Prague wants EU talks on Radio Free Europe’s future

PRAGUE: The Czech foreign minister said on Sunday he would discuss the future of Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) with European peers after Washington stopped funding it.

Donald Trump´s administration put journalists at several US-funded broadcasters, including RFERL and Voice of America, on leave on Saturday as it froze funding to them.

Founded by the United States during the Cold War to counter Soviet propaganda, RFE/RL was banned across the communist bloc including former Czechoslovakia, where regimes regularly jammed its signal.

The US-funded media have since reoriented themselves, focusing on countries like Iran, Russia and China. “It is in our interest not to have totalitarian regimes blossoming around us,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said on Sunday.