Source: Media Freedom Rapid Response

The annual Monitoring Report takes stock of the press freedom situation in 36 European Member States and candidate countries between January to December 2025. During the reporting period, the Mapping Media Freedom database documented 1481 press freedom violations, affecting 2,377 media-related persons or entities.

The report is structured in four parts:

• A general overview highlighting major issues and trends of the press freedom situation in EU Member States and candidate countries, including quantitative analysis and charts with statistics.
• Three thematic chapters on prominent topics within press freedom in Europe: impunity of crimes against journalists, foreign agent laws and narratives, and Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).
• Analysis of the press freedom situation in five EU Member States: Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, and Spain.
• Analysis of the press freedom situation in six EU candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Türkiye, Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Italy

The thematic chapter on Italy highlights the pressures that continue to stifle media freedom in the country. I 2025, MapMF documented 118 incidents targeting 200 media-related persons and entities. Verbal attacks, such as insults, harassment and smear campaigns, were the most frequent type of violation recorded, accounting for half of the cases.

At the same time, in 2025 Italy experienced the EU’s worst spyware scandal, involving Fanpage editor-in-chief Francesco Cancellato and journalist Ciro Pellegrino. This sparked serious concerns about the worrying use of surveillance tactics, possibly by state actors, to control investigative journalists.

Legal pressure remained a major threat to media freedom, accounting for 22% of all documented cases. In line with the trend of previous years, defamation lawsuits, often initiated by high-profile politicians, remained the most common form of legal intimidation aimed at silencing critical voices.

Finally, the report underlines persisting challenges to editorial independence, particularly regarding the public service media RAI, which continues to be exposed to undue interference from the government.

Overall, the report confirms a dire picture of the media freedom situation in Italy, with a wide range of pressures hampering the work of journalists and media professionals.

This report has been compiled by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), and the International Press Institute (IPI) as part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) project. The project is co-financed by the European Commission.

Download it here.