“Foreign agents” in media regulation: Russia and beyond

This article reviews wide-range restrictions on foreign involvement in media activities that were introduced in the last decade in the Russian Federation. Such legislation – generally called “foreign agents” law – brought about substantive case law and administrative sanctions against the media and journalists. Moreover, the Russian example served as the pattern for other governments, which introduced – with diffe- rent degree of success – their national rules on “foreign agents.” This article provides an update of relevant developments in Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as compares them all with their sup- posed model of the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act. We look into the evaluation of the national “foreign agent” statutes by the European Court of Justice, Russian Constitutional Court and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, as well as into the national case law and administrative practice.