The brutal killing of the Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova has been strongly condemned by Left MEPs.

Marinova’s body was found on Saturday in Ruse, Bulgaria. She had been the presenter of a current affairs talk show on local television and had investigated into alleged fraud between criminals and politicians over EU funds.

She is also the third high-profile journalist to be murdered in the EU in the past year after Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta last October, and Slovakia’s Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová in February 2018.

Commenting on the latest murder, Stelios Kouloglou (SYRIZA, Greece) said:

“Investigative journalism is becoming more deadly by the day!”

“Viktoria Marinova is the third journalist to have been murdered in the EU whilst investigating corruption cases in a single year. Let’s not forget that Ján Kuciak was also murdered in Slovakia for doing exactly that, and next week marks a year since Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder in Malta. We cannot imagine that even in our worst nightmares,” he surmised.

Miguel Urbán (Podemos, Spain) agreed:

“We demand an official investigation into this murder by the Bulgarian authorities. It is already the third time a journalist has been killed in the EU in the last year and that is a very worrying situation”.

“It gives the impression that freedom of speech in the EU is under attack, and member states and EU must do something about it,” he added.