10/02/2026
Multifaceted lobby and media freedom.
"Founded in Lyon in the early 1990s, Euronews set out to speak to viewers in Paris, Rome and Athens, offering a continental voice in a media landscape dominated by American broadcasters. By 2011, it operated more than 30 offices worldwide, with a footprint stretching from Washington and Beijing to the Middle East and Africa. Fifteen years later, that global ambition has slipped from its grasp.
An investigation by Euractiv found that even as it continues to receive millions of euros in EU support, Euronews has rebalanced its business model to become increasingly reliant on politically connected investors, lobbyists and commercial partnerships with entities linked to illiberal states. Financial records and interviews with 14 current and former employees depict a financially strained organisation deepening ties with strongman-led governments from Serbia to Azerbaijan.
Internal sources suggest that Euronews’ engagement with authoritarian regimes has become a pillar of its new commercial strategy, with the creation of subsidiaries in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan in the wake of commercial agreements with state authorities.
While the new business has helped improve the broadcaster’s bottom line, the strategy has also raised questions inside its newsroom about whether management has sacrificed Euronews’ editorial integrity.
“Euronews’ long-standing editorial independence seems to be eroding,” a group of 48 employees wrote in an anonymous letter in June to Euronews Chairman Pedro Vargas David, seen by Euractiv. “We have repeatedly faced interference in our work, which has led to self-censorship and delays in coverage. This not only compromises our journalistic standards but also undermines our credibility.”
The blurred lines between Euronews’ journalistic mission and commercial ambitions were on display in the front row at the Enlargement Summit on 4 November.
Claus Strunz, a former top editor at Germany’s Bild newspaper who took on the dual role of Euronews chief executive and editorial director last year, sat near Mário David – a former Portuguese MEP, confidant of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and father of Pedro Vargas David, the broadcaster’s chairman and principal investor.
The younger David built his career in startup financing before taking part in one of Hungary’s most consequential telecom deals – the takeover of Vodafone Hungary, widely viewed by analysts as part of Orbán’s broader effort to consolidate influence over domestic media. Not long after, David’s firm Alpac Capital moved into Portuguese media assets and, in 2022, acquired Euronews with the support of an Orbán associate.
When the deal was announced, David portrayed the Euronews investment not just as a financial transaction, but as his democratic duty in the service of Europe.
Precise data on how much public money the broadcaster received in its first 18 years is not publicly available, but even relying on conservative estimates, the EU’s total outlay on Euronews since its inception would make the network by far the most-subsidised media organisation in the bloc’s history. Over the past 15 years alone, the EU executive has committed more than €350 million to supporting Euronews.
And yet, for most of Euronews’ existence, financial records show, profitability was as elusive as viewership.
It has recorded losses of €180 million since its inception. Last year, its total debt reached €103.5 million, including €19 million in unpaid invoices, internal sources confirmed to Euractiv.
Euronews’ engagement with illiberal states began long before its acquisition by Alpac Capital, internal sources said. Since the 2010s, shareholders have included state-linked broadcasters from Russia, Turkey and Morocco. The decisive turning point came in 2015, when Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris took majority control, joined by NBC News, which held a minority stake. For the first time, the network was under private control.
From that moment on, the boundary between private ownership, political proximity and editorial strategy grew increasingly difficult to distinguish, current and former employees recall.
While Euronews had long provided services to the EU in return for subsidies, it could always argue that it was doing so in the service of the “European project.” Promoting the channel’s new benefactors, a group that includes Azerbaijan’s authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev, who inherited control of the former Soviet republic from his father in 2003, is more challenging.
Whatever the Turkic connection, there’s no question that Euronews’ links to the region have been lucrative. In 2024, annual contracts with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for “sponsored magazines” – paid television clips – contributed roughly €18 million to annual revenue, internal sources confirmed to Euractiv. Azerbaijan counted among Euronews’ top 10 advertising clients that year, along with the Hungarian group New Land Media and the Moroccan National Office for Tourism, the same sources confirmed.
Euractiv reviewed 120 items published on euronews.com between 1 August 2024 and 31 August 2025 under the categories “Azerbaijan,” “Baku” and “Aliyev”. More than one-third of content tagged “Azerbaijan” over the past year consisted of paid advertising or sponsored partnerships or opinions from ruling party members.
The question is how far these financial and personal arrangements impact editorial choices.
Euronews’ interviews with Aliyev offer some clues. When Aliyev won a fifth presidential term in early 2024 with 92% of the vote in an election the OSCE said was marked by repression and irregularities, Euronews dispatched a reporter to Azerbaijan and produced a broadcast segment highlighting Aliyev’s popularity, but made no reference to widespread concerns over the integrity of the election.
Aliyev has been interviewed no less than four times by Euronews since 2023. In one of them, he dismissed The Washington Post and The New York Times as “fake news,” a claim that went unchallenged by the Euronews moderator. Mocking their coverage, Aliyev added: “Can you imagine? They published dozens of articles calling me a dictator.”
The concerns over Euronews’ editorial independence came into focus at the company’s Enlargement Summit, during an onstage interview with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić – a leader Brussels has long viewed warily over democratic backsliding and his warm ties to Moscow.
The moderator opened by asking whether Vučić still considered himself a “devout Europeanist”. Absent were questions about nationwide protests, his branding of an EU lawmaker as “scum,” or frictions with Europe’s centre-right.
Vučić instead used the session to tease EU officials over their jargon, while name-dropping his “friend” Mário David, father of Euronews owner Pedro Vargas David.
Mário, a longtime supporter of Serbia in the EU, has known Vučić for years through the European People’s Party, a Vučić spokesperson said. Pedro Vargas David, sitting in the front row, laughed along.
Euronews’ ties with Serbia deepened in 2021 through a Belgrade franchise created with predominantly state-owned Telekom Srbija, promoted at the time as a bridge between Western editorial standards and local journalism. Critics say the promise has proved difficult to sustain.
Former employees trace a turning point to mid-2023, when TV presenter Minja Miletić became regional director. “We were told to remember who is paying us,” one former producer recalled.
Tensions escalated in April 2025 amid a wave of popular protests in Serbia against the government. Nearly 80 Euronews employees signed an open letter condemning their management’s support for the state broadcaster RTS, which critics attacked for backing the regime. Several Euronews signatories were later dismissed – a move media watchdogs described as retaliation.
The dispute comes as media freedom remains a central issue in Serbia’s EU accession bid. During a recent visit to Belgrade, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reminded Vučić that progress on the matter is essential. Serbia now ranks 96th in the World Press Freedom Index, down from 59th a decade ago.
Inside the Belgrade newsroom, some journalists once assumed Euronews’ headquarters would intervene if political pressure mounted.
“We expected there would be someone we could turn to,” one senior reporter said. “If that failed, they would revoke the license.” No such intervention came.
“The EU cannot stand behind what is happening with Euronews Serbia,” said Irina Milutinović of Belgrade’s Institute of European Studies. “It is a collapse of the brand – and a test for Brussels.”
Worries about Euronews’ connections to political figures such as Orbán, Vučić and Aliyev are not confined to lawmakers and media observers. According to several people inside the European Commission, similar unease is shared within the EU executive.
A senior official involved in funding negotiations during the previous Commission mandate said the shift from five-year grants to shorter, project-based contracts reflected not only budgetary pressures but also sensitivities surrounding the broadcaster’s ownership structure.
Whatever qualms the Commission may have had about Euronews’ owners’ ties to Orbán, however, didn’t prevent the executive from granting it a contract for its Hungarian activities in 2025.
In a statement, a Commission spokesperson said the institution remained “committed to supporting the news media sector and providing citizens with independent, multilingual information on EU affairs,” adding that annual content analyses ensure EU-funded material complies with professional standards.
Documents obtained by Euractiv through freedom-of-information requests suggest, however, that the Commission’s oversight is narrowly defined. Reviews focus on the output of programmes financed under EU contracts. Ownership structures or the editorial independence of the broadcaster as a whole is are outside the Commission’s scope.
Multiple reviews have questioned the strategy behind the funding. The European Court of Auditors flagged weak oversight, while an internal Commission finance report raised doubts about the efficiency of Euronews’ campaigns, noting that the channel’s audience – “predominantly male, well-educated managers in their late forties and frequent travellers” – is hardly representative of the European public.
Amid mounting political scrutiny, Commission funding has gradually shrunk. EU support now accounts for less than 15% of Euronews’ revenue, down from between 20% and 32% between 2022 and 2024, according to internal sources.
Alpac executives see the shift away from the EU as a sign of financial health – and a key argument in their effort to cash out of the investment. Rumours of a possible sale recently began to swirl after David acknowledged to colleagues that, four years on, he was approaching the end of his investment horizon."
