Patrick Penninckx, Head of the Information Society Department of the Council of Europe has addressed on-line the participants in the Regional Conference of SafeJournalists Network “Settings UP of the Media Freedoms and the Safety of Journalists in the Western Balkans” which took place in Sarajevo on 26-28 April 2022. In his intervention, the speaker highlighted that serious threats to media freedom in Council of Europe member states increased by 41%, from 200 in 2020 to 282 in 2021. Eleven alerts on insults and smear campaigns confirm that verbal attacks performed by representatives of public authorities, including active heads of government and state, persist. He then called for a common search for solutions and provided a detailed presentation of Council of Europe instruments to promote media and journalists’ freedom and safety.