A billion-euro charm offensive blurs the line between public information and political theater.

Over the past decade, nearly €1 billion in EU taxpayer money has been poured into media campaigns designed to portray the European Union in a favorable light, according to a detailed investigation by conservative think tank MCC Brussels.

The analysis lays bare a sprawling architecture of publicly funded messaging that, rather than safeguarding media plurality, appears crafted to systematically advance EU political objectives and stifle dissenting perspectives.

Read the report here.

According to the report’s author Thomas Fazi, “this report blows the lid open on Brussels’s media machine: how the EU channels vast sums of public money into media projects across Europe and beyond, to the tune of nearly € 80 million per year (at least).” He further observes that “this is likely a conservative estimate,” as many indirect or subcontracted payments are not publicly disclosed.

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