The meeting called "Promoting Core Labour Standards for All Journalists: The Challenges of the Digital Era", is the largest and most important event of European journalists' associations, said Dragutin Lucic, president of the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND), which organised the conference together with the Croatian Journalists Trade Union.
Representatives of European journalists are expected to elect new members to the EFJ Steering Committee at an annual assembly, scheduled for 23-25 March.
We in Croatia are witnesses that collective agreements are not respected and labour rights are violated, said Katja Kusec, president of the Croatian Journalists Trade Union. She expressed hope that the final document to be adopted at the assembly would point to problems Croatian journalists and the media are faced with.
Reporters are a key group that promotes democracy and dialogue on their rights as well as dialogue on democracy, EFJ chairman Arne Koenig said.
A representative of the French Journalists' Association (SNJ-CGT), Patrick Kamenka, said journalists were often prisoners of institutions, lobbying and industrial marketing.
The digital revolution and new technologies have led to new working procedures which do not necessarily lead to a good piece of information, he said, adding that the Internet had become the main source of information, notably to young journalists.
The secretary general of the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Jeremy Dear, warned about the increasing commercialisation of journalism and profit of media corporations whose owners are concentrated on citizens as reporters and show-business.
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is a regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). It was created within the framework of the IFJ Constitution to represent the interests of journalists' unions and their members. The EFJ is Europe"s largest organisation of journalists, representing about 280,000 journalists in over thirty countries.