Statutes of the European Newsroom

1. Purpose and Function

News agencies are the main sources of information for the media. They provide news that have been processed according to transparent quality standards and thus act as joint editorial offices for their customers. The European Newsroom of News Agencies (subsequently called “European Newsroom”) is a facility for news agencies in Brussels. It is the purpose of this facility to improve the fact checked, professional news-flow according to the principles of quality journalism between the central EU institutions and the member states as well as the accession candidates to the EU.

News agencies committed to the principles of quality journalism perform their journalistic tasks in the European Newsroom based on facts, impartially and independent of actions and influences from political parties, ideological groups, economic and financial players maintaining at the same time their editorial independence. The European Newsroom is completely free from third-party influences that could have an impact on the journalistic work of the participating agencies. The same applies to the participating agencies themselves.

The European Newsroom supplies the participating news agencies with premises, workspaces and technical infrastructure (subsequently called “infrastructure”) which enable them to carry out their journalistic work. Workshops on new techniques in journalism (fact checking, podcasting, etc.) will be offered in the European Newsroom.

Apart from providing offices, access to news and further learning, the European Newsroom also aims to improve communication between the participating agencies, in order to continuously enhance the quality of journalism and adherence to common values such as verification, accuracy and transparency. The legal entity in this cooperation is dpa.

2. Participating News Agencies

News agencies wanting to participate in the European Newsroom have to meet the following criteria:

  1. The news agencies have to operate a general news service. This must include at least the following departments: politics, business and panorama/miscellaneous.
  2. The news agencies guarantee that their staff working in the newsroom are independent from third-party influences, and this independence must actually be lived and be discernible in the agencies’ journalistic output.  The journalists will have to stick to the values of the European Newsroom, such as verification, accuracy and transparency, hence ensuring the output is of the best journalism quality. In exceptional cases further steps will be taken where the agencies of the steering committee – or experts commissioned by them – shall examine the independence, depending on the individual audit.
  3. The news agencies must have their registered offices in an EU member state or in a country being an official or potential accession candidate to the EU (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey) or Switzerland or Norway.

3. Editorial Independence

The European Newsroom shall be independent of any instruction, pressure or request from any EU Institution, any EU Member State or any other State or Institution in all matters concerning the editorial content that is produced in the European Newsroom.

    4. Editorial Standards

    The European Newsroom acts according to the rules negotiated between the International Press Association (API) and the European institutions.