Not very often do we see the European Union play the role of the Fairy Godmother to advance press freedom in a country where medias need all the help they can get to keep pushing steadily the limits of freedom further out. In one of these rare occasions, I sat down last week with the EU ambassador to Morocco, Enoko Landaburu, and Delia Mucica, President of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on the Media and New Communication Services, at the opening ceremony in Rabat of a seminar gathering representatives of civil society, journalists and media professionals.
Organised as a complement to a national dialogue "Media and Society" bringing together various actors, in particular the IFJ local affiliate, the Syndicat nationale de la presse marocaine, this EU-Maroc seminar for press freedom set out to widen the debate by giving an insight into European standards and practices as benchmarks to strengthen press freedom and quality journalism.
The two-day debates centred around four workshops led by French, Belgian and Moroccan academics and media professionals on the press code, ethics, justice and media, and access to information, and ended with recommendations which, we are told, will feed the dialogue on human rights between the EU and Morocco.
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