The European Newsroom was officially launched on Tuesday night at the offices of Belga News Agency in the presence of European Commission Vice-Presidents Vera Jourova and Margaritis Schinas.
The newsroom is the result of collaboration between 18 European news agencies. Coordinated by the German DPA press agency and located at Belga News Agency on the Arduinkaai in Brussels, it hosts correspondents from the participating press agencies, who enjoy services such as a shared agenda and a joint interview room.
Next to their regular work for their agencies, correspondents jointly produce news digests on European affairs, feeding one another's news wires and dissemination channels.
This enables them to offer a "comprehensive, multilingual and pan-European perspective on EU affairs to audiences across the continent, under high professional standards," the European Commission reported in a press release on Tuesday.
The newsroom also provides training, with a view to equipping correspondents to counteract growing disinformation, according to the Commission, which will cover the operating costs of the project until the end of 2023.
Editorial work at the European Newsroom actually started at the beginning of July, ahead of the official launch.
In addition to DPA and Belga, participating agencies include AFP (France), Agerpres (Romania), ANSA (Italy), APA (Austria), BTA (Bulgaria), Europapress and EFE (Spain) and HINA (Croatia).
STA (Slovenia), TASR (Slovakia), ATA (Albania), FENA (Bosnia and Herzegovina), MIA (North Macedonia) and Tanjug (Serbia) are also founding members.
Poland's PAP joined later and receives no EU funding, while the newsroom recently opened its doors to Ukrinform, the Ukrainian press agency, which will not pay fees to access its services. Other agencies may join the project at a later stage.
“The idea behind the project is to bring agencies large and small together and bring the diversity of Europe to our newsroom,” Belga News Agency quotes DPA CEO Peter Kropsch as saying.
