. At present we hear that representatives of the previous government have no equal access to the mass media. Public broadcasting could have provided such equal access, if it had been created," he said.
As reported, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), expressed its concerns about recent developments in Ukrainian media towards censorship and called on the authorities and media owners to respect standards of press freedom.
The statement says that "journalists from the major Ukrainian private TV channel 1+1 complained about pressures and censorship after they were denied permission to cover important news that the authorities considered critical on May 6."
"Some TV programs which carried criticism of the government were dropped," reads the document.
Journalists at another Channel, STB, also issued a statement which denounced cases of censorship, the federation said.
