ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the key provisions of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), highlighting their interplay as directional in understanding the evolving European Union (EU) media and digital policy. The specific focus of the chapter is on what these policies mean for the Western Balkan region (Albania, Montenegro, The Republic of North Macedonia, and Serbia). As EU regulations, both the EMFA and the DSA apply directly and uniformly across EU Member States. However, this is not the case for candidate countries, where the EU regulations do not have direct legal effect. Still, as part of the accession process, enlargement countries are expected to align with EU standards and are therefore expected, both structurally and in practice, to prepare for the implementation of the DSA and EMFA. This alignment is especially urgent, given that conditions for media pluralism in the Western Balkans are, on average, more problematic than those in current EU Member States and it is related to the capacity of these countries to strengthen and maintain democratic resilience.
