Finances

The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom is a co-operative owned by its members and registered under German and European law as a European Co-operative Society SCE. That means it is an independent non-profit body that qualifies for grants from charitable foundations, local, national and international bodies, philanthropists and commercial donors.

Its launch in 2015 was facilitated by a grant from the European Commission, requiring six partner organisations to deliver a secretariat in Leipzig, a Media Freedom Resource Centre (online library), monitoring reports on journalists under threat and establishing criteria for assessing legal cases.

In addition the ECPMF has received in-kind and financial support from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, from the City of Leipzig, the State of Saxony and the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The balance sheets since the foundation of the ECPMF

In its first two years of existence, from spring 2015 to spring 2017, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom was administered by the media foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig. The ECPMF co-operative was not established yet; all legal and financial responsibilities were with the media foundation. This is why the balance sheets don’t show much more than the cooperatives shares and the fees for the bank account.

This changed in 2017 when the ECPMF was fully operational as an organisation and formally recognized as an European Co-operative with limited liabilities. The following balance sheets provide a financial chronicle of the organisation and show the purposes of the expenses.