Practicing What You Preach - Development of Media Freedom and Plurality Following Accession to the European Union: A comparative analysis of pre- and post-accession Europeanization

Abstract: This essay poses the question: To what extent does accession to the European Union lead to an improvement of media freedom and media plurality, and to what extent does a Europeanization of media occur? The essay focuses on the developments of the Central and Eastern European countries and focuses on Croatia and Czechia as the analyzed cases. In answering this question, the various theories of Europeanization (Europeanization, EU-ization, de-Europeanization, and de-EU-ization) are utilized through a co-variational analysis. The analysis is broken up into two stages for each respective country. The first, the pre-accession phase, observes developments of the media systems in the respective countries prior to EU-accession for them both. The second, the post-accession stage, observes developments of to the media systems after joining the EU. The findings point to a much greater development in the pre-accession phase in comparison to the post-accession phase, and a relative stagnation of development post-accession, signaling that Europeanization, as an umbrella term for the sub-theories, is stronger prior to an EU-accession. Moreover, the argument is made that the developments in both phases are a result of EU-ization and a relative de-EU-ization, respectively, namely due to discrepancies in logic between the pre-accession acquis communautaire and the post-accession EU competences.