France / EU · Bias: Center
Alpac Capital (Orbán-linked leadership)
Launched in 1993 as Europe's answer to CNN, Euronews built its brand on aggressively neutral, multi-language coverage — its signature 'No Comment' segment literally shows raw footage with zero narration. For years it was the beige, trustworthy wallpaper of European hotel rooms. Then the ownership got interesting. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris sold his 88% stake in December 2021 to Alpac Capital, a small Portuguese fund whose CEO, Pedro Vargas David, is the son of a longtime adviser to Hungary's Viktor Orbán. For a channel whose whole identity is 'neutral Europe,' that raised eyebrows that haven't come down since. OWNERSHIP AS OF OCTOBER 2026 Euronews is majority-owned by Alpac Capital, a Portuguese investment firm that agreed to buy an 88% stake from Naguib Sawiris in December 2021 (deal announcement, December 2021). Alpac is run by two managing partners, Pedro Vargas David and Luís Santos. Vargas David also chairs the Euronews board, and the CEO and editorial director is Claus Strunz, a former editor at Germany's Bild (Euronews company statement, 17 February 2025). The central newsroom has moved from Lyon to Brussels, and the company says 2024 was its first profitable year in a decade (same statement). The part people actually search for is the money. In April 2024, a joint investigation by Direkt36, Le Monde and Expresso reported that 45 million euros of the roughly 150 million euro purchase came from a Hungarian state capital fund managed by Széchenyi Funds, plus a 12.5 million euro loan from a Hungarian company that handles government advertising. Euronews' chief executive at the time said he had not known of any Hungarian state involvement and had never had contact with officials in Hungary. Orbán's press office said it knew nothing about the deal. Alpac did not answer the reporters' questions (Direkt36, 12 April 2024). The newest chapter: in May 2026, Alpac agreed to buy Adria News Network from United Group. That is the company behind N1, Nova S, Danas and Radar, some of the best-known independent newsrooms in Serbia and its neighbours. On 17 August 2026, Vargas David was registered as director of the Serbian companies and the existing managers were replaced. Luxembourg's media regulator, ALIA, said the next day that its review of the change of control was still running (N1; European Western Balkans, August 2026). Serbia's competition commission has approved the sale. We could not find a final ALIA decision as of this review. IS EURONEWS LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading, and it is only our reading: Euronews sits in the centre on the classic left-right scale. It does not shout and it does not campaign. The habit we keep noticing is a different one: it tends to take official language at face value. Here are the receipts from our own archive. On 31 July 2026, we noted its Ceuta headline was a turnstile count, "At least 50,000 migrants cross into Spanish territory of Ceuta from Morocco in a single day," while the death toll sat deep in the story. On 2 August 2026, we noted the headline said migrants "return to Morocco" while the article's own first line said they had "been returned." On 8 August 2026, we noted it called a planned $1 billion US security package for Colombia "aid." On 23 and 24 August 2026, we noted its Kazakhstan election coverage ran softer than the wire services'. Its results piece quoted an observer praising the "digitalisation" of polling stations. On 25 August 2026, we noted the headline "Ceuta migration sparks nearly 9,600 hate posts on social media," which made the migrants the subject of the sentence and left out the people who wrote the posts. On 30 August 2026, we noted its Venezuela oil story put 'sovereignty' in quotation marks but never mentioned the events of January that led to the arrangement. And two for the credit column. On 7 August 2026, we praised it for naming US-Iran tensions in its headline on the Saudi-Türkiye-Pakistan defence pact. On 1 September 2026, we praised it twice: for building a headline out of what Trump actually said about Venezuela's oil, and for printing the Met Office figure that human-caused emissions made the UK's record summer about 130 times more likely. So: centre, in our view, with a soft spot for the press-release version of events and a real ability to do better when it wants to. IS EURONEWS RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? For basic facts, yes, in our experience. In the pieces we have read, the numbers and quotes usually check out, and the details we wanted were often there, just lower down than we would have put them. Our complaints are mostly about framing: which word made the headline and which fact got paragraph seven. Two honest notes. First, we did not find a major regulator ruling against Euronews to report here, so we are not going to pretend there is one. Second, ownership matters for a channel that sells itself on neutrality. The reported Hungarian state money is a fair thing to know about. It is not proof that any single story was steered, and we have not seen proof of that. When the takeover was announced, Euronews said it had every guarantee of editorial independence. What we write is not a scientific score. It is our own reading of a few dozen headlines. If you cite Euronews in schoolwork or at work, cite the specific article, and check a second source when the story is about a government that might like how it reads. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns Euronews now? Alpac Capital, a Portuguese investment firm, holds the majority. It bought an 88% stake in a deal announced in December 2021. Is Euronews independent? The company says its editorial independence is guaranteed. A 2024 investigation by Direkt36, Le Monde and Expresso reported that Hungarian state-linked money helped fund the purchase. Both things are on the record, and readers can weigh them. Is Euronews right wing? Not in our reading of its headlines. We would call it centrist and cautious. The right-wing question comes up because of the owner's reported links to people around Viktor Orbán, not because of how the stories usually read. Is Euronews reliable, legit, trustworthy? It is a real, long-running broadcaster with about 300 journalists, by its own count. We find its facts generally solid and its framing sometimes too gentle with officials. Is Euronews free? Yes. The website and the live stream are free to use. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 4 October 2026: added current ownership and leadership, the 2024 funding investigation, the Adria News Network takeover through August 2026, and nine dated examples from our own archive.
The landmark story here is the takeover itself. Investigative reporting out of Hungary found money connected to the Hungarian state helped finance Alpac's purchase — meaning Europe's 'neutral' channel was quietly bought with backing traceable toward the EU's loudest press-freedom offender. In May 2026 the same owners moved to buy United Group's independent Serbian outlets — some of the last major media in Serbia not aligned with the government. Watch this space: it's the rare media story where the ownership page IS the story.