About us

Our vision and mission

We believe that journalism is crucial to fostering living democracies across Europe. We are dedicated to advancing independent and investigative journalism that serves the public interest, furthers accountability as well as transparency, and contributes to critical thinking and informed debate.

We aim to promote and develop professional journalism in response to the challenges and opportunities stemming from increasing digitalisation, the internationalisation of political, economic and criminal power structures, and changing revenue models.

Journalismfund Europe vzw is an independent, non-profit intermediary organisation based in Brussels and founded by citizens in 1998. It was set up with the aim of strengthening democracy in Europe by facilitating independent, cross-border investigative journalism and by bringing donors and journalists or media together without endangering the journalists' independence.

This is how we work:

We facilitate donors so that they can play their role supporting investigative journalism to the maximum extent possible without any risk. We therefore report in a very transparent way about our projects.
We facilitate journalists and media outlets to do investigative and cross-border journalism, and we safeguard their independence from donors.
We help journalists disseminate their stories among citizens.

Our origin

Journalismfund Europe is a Belgian-registered independent non-profit-making intermediary organisation that has its origins in the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism. The Fund was created in 1998 by family, close friends and colleagues of Pascal Decroos to commemorate and further the legacy of this Belgian journalist.

What we stand for, is what Pascal Decroos stood for in word and deed. He was dedicated to investigative journalism. He was committed to creating opportunities to develop young journalistic talent and had an ability to bring people from very different facets of society to engage in dialogue and work together.

The journalism we stand for

The journalism we support is characterised by the two 'I's: investigative and independent.

Investigative journalism is fact-based, well-researched, uses the best available methods and respects the relevant professional, ethical and legal rules.
Independent journalism is credible because it is editorially independent of political, economic or other influences. Journalismfund Europe strives to provide the necessary structures to safeguard such editorial independence.

Journalismfund Europe endorses the principles of the IFJ Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists as well as the national codes of ethics that are in force (see https://www.ifj.org/who/rules-and-policy/global-charter-of-ethics-for-journalists.html).

Journalismfund Europe facilitates journalists and media to strive to provide:

Truthful, verified news and information in a context that gives them meaning;
Forums for civil exchanges and greater understanding of various viewpoints, with fairness in mind;
Stories, information and ideas that reflect diverse types of communities and their interests and views

Fully in line with The Trust Project