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Hundreds of thousands of people took to the central square in Prague to protest the Czech government's plans to abolish a special license fee that funds public media in the Czech Republic.
The authorities propose to finance the media directly from the budget, but critics of these plans argue that this will allow politicians to put pressure on the media and journalists.
The coalition government, which includes the populist ANO party and two right-wing Eurosceptic parties, insists the changes will not affect editorial independence. At the same time, the authorities are demanding that broadcasters cut costs.
At the end of October, parliament approved the first draft of this proposal. Since then, thousands of Czechs have taken part in the protests.
Sunday's rally was organized by the Million Moments for Democracy association. She said the rally was attended by "approximately 400,000" people. The demonstration was called the largest protest since the creation of the Czech Republic following the collapse of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
“I know that all of our Czech television is a guarantee of truth and objectivity,” 72-year-old pensioner Milana Rudolfova told Reuters. “If we don’t have public television and radio, then unfortunately we won’t be able to trust anything anymore.”
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Prime Minister Andrej Babis stressed that the government does not intend to control public media.
“The funding system is changing, but no one wants to control public media, no one wants to dictate to them what to say and do, no one wants to nationalize them,” Babis told the Czech News Agency.
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Currently, Czech households pay 205 CZK (€8.4) per month to use public television and radio.
“We are doing this because the system is already outdated, and today most of Europe has switched to this model, and other countries are joining it,” the prime minister added.
In the past few years, some European countries, including France and Norway, have abandoned the model of funding public service broadcasters through license fees.
France abolished license fees in 2022 and now its state media, which also runs advertising, is funded by a portion of VAT revenue.
Norway abolished license fees in 2020 and transferred funding for its public broadcaster to the national budget.
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The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, continues to be funded by a license fee of £180 (€210) annually. Some of these funds go to support other British broadcasters. But overall tax collections have fallen steadily and the BBC, which faces regular funding deal renegotiations in 2027, has announced staff and broadcast cuts.
Some participants in the Prague protest were wearing pointed paper caps made from newspapers. This is a reference to the cartoon character Vechernicek, who has been hosting a children's bedtime story program on Czech television for decades.
Critics compare the government's media bill to changes that took place in Hungary under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who tightly controlled state media while in power.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis was appointed in December 2025 and has been repeatedly criticized for the ruling coalition's attacks on Czech media.
“Political attacks on private and state media have become one of the hallmarks of Andrej Babis’s premiership,” Pavol Szalay, director of the Prague bureau of the international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders, said in June.
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