The organisation has just published a report called “Right to Write: Screenwriters and the Growing Threats to Freedom of Artistic Expression in Europe”

Representing nearly 10,000 screenwriters across 31 guilds in 27 countries, the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE) has produced a report that should be read by anyone and everyone involved in the audiovisual chain: producers, broadcasters, film funds, journalists, writers and, of course, creators. The title, “Right to Write: Screenwriters and the Growing Threats to Freedom of Artistic Expression in Europe”, clearly sets the tone, and its findings are as precise as they are alarming.

It doesn't come as a surprise. But reading a detailed, well-mapped-out anatomy of how far-right movements across Europe are systematically working to crush freedom of artistic expression is, or at least should be, a powerful wake-up call.

The picture that emerges is one of the structural rise of far-right parties and movements, not a marginal trend. Many are already governing or are significantly influencing politics in more than seven EU member states. In the European Parliament, if they were to join forces within a single political group, they would hold more seats than the European People's Party, currently the largest in Strasbourg. This is unlikely to happen because substantial divergences persist on many fundamental issues, but across Europe and within its institutions, a common strategy and vision are clearly at work. Hungary's Fidesz, Italy's Fratelli d'Italia, the Sweden Democrats and Slovakia's Smer, to name but a few, are already governing, and their agendas converge around one overriding concern: control of the narrative.

There is a common and recognisable playbook documented in detail by the report. It begins with the systematic delegitimisation of independent media and the endless stream of "fake news" accusations designed not just to discredit specific outlets, but to destroy public trust in the very idea of verifiable truth. It continues with the installation of loyalists inside public broadcasters, the weaponisation of regulatory bodies and the dismissal of leaders of cultural institutions, replaced by ideological appointees. It ends, or rather carries on, with a progressive narrowing of what can be said, shown, funded, or even imagined.

Public service broadcasting (PSB) lies at the heart of this battle. PSBs fund 55% of European TV fiction and invest over €7 billion annually in original European content. Most far-right parties have made their defunding a stated political priority, directly attacking the financial infrastructure that sustains European storytelling. Many of these parties openly appeal to a mythologised past that never existed, incorporating elements such as faith, family and fatherland, and they are willing to sideline any story that does not fit in with this antiquated vision. Stories about immigration, LGBTQ+ lives, social conflict and political dissent are not banned outright; they are simply made unfundable, unpitchable and unimaginable.

But perhaps the most insidious threat documented in the report is the one that leaves no paper trail: the chilling effect. Long before any formal censorship is applied, screenwriters, commissioners and producers are already adjusting their behaviour. Projects revolving around sensitive themes are being shelved at the development stage. Broadcasters are signalling, sometimes explicitly, sometimes through silence, that certain stories are no longer welcome. Writers pitch what they think will be accepted, rather than what they believe needs to be said.

The report notes that at the FSE's European Screenwriters Day in Berlin in November 2025, representatives from across the continent confirmed anecdotally what is increasingly difficult to deny: a widespread, pre-emptive retreat from anything that might be labelled as controversial. Self-censorship is becoming an informal rule in the industry.

The threat is systemic and transnational. Far-right pressure on EU media regulation, combined with US lobbying against European digital laws, risks dismantling the entire legislative framework that sustains European audiovisual production – not just individual projects, but the industry's very structural foundations. The cultural exception that protects European film and television from trade liberalisation, the AVMS Directive, the European Media Freedom Act… All are under threat in a political environment where the far right opposes EU regulatory frameworks as a matter of principle, and where Washington is pushing hard to weaken them in the name of free markets.

This is not the first time that the FSE has sounded the alarm. But this report marks a new level of urgency and clarity. It is a map of a threat that is already unfolding, country by country, institution by institution and story by story.

“History has not ended. Societies are not frozen in time, neither in the present nor the past. Our capacity, individually and collectively, to imagine, to try to understand what is wrong and to rehearse what might be, is core to our capacity to change, to resolve problems and to shape a different, perhaps better, future. This is the function of storytelling,” the organisation states.

You can read the report in full here.