After 6.5 years as Managing Director, Lutz Kinkel leaves the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom. “I’m grateful for the time at ECPMF, it was a fulfilling, meaningful and successful mission we shaped together”, says Lutz. Having started in May 2017 he led the organisation into substantial growth, increasing the yearly revenue from 1 Million in 2017 to 5.34 Million in 2022 and the staff from six to 22 persons. “It is deeply satisfying that ECPMF is a well-established and respected actor in the field of media freedom and has a tangible impact now”, says Lutz.
The milestones of ECPMF’s development were the takeover of the mappingmediafreedom.org platform in 2019, the creation of the Media Freedom Rapid Response project in 2020, ECPMF’s contribution to the European campaign for an Anti-SLAPP-directive and the integration of ECPMF into the German Hannah-Arendt-Initiative, which enabled the organisation to provide comprehensive support for journalists in Ukraine and in exile.
“The Executive Board thanks Lutz Kinkel for building up the organisation”, says chair Mogens Blicher Bjerregard. The post of the Managing Director will be advertised. In the interim ECPMF is led by the former Deputy Managing Director Andreas Lamm and Director of Finance Sarah Koslow. Contracts to continue major ECPMF projects like the Media Freedom Rapid Response and IJ4EU in 2024 and 2025 – both financed by the European Commission – were already signed in 2023.
