The Czech initiative to preserve Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has already won the backing of 12 countries, European Affairs Minister Martin Dvorak wrote on social media yesterday, as Finland and Denmark have recently joined the initiative.
The Prague-based radio had a funding agreement with the United States, and the US Congress had already promised money to the station to keep it running until the end of the fiscal year. However, the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) announced on 15 March that it was cancelling the agreement and refusing to release the allocated funds.
Following the announcement, Dvorak (STAN) approached other European ministers with an initiative to support the radio station, and also raised it at the EU General Affairs Council. “There are also a number of discussions taking place at various places and levels. It looks promising,” he said yesterday.
RFE/RL has sued USAGM over the funding termination. A hearing was held Monday in a federal court in the U.S. District of Columbia over RFE/RL’s request to release $7.5 million. The US Congress allocated the money for the station’s operations in March, but USAGM refused to release the funds. Shortly before the start of the hearing, USAGM announced that it would take immediate steps to release the amount, equivalent to the radio’s operating costs for two weeks. RFE/RL is also asking the court to release about $77 million more that Congress had allocated for the station’s operations through the end of the fiscal year.
Billionaire presidential adviser Elon Musk, a central figure in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, who is leading attempts to drastically cut the operations of the federal government, has called for the shutdown of RFE/RL as well as the Voice of America radio station. According to the Financial Times, Musk described RFE/RL as “radical left-wing lunatics who talk to themselves while throwing away a billion dollars a year of US taxpayers’ money.”
Radio Free Europe began regular service in 1951, and Radio Liberty has been operating since 1953. They were created at the initiative of the USA with the participation of exiled politicians and journalists from Czechoslovakia and Poland, and began broadcasting in Czech from their original headquarters in Munich. Gradually, broadcasts in other languages were added. Since their inception, the stations have aimed to promote democratic values and human rights by reporting in countries where free media do not operate or are even banned. RFE/RL reports that nearly 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, currently follow the broadcasts every week.
