There’s a new kid on the Brussels block. Digital media publisher Remedia Europe has just unveiled its EU affairs-focused outlet, Brussels Signal, with the ambition to offer European citizens fresh, critical perspectives on the political developments impacting their lives.

Conceived as a counterpoint to existing media outlets, Brussels Signal aims to disrupt the current media climate by providing a platform for voices that challenge prevailing orthodoxies in EU policymaking and demand more accountability. In this pursuit, it has already assembled a team of journalists known for their willingness to go against the grain, including Douglas Murray, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Dominic Green and Alessandra Bocchi, who will be complemented by senior news editor Justin Stares, a Brussels-based correspondent whose bylines have appeared in the world’s most prestigious and influential outlets.

Following its soft digital launch on 31 May, which invited readers to a virtual event with the editors, Brussels Signal will expand into video content and newsletters over the coming weeks, while gearing up for autumn events at its purpose-built studio in the heart of Brussels’s European Quarter.

Editor-in-Chief Michael Mosbacher, who comes to this new venture with a track record of launching successful media startups, including the UK-based Standpoint and The Critic, says his team is “thrilled to introduce Brussels Signal.” Through its varied output, ranging from curated newsletters focused on underreported regional issues to podcasts and video content with incisive thought leaders, Mosbacher says that Brussels Signal will look to “present a distinctive alternative viewpoint…that effectively engages and enlightens our audience” – crucial given the fundamental shifts in digital media consumption currently hitting the industry.

Brussels Signal has arrived on the scene at a critical moment for European media. With the war in Ukraine, emerging tensions between member-states and a stubborn inflation crisis on one hand, and continued consolidation in media covering the EU on the other, the industry has been left in need of an outlet that presents a diversity of viewpoints on the bloc’s most pressing issues. Patrick Egan, Remedia Europe CEO and publisher of Brussels Signal, has commented that the current “environment [in the EU] fraught with crisis and conflict” has created an opportunity to add real value by providing a “distinctive source of news and insights” that will “shake up the news media landscape” and offer audiences fatigued by social media-based and narrow, partisan reporting the journalistic qualities they are looking for.

Egan believes that today’s European citizens demand and deserve more media pluralism, curated, localised coverage and open marketplace of ideas that they have been deprived of by legacy outlets for many years – a conviction that has turned into action. “Rather than sit on the sidelines, I decided to invest my time and money to pursue that opportunity and bring about the change we need,” he says, while adding that the seed capital Brussels Signal has secured has allowed it to launch “with confidence in our news brand and its prospects as a sustainable business.” At a time when the former giants of digital media have succumbed to their dying business models, that is no small challenge.

Over the coming weeks and months, this startup media outlet looks set to become a viable new player in the ‘Brussels bubble.’