The European Union will fund the anti-communist radio station launched by the US during the Cold War.

PASCUAL SERRANO

The European Union agreed on May 20 to provide emergency funding to help keep Radio Free Europe afloat after the U.S. government ended its subsidies to the network.

Last March, the Administration of US President Donald Trump ordered a wide cutout of the United States Agency for Global Media, the institution on which they depended 'Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty' and 'The Voice of America' (Voice of America), the latter participated in the campaign to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán en Guatemala 1954 in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961, the coup d'état against Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic in 1963 and the occupation of that country in 1965. In the XNUMXs it added a television service, as well as special regional programs to influence Cuba, such as Radio Marti and TV Martí.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said EU foreign ministers had agreed on a €5,5 million funding package to "support the vital work of Radio Free Europe." She said she hoped the 27 EU member states would also provide more funds to help Radio Free Europe in the long term.

The "short-term emergency funding" is a "safety net" for independent journalism, he said. Again, that narrative that "independent journalism" is the kind they fund.

Kallas stated that the EU can help the broadcaster "work and operate in those countries in our neighborhood that depend heavily on news from abroad." He thus confirmed that his intention will continue to influence countries outside the European Union.

The corporate offices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are located at Washington and its newspaper headquarters are located in the Czech Republic, which has been leading the EU effort to find funds.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has its main focus on the Cold War and the fight against communism. Funded by the United States government transmitted to countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia y Middle East.

Radio Free Europe broadcast to the countries of the socialist bloc in Europe and Radio Liberty addressed the Soviet UnionRFE was founded as a propaganda source anti-communist in 1949 by the National Committee for a Free Europe. Although the CIA initially provided covert funding to RFE/RL, it ceased direct funding in 1972. The two eventually merged in 1976.

More than pro-democracy, as its propaganda claimed, Radio Liberty was anti-communist, which is why it had no problem with settle in Franco's Spain in 1959, in the Catalan town of Pals, a small town on the Costa Brava, following an agreement between Franco and the US government.

The broadcast content wasn't recorded in Pals; the programming was planned and developed from the Munich headquarters and reviewed in the United States. After this process, the material was sent to Pals. They broadcast in 16 languages. To accomplish this task, some 200 people worked at the facilities. The programs sought to showcase the benefits of capitalism, from politics to culture and consumption. It was an exercise in seduction, and Pals proved to be the perfect vehicle. It combined a convenient geographical location, few forests, and a Mediterranean that served as a screen and helped boost the airwaves. It seems that Franco's Spain was a good host for Radio Free Europe's fight for freedom.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Radio Liberty's headquarters in Pals gradually became less useful until it closed in 2001.

Kallas herself recalled the influence and role the broadcasting network had on her while growing up in Estonia, which was then part of the Soviet Union and was an ideological target of Radio Free Europe.

"Coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain, it was actually from the radio that we got a lot of our information," she said. "So it's been a beacon of democracy, very valuable in this regard," said the Conservative leader. A "beacon of democracy" from Franco's Spain.

With the closure of these stations, as well as the USAID agency, the Trump administration was addressing the need to cut public spending and abandoning its policy of global interference. Unlike USAID, which also had a humanitarian aid component, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was a purely propaganda outlet that broadcast in 27 languages ​​in 23 countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Now the European Union is taking up the baton of this media interference. This is curious because the European Commission frequently reports electoral interference in its member countries. Recall that the Romanian presidential elections were even annulled due to the "influence of TikTok." In France, a so-called Parliamentary Delegation for Intelligence (DPR) stated that There were three threats of foreign interference -classic, modern and hybrid- from Russia, China, Türkiye and Iran.

And the European Commission itself created the project in 2015 EuvsDisinfo precisely to neutralize interference by foreign agents. In this same legislature, 2024-2029, MEPs created a new special commission on the European Shield for Democracy, tasked with proposing measures to strengthen the EU's democratic resilience in the face of foreign interference and disinformation.

However, funding a radio station with the sole purpose of influencing the population of non-EU countries isn't considered interference, but rather "a beacon of democracy." In other words, it's like when they fought against communism or when coups d'état took place in Latin America.

Radio Free Europe had two projects that clearly intervened in the Ukrainian conflict region: 'Crimea Realities' and 'Donbas Realities'. Obviously, with the aim of political interference. However,The paradox is that the European Commission banned Russian media, especially Russia Today television and the Sputnik agency, which it accused of being Kremlin political propaganda, and now announces the funding of a radio network whose sole objective is to influence Eastern countries, just as it did during the Cold War, through its anti-communist content.

We all know that neither Russia nor Putin are communists, but it seems that in the European Union they are still anti-communist, just in case.

Pascual Serrano He is a journalist and writer. His last book is "Forbidden to doubt. The ten weeks in which Ukraine changed the world”