The channel maintains it was illegitimately pulled off the air in the EU over baseless accusations of propaganda
The European Court of Justice is in the process of hearing RT France’s case against the Council of the European Union after it suspended the channel’s broadcasts. Both sides are making their cases before 15 judges in Luxembourg on Friday.
The EU is being represented by the Legal Department of the EU Council and several member countries have expressed their desire to participate in the trial, including France, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
RT France, meanwhile, is being represented by French lawyer Emmanuel Piwnica, who used to be the president of the Bar Association at the Council of State and the Court of the Cessation of France and has over 40 years of experience representing clients before French high courts, as well as international and foreign courts.
The hearing began with an opening statement by Piwnica. However, shortly after he started making his opening statements, the channel’s president, Xenia Fedorova, reported that Twitter had unexpectedly decided to ban RT France’s Communication service channel on the entire territory of the European Union.
Fedorova blasted Twitter’s decision as a “step closer to total censorship,” noting that the account of the communication service of RT France was “solely dedicated to information on our channel.”
“Apparently they didn’t want to give supporters of our channel the opportunity to spread information about the trial,” Fedorova noted on her Telegram channel.
Either way, the trial continued as Piwnica made the case that RT France was a French company and a media outlet authorized by the French audiovisual regulator ARCOM, which has never sanctioned the channel.
He insisted that the censorship imposed by the EU was illegal under the bloc’s own laws, which do not allow the Council to ban any media, and that the sanctions constituted an attack on pluralism and freedom of expression.
“RT France must be silent, says the Council of the EU, because RT France would be a propaganda tool for the Russian Federation. RT France would not have the right to speak. False, it is not a propaganda tool. The position of the Council is illegal!” Piwnica argued.
He added that the only thing the EU Council really wanted was the complete disappearance of RT France because of “war,” but noted that “even the war does not allow the Council of the EU to act, the legislation does not allow it!”
Piwnica insisted that a conflict between two third states did not allow the Council to free itself from the “legal framework which determines its powers” and that no assessment of RT France’s editorial content has been carried out to justify the censorship and prove the claims of ‘propaganda’.
“It is precisely in times of crisis, of war, that fundamental rights are essential for everyone … I ask you to cancel the decision of the European Union to prohibit the broadcasting of RT France within the European Union,” Piwnica concluded.
Representatives of the EU Council responded by justifying the “exceptional measure” by stating that since RT was funded by a state “whose leader has launched a war against a sovereign state” it was not treated as “ordinary media by a propaganda organ.”
EU Commission representative Daniel Calleja Crespo insisted that the objective of the ban was to “protect the European public order against Russian aggression against Ukraine” and argued that the legal measures taken by the Council were compatible with European law.
Later in the hearing, representatives of the participating EU member states took turns proclaiming support for the Council’s decision, with most of them arguing that RT was “propaganda” and “part of a modern war arsenal” that should not be granted the right to freedom of expression over its support for the war in Ukraine.
At the same time, none of the speakers accusing RT France of propaganda during this hearing have presented any specific examples or evidence of the channel’s alleged transgressions as of yet.
RT France initially filed its appeal on March 8, requesting the EU reverse its March 1 decision to ban the broadcasting of the channel in all member countries. The channel has insisted that the ban was illegal and an example of unfounded censorship by the EU, one which constituted a “serious attack on freedom of speech.”
Meanwhile, the Council of the EU has maintained that all RT channels and RT France in particular are considered to be Russian propaganda weapons used to justify and legitimize Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Council has justified its classification of RT France as ‘propaganda’ by pointing to the fact that the channel is entirely funded by the state, has been banned by other countries – namely the UK – and that it allegedly disseminated propaganda on at least one instance on February 24, 2022.
RT France defended itself by pointing to the fact that its source of funding has been widely known and that it in itself does not constitute a ban as there are countless examples of state-funded media projects that have never been subjected to any sanctions, including France24.
The channel also maintains that it is editorially independent and has never been sanctioned by the French regulator CSA/ARCOM, which is supposed to be the only authority with the legal right to sanction a TV channel.
As for the alleged ‘dissemination of propaganda’ claimed by the EU, RT France’s legal team has provided evidence that the elements of its broadcast, deemed to be ‘propaganda’ by the EU Council, actually represented all points of view and contained the exact same information which was being covered by other media channels who did not face any sanctions or accusations of propaganda.
The channel has insisted that all the sources of information distributed by RT France were always clearly indicated and that the act of relaying the point of view of Russia is not in itself reprehensible and merely represents information provided to the media.
RT France surmises that its mode of funding, and not the content of its broadcast, has been the sole underlying reason for its ban and insists that the Council of the EU has no right to assess or qualify the editorial content of any channel, as that function is specifically and exclusively assigned to national regulators who would otherwise be simply denied their role.
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
