International Press Association hosts meeting to discuss future of foreign press in Belgium

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 18, 2010 at 3:52 PM

The International Press Association, an organization representing all foreign reporters stationed in Belgium, is hosting a meeting today to discuss employment prospects for journalists reporting in Brussels.

The meeting, entitled "What does the future hold for Brussels-based journalists?" will attempt to address the exodus of much of the European Union press corps over the past five years and the diminishing presence of foreign press in Brussels. According to a press release, the API "considers an urgent taking stock and a broad debate are imperative." The group hopes to address three main concerns:

Communication and information policies of the European institutions and in particular the Commission.

Conditions regarding work and residence of journalists based in Brussels

Improvement of contacts and collaboration at the heart of the press corps based in Brussels.

According to the writer of The Economist's European Union blog Charlemagne, the EU press corps decreased from 1,200 reporters in 2005 to 752 this year, with 200 leaving in the past year alone.

The problem, explains the Charlemagne writer, is crippling taxes in Brussels that make it financially impossible or unattractive to stay after five years of service. For the first five years that reporters work in Brussels, they are exempt from those taxes and are only obligated to send money to social security plans back in their home country.

After those five years, funding a reporter in Brussels becomes impossible for many newspapers. And, according to Jean Quatremer, a reporter and blogger for the French newspaper Liberation, when foreign papers have to choose between posting reporters in Washington or Brussels, Washington tends to win out.

This is why the number of daily papers from Britain with reporters stationed in Brussels has shrunk from six to three, why French papers Le Monde and Figaro have reduced their staff to two and one reporters, respectively. In the complicated calculation of a newspaper facing budget cuts, foreign desks are often easy to let go.

The diminishing presence of foreign correspondents in Brussels is indicative of a wider trend, as foreign news desks are cut from Jerusalem to Rome. If the IPA is unable to find a solution to the problem, will citizen journalists and the internet pick up the slack, or will consumers of news media suffer from a gross lack of information?

Sources: Journalism.co.uk, The Economist, Coulisses de Bruxelles