The rise of far-right movements across Europe is threatening the freedom of artistic expression, according to a report by the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe published today (March 25) during Series Mania.
The report described a recognisable far-right “playbook” that delegitimises journalism with accusations of “fake news”, intimidates and seeks to discredit critics, concentrates media influence, weaponises regulators, politicises cultural bodies, and either defunds or captures public service media.
Called Right To Write: Screenwriters and the Growing Threats to Freedom of Artistic Expression in Europe, the report said far-right parties are in government, alone or in coalition, in seven EU member states: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden.
In many other countries, there is a realistic prospect they could be in government in the near future, including in Austria, France, Germany, Portugal and Romania, it suggested.
For screenwriters, the report said the most immediate risk is financial and structural: the direct attack on public service broadcasting by far-right parties undermines a central pillar of European commissioning and production funding.
Alongside this, the report said far-right parties seek to champion an ideological programme of restoration — a cultural policy framed around an idealised past, moral policing, and a suspicion of contemporary diversity — creating pressure for conformity in what stories are developed, financed, and broadcast.
Even where formal censorship is avoided, it said the effect can be the same. “Anecdotally, screenwriters already describe a chilling climate in which ‘controversial’ themes are pre-emptively avoided, and self-censorship is becoming an informal rule,” the report warned.
It said many broadcasters and production companies are adapting their production and development portfolios in response to the shifting political landscape. “Their risk management strategies see them moving away from stories which might attract the opprobrium of increasingly powerful far-right actors.”
The report posited that individual creators, including screenwriters, are adjusting their approach in response. ”Self-evidently, screenwriters pitch projects to those they think will be interested. Realising that romantic comedies, escapism and historical dramas, that demonstrate the innate capacity of their compatriots to defeat foreign invaders, are now the required genres, writers may decide to put their immigrant or LGBTQ stories in the bottom drawer.”
The report also said that far-right hostility to the EU’s regulatory frameworks, combined with the hostility of Donald Trump’s US administration to regulation, which it claims impinges on US companies, “raises the prospect that the legislative and policy underpinning of Europe’s audiovisual ecosystem could be weakened, with lasting consequences for creative livelihoods”.
The Right to Write report was written by David Kavanagh and Carolin Otto for the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe.
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