Bridging Policy and Practice: Launch of the Team Europe Democracy Toolkit for the Implementation of the OECD DAC Principles on Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment

While press freedom has been in decline worldwide for more than a decade, in 2025 a new low point emerged: the RSF Index reported that for the first time in the history of the Index, the conditions for practising journalism are “difficult” or “very serious” in over half of the world’s countries and satisfactory in fewer than one in four – with 60% of countries seeing their scores decline.

Amid a global democratic backslide, information ecosystems continue to significantly deteriorate. The drivers include media capture, threats to journalist safety, declining public trust in journalism, collapsing business models, and growing government crackdowns on free and independent media. Disinformation remains pervasive, especially on digital platforms, undermining public trust in democratic processes and polarising societies.

The Team Europe Democracy (TED) initiative is a global thematic Team Europe Initiative involving 15 EU Member States and aiming to promote democracy and human rights worldwide. Within the initiative, the Working Group (WG) on Information Integrity facilitates multi-stakeholder discussions and knowledge exchange on safeguarding the information environment. Through collaboration and collective action, the WG strives to promote the resilience of information ecosystems, uphold human rights in the digital space, and foster informed and engaged citizenry, driving positive democratic change.

To further this objective and respond to these challenges, TED has worked with its members and partners develop a toolkit to support the implementation of the OECD DAC Principles on Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment.

The Principles present a significant milestone for the global community as a set of concrete recommendations to increase the impact of international support for media and the information environment. In the context of shrinking funding and growing threats against public-interest media, the Principles call for effective support measures and deeper coordination among stakeholders.

The toolkit offers practical guidance to help different stakeholders apply these principles in their respective work. It translates high-level commitments into operational practice, ensuring that media and information-integrity support is relevant, effective, and sustainable. The toolkit was developed through a series of consultations with members of the Team Europe Democracy Initiative as well as further relevant practitioners, and reflects the Principles’ priorities and needs.

The toolkit will be launched during UNESCO World Press Freedom Day on 5 May in Lusaka, Zambia. The objectives of the launch session are

1. to introduce the toolkit to the WPFD community,
2. to discuss how to translate the OECD DAC Principles into action,
3. to showcase how programme managers, policy officers, strategic leads, and others can use and access the toolkit.