In the Global Press Freedom Index 2026, Cyprus has fallen to 80th place out of a total of 180 countries. This is according to the results published on Thursday by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

This means that the country remains the second worst member state within the European Union – only Greece performs worse. Cyprus scored a total of 56.9 out of 100 points, just above the global average.

The decline in political assessment was particularly marked in the Euro-Balkans region. Cyprus also received the weakest assessment in the legal area. This shows that journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to work freely, to obtain information and to protect their sources.

Pavol Szalai, head of the RSF office in Prague, explained that the negative trend has continued to intensify since 2022 and accelerated significantly again in 2024. While Cyprus was still in 26th place in 2021, it fell to 65th place in 2022 and already to 77th place last year.

Szalai is particularly critical of a proposed law according to which a prosecutor appointed by the president or the head of the intelligence service could lift the confidentiality of journalistic sources.

He stressed that the protection of journalistic sources is a central foundation of press freedom and warned that such an encroachment would be extremely dangerous.

In addition, there are concerns about another draft law that would make the dissemination of so-called fake news a punishable offence. Szalai also criticized the fact that government representatives are increasingly leaving questions from media representatives unanswered.

During Cyprus' EU Council Presidency, there were also conflicts over press accreditations. Authorities demanded special state press cards from journalists and did not recognize the ID cards of the journalists' association.

According to Szalai, such measures clearly weaken the media's right to access public information.

The report also addressed the handling of the allegations of investigative journalist Makarios Drousiotis. The authorities were criticized for not sufficiently investigating allegations of surveillance and the possible hacking of his devices.

Szalai explained that these problems must be considered in the larger context. Cyprus is a very small media market with a strong concentration of media ownership. At the same time, there is a lack of transparency in financing structures, and the public broadcaster CyBC also works without sufficient guarantees for its independence.

Overall, this creates an environment that makes independent journalism considerably more difficult.

In the north of the island, the "administration" there landed in 82nd place, only two places behind the Republic of Cyprus.

Although this meant an increase of nine places, the total score improved only slightly to 56.6 points.

Szalai made it clear that this was not real progress. Rather, the change is mainly due to the fact that other regions performed even worse. The north remains in one of the last places within the EU-Balkan zone.

A small positive step was the judicial dismissal of a defamation lawsuit by the former Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar against the newspaper Yeniduzen and the journalists Cenk Mutluyakali and Serhat Incirli.

Szalai assessed this lawsuit as a strategic attempt to silence critical voices and described the dismissal as a positive signal.

Nevertheless, he expressed great concern about the ongoing proceedings against journalist Ali Kismir. He still faces a prison sentence of up to ten years for an article in which he criticized Turkey's influence on elections.

According to Szalai, Kismir is unjustly prosecuted, while a decision by the Constitutional Court is still pending.

RSF also sees the growing political pressure from Turkey, the strong concentration of media ownership and legal threats against journalists as central causes of the restricted press freedom in the north of the island.






Author: Editorial Team 
Source: REUTERS / Reporters Without Borders (RSF)