Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Ordinary meeting
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LIBE European Parliament
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
I'm sure my colleague can tell more. Strategic foresight is increasingly embedded across all the justice and harm affairs agencies, and we had a joint event on it. So looking further afield and trying to anticipate how we can be better prepared for new and emerging risks linked to technology, drugs, migration, security, and societal change as well. We had coordinated implementation of the AI Act as a shared priority, and organized an event on that. And we are also all looking at it both internally and then, of course, also externally, where we see a lot of increased use of AI in migration and asylum, for example.
That was led by asylum agency, but fundamental rights agency contributed with research on usage of AI in the migration, asylum, and border policies. Let me finally mention, I think I'm coming to the end of my time, that I'm very happy to report also that fundamental rights remain central to interagency cooperation. It's always been there, but we reaffirmed it by issuing a joint statement by the heads of agencies marking the 25th anniversary of the proclamation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. And as you, I'm sure, are well aware, several agencies have their own internal fundamental rights officers, and this is a network that Fry's coordinating. So we have, I think, quarterly meetings with all the fundamental rights officers.
Of course, Frontex having the biggest one, soon, I think, bigger than FRA in its entirety. But, also, the asylum agency has now a team working on fundamental rights. And I in my experience, you can only really cooperate on fundamental rights when you have both the internal knowledge and then you bring more external knowledge where it's needed. So perhaps I stop there, and I think I was on time.
Javier Zarzalejos
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Missus Routio. Doctor Nolan, now the floor is yours for 7 minutes.
Speaker 3
Thank you very much, chair. Good morning, everybody, and honorable members of the committee. It's a very great pleasure and an honor for me to be here with you today as the new executive director of the European Drugs Agency and as chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Agency Network for this year. This is the second time that EUDA has presided over the network under our strengthened mandate. And this presidency is supported by our three partners, FRA, and also the European Institute for Gender Equality, who will take over the presidency next year in 2027.
So I'd like to begin, and it's important for me to do so, by warmly congratulating CIRPA and her staff for their successful work over last year. Over the years, the Justice and Home Affairs Agency's network has grown into a solid and trusted framework for cooperation. It is no longer just a forum for exchange. It is a place where agencies work together with shared priorities, shared responsibility, and shared purpose. And in today's security environment, working in this way is absolutely essential.
And our presidency also comes at a very decisive moment when the European policy framework in the Justice and Home Affairs Agency is evolving at a fast pace. The European Union has adopted the preparedness union strategy, Protect EU, and more recently, the new drug strategy and action plan against drug trafficking. Another important component, of course, is the new impact priorities for the next 4 years. In addition, the EDA's reinforced mandate and the up-and-coming revision of the other justice and home affairs agency mandates give us much stronger tools to act together. So the question now before us is how do we turn this policy momentum into coordinated impact on the ground?
And we believe the answer is captured in the guiding theme for our presidency, which is one safety, building preparedness, and resilient communities. One safety reflects that health, security, social cohesion, technical innovation, and fundamental rights are deeply interconnected. We can't protect public security without protecting health, and we cannot reduce organized crime without addressing vulnerability. And we cannot build preparedness for the future if institutions continue to work in isolation. So at its core, when safety is about interconnectivity between agencies, sectors, disciplines, technology, and, of course, levels of governance, it is about working across traditional boundaries to better protect people, including those who use drugs, communities, and especially young people at risk of exploitation.
Speaker 4
And you may ask, why is this approach so necessary? Across the union, we are facing fast-moving and complex challenges. From the EUDA's perspective, the availability and use of psychoactive substances continue to generate serious health, environmental, and security harms. Drug markets remain a key driver of organized crime, violence, and intimidation. And at the same time, digital platforms and encrypted technologies are reshaping criminal business models, including the recruitment of minors and vulnerable young people.
Speaker 5
In such an environment, siloed approaches are not comprehensive enough to fully succeed. That is why our 2026 presidency program places a strong emphasis on cross-sector cooperation and a whole-of-society approach, fully aligned with the current policy framework I have just previously spoken about. So let me briefly highlight what are the four key thematic areas under our presidency of the network, and where we will work through expert exchanges under our presidency. The first area is preparedness. We need to better anticipate risks through shared foresight, monitoring, and early-warning systems.
Enhancing preparedness means earlier action, fewer harms, and more protection for both individuals and society. And here, we will focus on aligning tools and practices through expert exchanges on technology foresight and synthetic drugs, and by strengthening cooperation with the EU Innovation Hub for internal security. The second area is protection and response. By acting together, we can better target high risk actors, environments, and behaviors while also reinforcing community safety and protecting youths from recruitment and exploitation by criminal networks. Here, we will use drug market related violence as a concrete case study to show the added value of coordinated justice and home affairs action.
We will address issues such as root recruit youth recruitment by organized crime, digital enablement, and consider tools that may support the member states. The third area is resilience. Strong communities are often the most effective long-term defense against organized crime and drug-related harm. Our focus will be to enhance a whole of society approach through consideration of how stronger cross-sector cooperation may be enabled. A dedicated expert meeting will bring together public health, law enforcement, judicial actors, and civil society representatives to consider security challenges faced by our communities.
We will also look at how we can use EUDA's AI in Action initiative as a case study, to support responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence across the network. The fourth area is international cooperation. Focusing on the external dimension, we will work to reinforce collaboration with key partner regions, including the Western Balkans and the Middle East and North African regions, addressing drugs, organized crime, environmental harms, and future risks through targeted conferences, expert meetings, and foresight activities. And in addition to all of these thematic areas, the UDA will also host six horizontal working groups which focus on the regular business of the network and cross-cutting issues.
Speaker 5
Will also coordinate a staff visit program to promote mutual learning across agencies. In closing, one safety is about strengthening Europe's collective ability to anticipate, prevent, and respond to complex threats, while building resilient communities and public trust. Your committee's engagement has always been essential to our work. And in a year that is marked by significant policy implementation and wider geopolitical uncertainty, your political and stringent guidance will be decisive. We very much look forward to deepening our collaboration with the Libre committee and the EU institutions to co-create a safer and more just, resilient Europe for our citizens, our communities, and people who use drugs.
Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Doctor Lorraine. And now we proceed to the round of political groups. In principle, each political group representative will have two minutes for their intervention. So we start with EPP, missus, Elena DuPont. The floor is yours.
Lena Düpont
Thanks, chair, and thanks to both of you for being here, for being present, for presenting the very important work of the JHA network, and also congrats to what you have been achieving in the past years because I think when we first started with this JHA network, it was a bit of a, it was less structured than it is today, and that's why it was also less efficient than it is today. So first of all, congrats to that and the plea to keep up the good work on that as well. And of course, to you, Madam Nolan, a warm welcome here in the parliament in your role, and congrats to that still. So, all the best for your work. Having said that, there are a few things I'd like to address.
Maybe one more procedural question. While cooperating within the networks, did you come across some structural hurdles that could be improved when it comes to overlapping of mandates, when it comes to a bit of blurry lines between agencies' work? But at the same time, are there things where the lines are too strict, so where there probably could be a bit more blur in order to facilitate exchange and cooperation? Connected to that, of course, the question of information exchange. So within the ecosystem of agencies that.
we are.
Lena Düpont
Having, is there enough room for efficient, but, of course, in line with fundamental rights protection, exchange of information? Or do we need to address that? The second question is a bit more political. When we look at the hybrid landscape, you were both touching upon it. I very much welcomed your words on preparedness and breaking the silos, because I think that this is still a work we need to do within the agency's network in the JHA area, but also to agencies probably a bit outside the JHA network.
So maybe you can say words if there is an idea to do that, and if so, which silos we need to break the most urgent, so to say. And I think for the first round, that's it.
Thanks.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Excellent questions. On structural hurdles, of course, fundamental rights agency works on fundamental rights horizontally. So for us, it's easier because we don't have a sort of clear mandate. We have to prioritize depending on the sort of issues, how sensitive they are from fundamental rights perspective.
But there are some other hurdles. One, of course, is the very different sizes of the agencies. I'm sure it is much more difficult for mister Leighton to coordinate within Frontex, the ever growing than for me to coordinate within FRA with, you 100 plus people. But I think it is more serious, also sort of the maybe increasing lack of balance between the justice and home. Home affairs agencies are growing very much in the current security environment, but themselves acknowledge that they cannot really work without having the justice element as well.
Because if you investigate and prosecute, it stops there. You know? What's the point, then? Then criminals are still free. So I think that would be one hurdle I would like to mention.
From the silos, as I said, it doesn't really touch us, but we have one limitation, which is that the fundamental rights agency is mandated to work only within EU member states and enlargement, which are becoming more and more important. At the same time, the external dimension is very big for some other agencies working in third countries. And those who know very well know that we have a sort of small opening of a mandate there in the preamble of the regulation, where it says that while we cannot work on foreign security defense policy as such, we can assist those who do. So I think this is something we need to explore more to make sure that also in the external dimension, FRA can contribute. And I think that has perhaps not always been so clear.
But, of course, it is a limited sort of, as agreed, assistant type of activity.
Thank you. Mr. Ring?
Speaker 3
Thank you very much, and thank you for the questions. So I will pick up on some areas maybe that Serpa hasn't covered. First of all, in terms of information exchange and efficiency of information exchange, I think that really is central to the new mandate of the European Drugs Agency in terms of our capacity to really rapidly track emergency threats and rapidly exchange and communicate. And we have put a huge amount of work over the past number of years into developing tools and our capabilities to assist us in this regard. Our new drug alert system would be one example in terms of rapid communication of serious threats from both the health and the security perspective for drug, which complements our already well established early warning system.
Speaker 5
And, of course, technology and using digital interconnectiveness is a real backbone that underpins all of our work. And, of course, you know, the collaboration that we have with the other justice and home affairs agency in this network, not just within the network of agencies, but also through the impact priorities and our joint working in that area and through the European Innovation Security Hub. You also spoke about breaking silos with agencies and organizations that may be outside that network. Of course, that is very close to the heart of the European Union Drugs Agency because while we work in a holistic way straddling both the health and the security aspects for drug, so the health component is, you know, hugely important to us. From a regulation, in terms of the early warning system and the risk assessment of new psychoactive substances, we are mandated to work with the European Medicines Agency, for example, ECDC, and also the European Food Safety Agency.
Speaker 3
And outside of that mandate, working to grow our collaboration with those agencies on joint work programs, and particularly, for example, the blurring lines between licit and illicit medicine use would be another example of that. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Doctor Lorraine. Now I give the floor to S and D group representative, Miss Sipple.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much, Chair, and thanks to our guests. I will start by saying that it's always a challenge between security and fundamental rights to find the right way to deal with it. But in these days, with all the crisis around us, but also inside the European Union talking about digitization, AI, hybrid attacks, all the crisis around, it seems it becomes more difficult to uphold our values of democracy and fundamental rights. And I would like to hear from you which changes you see in the readiness to exchange on this, and keep an eye on these things not only from the FRA side, but also within the other agencies. I would also like to hear your views on using digitalization and artificial intelligence.
As it seems, we often criticize big platforms or providers coming from third countries, not willing to follow our legislation, but at the same time, we rely on them to some extent. So, what are your views on that? And maybe you could also a little bit go into the question, what do you mean when you try to find a way of decryption? We had debates about backdoors and frontos, so that's a critical point. And on the drugs agency, a similar question because drugs and the use of drugs, of course, we talk about health, we talk about support for users, former users.
There might be a link to social cohesion being a reason, maybe for using drugs, but there is also a link to organized crime. So how do you balance your work in this area? And do you see improvement also in working together with the other agencies? Because I heard from you that cooperation and learning from each other still is an issue you are working on. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Missus Sippel. I've asked the floor to Mrs. Rautio to answer your questions.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much. Very good questions. Not easy, but I'll do my best to answer. And happy to continue discussion later with more time, because these are very complex issues, so I can only touch on the surface. On internal security, Fra has worked on security-related issues for many years.
So there's nothing new. And we have an excellent cooperation with DG Home. I think people will be surprised to hear that quite recently, for example, looked at the terrorism content online directive, where we had also provided some legal fundamental rights expertise a few years ago. But we looked at the implementation, and we published, I think it was a couple of months ago, maybe, a super sensitive issue. We had very close cooperation with DG Home.
We had a lot of discussions. So although we are very clear about our independence, we do listen to the concerns of the security sector, and I think that's the key to being able to work on this issue. I come from Finland, so to me, it's very natural that you have to work on security and try to uphold the constitutional and fundamental rights. And it's doable, but it does require, you know, interest from both parties, but also to look for practical solutions. In most cases, you can find them.
In some cases, there will be red lines. Then FRAI is not a court. We are also not an executive. In the end, it's the responsibility of the commissioner, member states, and I accept that. And I think that's another reason why we can work, because in the end, we advise, but we don't try to decide or create the policies.
I'll give an example of the encryption, which relates to that is another area where we are working. We have research ongoing. And our research is not academic. It's really very practical. We talk to law enforcement, prosecutors, of course, also academic researchers, but not only.
And those who really have to implement the security-related policies, whether it's terrorism, lawful access to data. It's ongoing work, so there is not yet, and I'm sure you are very well aware, but we are totally embedded in the work that's happening within the innovation lab. So a small group of people is discussing. We have had closed Chatham and rules workshops to really try to get to the bottom. And in the end, we're also now working very closely with COSI, which is the security committee, and the relevant actors.
Think by autumn, we should have our findings ready. And then, of course, the work continues with the road map that the Commission is working on, where we also are observers in preparing. So I think that's a good example. I cannot yet say that we've resolved everything, but for sure, we are looking into every possibility, of course, also with the tech industry. On digitalization, we are working on both the AI Act, where we recently published the high-risk AI reports, of course, following also the recent amendments, adding some elements to the AI Act, but perhaps more importantly, with the Digital Services Act and the related other regulations.
And, of course, we are also doing research about balancing freedom of expression and then, at the same time, taking down illegal or harmful content. We are in particular looking at children, young people in our research. Also, young people as, you know, potential criminals. They're being recruited. I think my colleague mentioned that.
So I think I'll give those examples. Yeah. So we work on access to data with law enforcement, as mentioned, AI by law enforcement as well. We are also working on, of course, organized crime, but FRAI is more looking at victims and especially the online fraud environment where the victims often have nowhere to go and they lose a lot of money. So there we are really hoping to come up with some practical recommendations.
And then we're also working on protection of children against crime, countering terrorism, and then the whole migration asylum, I'm leaving outside. I'm just focusing on the internal security here. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Thank you. And, yes, a great question. So I will pick up on the latter part of your question, which relates to the drug aspect. And you mentioned, you know, the focus on both the organized crime, the security area, and the health. And just to come back to the remit of the agency in the first instance, that balanced approach in terms of how we service both areas is very much so part of the remit of the organization, and indeed, the new drug strategy really calls that out in terms of the balanced framework.
I think focusing on the organized crime aspect and what we are doing here, we do have a very wide program of work in this area. I've mentioned our contribution to the impact priorities, which, again, you know, come into this and are all part of it. And, you know, that's where we work in very strong collaboration with the other justice and home affairs agencies. But what I would like to mention here is our focus on drug market related violence and, in particular, research that we are doing in this area, first of all, to really understand this and monitor it in a much more effective way, and looking at the kind of indicators that we use there. Another area of particular focus is the recruitment of youth into organized crime.
And for a number of years, we've had a program called the Safe Futures Project, which is really around understanding this area, researching it, and looking at what are the vulnerabilities, the social pressures, the structural factors that predispose an individual to be drawn into organized crime. We have established a community of practice to debate this issue and to really, drive the practice in terms of prevention in this area. Another area of focus for us this year is looking at the offline aspect, the online aspect, to look at how social media can be used as a driver to accelerate this as well too. And possibly, I'm out of time in terms of that as well.
Thank you.
Jaroslav Bžoch
Thank you very much, and thank you for being here. I have just one question. It's a general question where we are at the moment with the cooperation of the member states. And the question is aiming like if we are using the whole capacity of the agencies. If not, what should we do?
And I'm also asking because we're gonna have a discussion about the mandates of the agencies, that's the part of the question. Another question is because you mentioned ETIA-centric exit systems. I would like to know your point of view on where we are at the moment and what also has to be done, because we usually talk about the interoperability of the systems, and the discussion is taking quite long years already. So I would like to know your opinion on that. And the last question would be, I probably didn't get it right when you are talking about this screening toolbox.
I just would like to know if it's the agencies or member states or if there is any overlapping, like, what screening the member states are doing and what screening the agencies are doing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Missus Sotia.
Speaker 2
Very good. On the cooperation with member states, as you may know, Fry's is entirely independent. So we're the only ones where member states are not on the management board. So we have had to find other ways. So we have a network of national liaison officers.
We work with the national human rights structures. But I think most importantly, since I started, I set up one structure within the agency, a small sector, 5, 6 people. With the only task to look for partnerships at the member states to ensure that what we have been working on would also be then made available more effectively to the member states selectively, because not every topic is sort of ripe for work at the, but on disability, gender based violence, integrated child protection, we have more and more cooperation, and I think it's a growth area for us. Secondly, I'm setting up another structure June 1 to deal with the Norway grants. We are getting quite some funding from Norway grants, which is helping with our very shrinking budget for operations.
And, we will also include work with enlargement countries there. So the 15 eligible member states and enlargement will be addressed much more systematically using not EU subsidies, but actually external funding. So for sure, those that are eligible, there will be much more concrete advice and activities at the member state level. Capacity of agencies, I can only speak for FRA. I think we are working in full capacity because of the shifting priorities.
The problem is when all staff are permanent and their work is no longer considered higher priority. How do I find a solution to make sure that we have enough, you know, security, AI, digital experts? And then there are some other areas where we don't see as much demand anymore, what to do with that. So it's an issue for management and human resources, but we are doing everything we can, also with internal mobility and retraining. But we are definitely stretched for capacity because there is a lot of demand, it's in new areas.
One thing I should mention, although it's not so maybe relevant to security, the FRA has been very well known for survey work, and this is hugely expensive. So, we are at the moment analyzing, evaluating all our survey work, and we will come up with a much more lean, efficient way of working on data collection in the future because we simply cannot afford to pay, you know, $56,000,000 to one large scale survey. Yes. And screening toolbox, anything we do is, of course, meant for real use. So whether it's EU institutions or member states, so it's toolbox guidance type of activity.
Thank you. Doctor Mohan.
Speaker 5
Thank you very much. I will come to the question of cooperation with member states, first of all. From the European Drugs Agency's perspective, that is absolutely essential to everything we do. Actually, as an organization, we couldn't function without the cooperation of the member states, so that partnership is very much essential to everything. We also work with the retox network of national focal contact points.
And, our monitoring and all of the data in our monitoring program comes from the national focal contact points, and our early warning system is very much so reliant on information that comes from the national focal or from the member states as well. We obviously have a very strong representation of the member states within the management board of the agency as well. So from the governance perspective, that cooperation is there. So you can really see from everything, it is the backbone of what we do, and the trusted and robust connections are absolutely essential. And we work very hard to deepen that partnership as well.
I've mentioned the Retox Network. This year, we have agreed on a new Retox Alliance. So it's a new framework, an enhanced framework for cooperation, working to enhance the monitoring as well. And, you know, in terms of the cooperation, they're deepening that to enhance our capability as well. We also support the member states in relation to responses and interventions, in relation to training capacity, in, you know, best practices, curricula in all of the areas of, like, prevention, treatment, and harm reduction as well there.
And increasingly, another key support that we provide to the member states is our role in policy evaluation. We've launched, we are shortly about to launch a new program called Poldev, which is focusing on tools to assist member states in the design and development of policy frameworks, and importantly, with that as well to how they evaluate those frameworks. So, you know, there's a huge level of cooperation going on there. In terms of capacity of the agency, I don't think you would have any head of agency sitting here telling you they had enough capacity. I think it is a challenge for everybody in the working environment.
Similar to Fra, we work on driving efficiencies, reducing redundancy, greater use of technology and digitalization within the agency. And nonetheless, we still have challenges, particularly in terms of the balance between our work in Europe and managing our international priorities. The drug market is truly global. We have to be active in that space. And also technology itself, in terms of keeping abreast of the pace of advancement, that is a challenge for agencies as well.
I'm overtime, so I'll stop there.
Javier Zarzalejos
It's okay, Doctor Nolan. I have no speaker from ECR, then I give the floor to Renew group, Missus Garcia Vermida Vandervale. Floor is yours.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the speakers and to the agencies for the wonderful work that you are doing for our home affairs and justice cooperation. I listened carefully to the questions and the answer posts. I think they're very relevant. So I would like to focus on a slightly different aspect, and that is the budgetary aspect of the new MFF. We are seeing, obviously, a change in the architecture of the MFF.
Your work is being brought under the national and regional partnership plans. It's also very difficult to compare, at least for me, but maybe you can enlighten us, to compare the real budgets in the new architecture, also because of the thematic facilities for home affairs. So my question has two components. The first one is, could you reflect a little bit on the possible impacts for your work of the new architecture of the MFF? This is to both speakers, by the way.
And the second one is, there has been a slight increase for the other agencies part of the budgets to EUR 6.7 billion for the MFF, not counting the thematic facility. Do you have any estimations of the gap in real terms between the increase and what you foresee to have at the needs for the next MFF? Thank you.
Speaker 2
Excellent question, which will give me a chance to tell about our rather, you know, weak budget situation. First, the current situation. Because of the, you know, increase in costs, I mentioned the surveys, the operational budget of fundamental rights agency has been shrinking. My predecessors still had a luxury of having over 50% at some point. We are now below 20%.
And I'm telling this to the Commission because they have not decreased any of their requests, including for expensive data collection and surveys. So if we don't do large-scale surveys, we will be able to implement the other parts. If we have to do large scale surveys, which we are being asked, for example, in the new racism strategy, they're asking for two expensive surveys, which would be double our annual budget. So obviously, we have to find different solutions for data collection. Then what's in the new architecture?
Of course, I welcome very much the investment in the justice area and civil society as such, and I hope the increases there will be surviving the negotiations. But as regards FRA, there is no foreseen increase at all. So flat budget for us, and it has been the same case since 2017. Although we have a long list of new tasks coming from the AI Act migration pact. I'm happy to provide the long list.
We have analyzed that. We have tried to propose a modest increase for the next few years. I'm still trying to calculate exactly what we cannot do if we don't get any increase. But I think a minimum 5% increase would be needed, especially with staffing. At the end of the day, it's always about expertise and implementation capacity more than funds because in the end, the staff do the work.
So modest increase that we would need would be probably, I don't know, six new posts. But this is for us, it's very small. So in the scale of, you know, money being discussed, our 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 is pretty small. And as my colleague said, we are also really looking into efficiencies. I've stopped quite a few things.
For example, fundamental rights report, I'm renewing it. It'll be done completely internally. No opinions, no translations. I'm looking for savings everywhere, but also because the times are different. Things have to come fast, they have to be shorter and more to the point.
So while we are saving, we are also hopefully increasing the way we work. I'll stop there. But not a good situation, but we will do what we can to deliver within the resources. And as I said, Norway grant is helping a bit because, at least in the 15 eligible, we can do more work with funding from Norway grant. Of course, totally have to separate the two different funding sources.
Thank you. Doctor. Doran?
Speaker 5
Thank you very much for the question, and a good question indeed. And I guess for us, a slightly different position maybe than has been reflected by FRA in terms of what we know is the proposal for the new MFF. We have been, there has been indicated that we will have an increase as well too, for which we are very grateful. But in linking with the last question, you know, although we are a bigger agency than FRA in comparison to some of the other justice and home affairs agencies, our staff numbers of about 140 are relatively modest still as well. So we are counting on the increased budget under the MFF as well, and we really will be looking to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and indeed, the European Council for the support in that regardless of which area it fits under the framework.
I think, you know, from everything I have said in terms of my opening statement, we are dealing with an increasingly complex drug situation in Europe. Challenges are increasingly connected, and it's changing in a very fast-paced way. And if we want Europe to be effective in its response to that, we have to properly resource that as well too. I've mentioned areas in the agency where we can see that the balancing of priorities is challenging for us in terms of the focus of our activities on the European situation. And then we have to build international cooperation, because that is a really key part in terms of the supply reduction elements that we work on.
So we do have to give that priority. Technology is another area. But, again, linking to the question on the member states and the networks, we have the retox network as well, which we contribute funding to, and that helps the member states in terms of their strength, their robustness. We also have a new network of forensic and toxicology laboratories throughout Europe, which is so important in terms of the detection. So it's not just a capacity that we have to have in terms of funding the agency internally.
It's also how we fund those partners in terms of their capabilities to work with us. So an absolutely crucial debate and consultation in relation to the MFF to come, and, I think, really essential for the future of the organization and its effectiveness.
Saskia Bricmont
Good morning. Thank you very much. My apologies for joining you a bit later, but I'm already updated on the discussions you've had earlier. First of all, I want to thank you for your work, for the work of the agencies, which is very important, especially in the current context, and also to come back to what you just touched upon, the budget. It's a bit the elephant in the room, and also in the overall balance between the agencies in the EU spectrum.
And we know it's not only at EU level, but also at national level that judicial sector might be a bit left aside, although we need to enhance the means. So I was wondering if you consider that the current budget allows you to fulfill your missions and how we, based on your previous responses also and the limited capacities, how we can support you further from the parliament side, and also this committee should probably take stronger positions when it comes to the forthcoming MFF discussions. Another question is related to the cooperation, of course, amongst the agencies that is growing. How do you see it in the coming years, especially in the context of the reforms of several agencies? Thank you very much.
Speaker 2
Thank you. Happy to continue to discuss the budget. Of course, the imbalance is there. 49% of the planned budget for agencies goes to Frontex and Europe. So two agencies, 49% for the rest of 49 agencies, and other forms of decentralized activities, 51%.
And I don't know the percentage for FRA, but it's definitely no growth. So it's going to be relatively less from the overall. So clearly, we cannot do everything we have been asked to do. And most of the requests actually come from the commission, the expensive ones. I just mentioned the large scale surveys that FRA has been working on since the last 15, 20 years.
It is very clear that that work cannot continue with the same volume. I set up a survey evaluation and task force last year, also a legal task force, to see how we can do more effective legal analysis, fundamental rights analysis. And we will have the first results in May. But we are looking at, of course, what has been the impact of this many surveys. We do six, seven surveys.
And then what are the possibilities to have more efficiencies, use of AI for analysis, but also whether we should stop some of the surveys because some of the groups have been surveyed repeatedly. ROMA surveyed four times. Commissioner wants yet another one fairly soon, too often from scientific perspective. So I think we really have to also somehow train those institutions that are asking, you know, what is realistic, and also what makes sense. It doesn't make sense to produce expensive million-euro surveys if we have four previous ones without any change, in my view.
I think we should be looking at alternative, cheaper ways of collecting data, also putting much more pressure at the national level on where the work really should happen for data collection. We could help with methodology support. And, of course, we will be doing sort of more targeted surveys. But that's an area where, because of the cost, we clearly will have to decide yes or no. For many other activities, they are not so, let's say, migration, asylum, and internal security.
These are more small-scale, very targeted cooperation activities, which are financially not that difficult. So for sure, we will be saying no to some request. And, you know, price independent, what can they do? In the end, it's our management board who decides, not those who make the request. It's very clear in the regulation.
You can ask all the institutions. You included can ask. Then we look at, you know, priorities, whether they are aligning with the priorities of the EU law and policy from fundamental rights perspective. And then we decide based on the resources that we have. So there's no automation in being able to ask.
And this will be something I need to carefully manage to make sure that we do the right things still and address the right issues.
Speaker 5
Thank you very much. And, again, the discussion on financing is always very welcome. We're in a slightly different position than FRA given that we've had a new mandate and we've had staff increases, and had a budget to support that. And I do think I have to say this morning, very thankful to the Libre committee for the support that you have given us in relation to that. That being said, we are still developing new services and implementing new services.
And I guess as those things evolve, costs do increase. And, we're also mindful of the areas that I have spoken about, you know, where we can already see prioritization of resources is an issue we do have to look at, and we have to monitor carefully. And the issue always is we can do more with a more budget. So, and that is something to keep in mind, particularly in an area like this, which has such an impact on the fabric of the society that we live in as well. There is huge value in the cooperation with the justice and home affairs agencies.
In my earlier answers, I have mentioned how we have strong collaboration with Europol, SEPAL, and Eurojust on Frontex, but we also cooperate with the fundamental rights area agency on fundamental rights relating to drugs, the issue of youth and drugs, and also the issue of gender violence and drugs are just some key examples there as well. We cooperate with the European Institute for Gender Equality when we're looking at the area of gender and drugs, and with the asylum agency in terms of reception areas, reception centers, and we have done some really nice work with the asylum agency in this as well. So I've mentioned it in my opening speech. I really believe in terms of reducing silos and increasing that cooperation, we are much more impactful by working together. And by working together, we also present the opportunity to save costs, because we can reduce overlaps.
And many of the cross-cutting themes that I have spoken about in relation to technology, use of AI, digitalization, these are areas where we can share, and in terms of shared services and how we run the agency. So there is huge opportunity for cooperation there, which, again, also reduces costs, but we need to be able to resource that cooperation as well.
Javier Zarzalejos
I have no speaker in the group on the left and or ESN, so I give the floor to madam Sorel.
Thank.
Malika Sorel
thank you very much, chair. My question is for the executive directors of the EDA. You talked about the health aspect of this. I think it's very important. We agree with that.
And what I wanted to know is whether you're going to encourage countries to launch awareness raising campaigns to alert young people, adults, and families on the dangers for health of using drugs and also about the effects that that can have in terms of organized crime, and blood being spilled. In France, the ministry for the interior, Bruno Rettio, launched a very useful campaign on this, and it raised awareness amongst young people about what drug use actually means on a wider scale. Unfortunately, what didn't last long enough as a campaign, we should have gone further. Could you say a bit more about what you think about how we can stop young people being drawn into drug dealing? They're paid a lot of money to do that, and it's very tempting for them.
And then secondly, in terms of your working groups, could you send us a list of the working groups and how they are made up, and whether there are any members who are part of these working groups? Thank you.
Speaker 5
Thank you very much. I did miss the first part of the question. So if I'm not comprehensive in the answer, please tell me. I think what you were asking me relates to how we alert adults and families and communities on the ground in relation to the harms of drugs and the association with organized crime, if I'm correct. This is a very key focus, our area of us as an organization, and I'll context this in the word of prevention.
And it goes, traditionally, prevention has been more focused on the health area, but increasingly, we are now looking at prevention in the context of organized crime and recruitment into organized crime. With regards to minors and youth recruitment, I think we have two key projects that are in this area that are very strongly researching it. The key points of that research is to really understand the vulnerabilities that predispose individuals to being coerced or into crime, the social and the structural factors that are actually involved. And in understanding those, that's how you get to the heart of preventing. Also, the community of practice that I spoke about continues the debate on this.
It brings together academics, policymakers, and professionals that are working in the field to keep the debate on this area live and stimulated. But a really important program process for us is keeping our connection with civil society and our communities' network projects so that we're working at the municipal level with those communities, really understanding the experience they have in real time and how that is changing. And I also want to make a word to our prevention curriculum, which is a very well established program for training of preventions in the professionals in the health area on the ground. And that is something we are focusing on. This year, we will change 200 professionals.
You mentioned awareness raising, and this year, we are designing a new project to focus on how we can support the member states in terms of awareness raising campaigns on an evidence based basis because that is, for us, so important because we need to look at the practices that work well here and then the development of tools to support the member states in working in this area.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Doctor Nolan. You can add if you want any closing remarks. You have one minute. You
Speaker 5
Also asked me about sending the list of the working groups that the agency had. We will be very happy to follow up with you in relation to that. I think I've probably answered the question, but if there's anything I haven't touched, I'd be happy to take it.
Speaker 2
Final words. Well, I would continue on the need to balance security and justice and ensure that we continue to integrate fundamental rights also within the area of security. Despite all the challenges we have, you know, outside inside the EU, I think we cannot lose the values and rights that are in the treaties and want to just convince that it is possible to combine security fundamental rights when you work together.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. This concludes our item in this session. And I really thank you very much to our guests for their input. I think it's been an extremely fruitful exchange and extremely good for the purpose of the Liebe Committee. Thank you very much.
That is true. That is true. Well, dear colleagues, we will now move on to the item concerning the future of the EU's law enforcement agency, Europol, which is a very important item on our agenda. As you know, the commission has indicated its intention to double Europol's staff and strengthen its mandate and oversight in order to turn it into a truly operational police agency. This will be a key legislative file for the committee.
And let me insist, this will be a key legislative file for this committee and will have profound implications for Europol and its capabilities. The commission has committed to basing this proposal on an evaluation and in-depth impact assessment and a broad consultation of the stakeholders. For today's exchange, we have with us Commissioner Magnus Brunner. We welcome him to outline the commission's ideas ahead of its proposal, expected later this year. It represents a valuable opportunity for our committee to raise questions and provide its own views on the future of this important agency.
So I'm very pleased to pass the floor to Commissioner Brunner for an initial presentation of up to 8 minutes, I would say. Eight minutes.
Magnus Brunner
However long you want me to speak, Mr. Chair. Thanks very much, Chair, and good morning to everyone. And you are right. I mean it's especially, I think, important for us also in this moment to hear your views, of course, and that's why we're discussing.
To hear your views, what do you think Europol of the future in the next years has to be able to do? How operational? Because we're always talking about being truly operational. What is it about? What do you expect from Europoold?
So we are here also, and mainly to listen to you. And of course, we also listen to the member states, altogether. We had a lot of discussions in the last weeks already with the member states to hear what their view is. And the good news, and what we hear from the member states and also from you, is that Europol is actually a sort of truly European success story. That's what we hear everywhere when we talk to law enforcement in the member states, when we talk to the member states themselves.
Everyone is very positive about Europol. And now it's time to go forward, of course, and to align the possibilities of Europol also with the challenges we face. And the challenges, of course, change almost every day, I would say, the moment. So it's about cooperation on the one hand. It's about information exchange.
That's the second important point. It's, of course, also about sharing resources. Money is often of the essence, I would say. And it's all about money, especially in economic times like these. We have a lot of this also, I think, something we have to talk about.
We have a lot of very good examples on which we can build. Good examples from Europol, a most recent one we just had a couple of days ago, actually, with where there was a hint from Poland, which then led to a Europol coordinated approach with Belgium, with Czechia, with Germany, Netherlands, Poland, of course, where the hint came from. So where Europol, together with the member states, were able to close down 24 synthetic drug laboratories across the whole Schengen area and arrest more than 20 suspects. So just to give you an example on how this cooperation and this collaboration with member states works very well. And this also, well, this example I just mentioned actually proves one point also, that yes, we can have open borders.
We can have, of course, and should have open borders and should have open societies also in within Europe, but only if our authorities are actually empowered to work together. And only then, I think, open borders also requires open channels of cooperation. And that's, as I said in the beginning, that's true, that was true yesterday, but it's even more true today as, of course, the world changes, as I said, almost every day. Maybe this week, we are focusing on threats coming from the war in The Middle East. Maybe last week, it was something which had to do with hybrid attacks somewhere.
And maybe tomorrow, it's a link to those threats. So that changes almost every week. What we know for sure is that we will face those threats much better, of course, if we can act as one European Union, if we can act together with the right tools on the one hand, with the right degree also of coordination and also the right level of ambition, of course, also. So that's why we want to strengthen Europol, of course, and that is at the heart of our work on internal security. Europol and the revision of Europol's mandate is one of the key elements of our internal security strategy, also.
From fighting organized crime on the one hand to international cooperation, new firearms rules, we just presented a counterterrorism agenda, which we just presented. So all this, together with the Europol mandate, that is what's at the heart of our internal security strategy. As I said in the beginning, we have carefully listened to the member states, to you, to key stakeholders also, altogether. And on this basis, of course, not going into detail now because we have to discuss it in the weeks to come, but we see, on a general level, four priority areas of action. One key priority is to close the information gap.
That is key. I think investigations altogether are sometimes or mainly too fragmented across the borders from one member state to another. Too often, we are sitting in different rooms with different information. It's like a puzzle when you have a puzzle and the three people are sitting in three different rooms with all having three one-third of the puzzle in their hands, and they can't connect it actually. So connecting those puzzle parts, I think, is key.
And when in the time where we sit in different rooms, the criminals, of course, are sitting together and can operate seamlessly across Europe. So I think we need Europol to become a real information hub, I would say, only then I think member states can connect their systems and connect these puzzle pieces I was mentioning. When you have burglary gangs, for instance, coming to the European Union and they sort of cross traveling across the member states and cross borders, that's an example. And this requires, first, making information sharing actually the default option, and also automating it in a way throughout the European Union. And all that actually in order to allow the investigators to see the links also between the different cases much faster.
That is key. The secondly, I think Europol needs to move from a rather system based on exchange messages to a joint case analysis. And as a third point, within this closing the information gap priority, I think we need to align Europol's data protection framework with that of the other EU agencies and of law enforcement in the member states so that they can all operate actually on the same framework. A second priority is to bring Europol's operational support in a way closer to investigators. That's, in our view, the second key point.
We hear it every time, actually, when we engage with law enforcement. More and more, they depend on actually Europo's analytical capabilities and their specialized expertise. So Europol is already operating, I would say, quite close to their limits. And at the same time, few law enforcement officers actually in the member states are probably aware of the full sort of range of possibilities Europol has, and that the capacities Europol can provide are, of course, limited. So there's scope to give more support to the member states, but only if the member states actually know that this support is available.
And of course, then, as I said, Europol has the capacity also to provide it. As a third main point, it's sort of the technological part. We are in a technological arms race against organized crime. And organized crime, as we all know, acts more and more sophisticated, more and more international, also more and more across borders. They are, in the meantime, multinational corporations, I would say, some with their own IT departments using artificial intelligence, encryption, drones, submarines, even.
And with new technologies also coming up like quantum computing, which is almost around the corner, I think there will be even more, this arms race will be even more intensive, I would say. So we think with the revision, we need Europol to take the lead, I would say, when it comes to winning this technological arms race. And then finally, we need to, I think, expand our network within the European Union, within the framework of agencies also. I think cooperation or more intense cooperation with Eurojust, with the EPPO, I think, would be important, actually essential. There are too many challenges we face at the moment to allow for inefficiencies, also. So more to be more efficient, more effective also within the agency group, I would say, is important.
But also when it comes to cooperation with international partners, that is key. We have already concluded a number of new working arrangements between Europol and also international partners, Brazil, for instance, Ecuador. But I think we need to expand these international partnerships. And coming back talking about Brazil, coming back to the sort of internal cooperation with agencies, I think also there is room for improvement, I would say. We had the situation that when the negotiations took place between Europe, Poland, and Brazil, we also had in parallel negotiations between Eurojust and Brazil.
And the Brazilians told us, oh, that's good to see you. But last week, we had the Eurojust people with us, which just doesn't make sense, I would say. So, but that was a year ago. And I think that has changed, and the cooperation between Europol and Eurojust is, of course, much better now. But I think we can improve that in the future as well.
So this is important, I would say, that not only whether the relationships, of course, the present relationships are going to be better and being reevaluated also. So those are the four priorities on substance. Maybe two points to add at the end. Sorry, I was too long now, Chair. But maybe just two points.
I think, of course, we need to invest in Europe. We need to invest in the people. The expertise, I think, is one of Europo's greatest assets. And now, of course, we also, I think, have to concentrate. That has to be our goal, not to concentrate talent in one place, but to help sort of to spread out the talents and the skills across the European law enforcement community. And I think we need to integrate Europol also into the maybe into the career cycles, I would say, of national law enforcement.
And secondly, for all of this, it's, of course, always about money. It's about resources. And I know we're going to discuss it on different levels in the next months. But we, as a commission, have proposed to double Europol's budget. I think that is necessary.
But of course, that's a question of priority also. What we saw in the last years and what you always actually also see that way because you always give the discharge to the directors of Europol that the money is actually used in a very effective and efficient way. That's also what the auditors always say, that's, of course, good news. But we have to be also realistic when money is tight. Everything is a priority.
We are, of course, aware of that. But I think there, with Europol, I think the money is used in a very effective and efficient way. So thank you very much. I'm sorry to be so long.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Commissioner. I think the subject is worth some extra time. And now I open the floor for the group representatives, starting with EPP, Messer Tove. There will be two minutes for answers for questions and two minutes for answers from the commissioner. Mr.
Tobe, the floor is yours.
Tomas Tobé
Thank you, Cher, and thank you, commissioner, for being here. As we all know, organized crime is a major threat to our security across Europe. And we also know that the criminal networks operate across the union. They do not care about the borders between the member states. In my home country, Sweden, yes, the government has taken a lot of new initiatives.
And yes, we can see the results. Yes, we can see that shootings from gang criminals are now down 50%. But we can still assess that right now, we have about 600 criminals who are directing serious organized crime against Sweden from abroad. And this leads me to the conclusion that, of course, we need a much stronger European response. And I do appreciate the commissioner's introduction because I do think it is important that the commission puts an updated Europol proposal on the table that actually addresses this and, as commissioner said yourself, moves things forward.
But I would like to be very clear from the EPP group. We really want to see a truly operational Europol, because we are convinced that this is needed. And therefore, my question is, in your assessment, Commissioner, what are the new capabilities and powers that are actually needed to make Europol more operational? Because I think we have an opportunity now, and I would urge the commission, don't listen too much to the hesitations of some member states, and make sure that we have a proposal that we can also be largely supported here in the European Parliament. Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Yeah. That is always an interesting question. What do we mean with truly operational? And what we don't, I start with the negative part or the defensive part, I would say. What we don't mean with truly operational is that Europol is like a European FBI turning up at your door and saying, hey, I'm from the no.
So no. That's not the case. That's not what we want. What we mean with operational and truly operational is that I think we need to move the agency beyond a purely analytical role. It was purely analytical so far, well, mainly, not just but mainly.
And we should move that role towards a stronger focus on operational support for the member states. Because what is it about? What is the job? The job is to support the member states and the law enforcement in the member states. So when it comes to the technical support, for instance, moving from sort of more bilateral messages, which we had maybe so far, to working together on a common digital platform.
For example, I was just in Munich a couple of weeks ago, meeting the Munich police, the Bavarian police there. And we have some very good examples. Burglar groups moving from Spain across France through Belgium and Germany, then hitting houses actually along their journey, so traveling through Europe. And to put the pieces together of the different member states in one place, I think that is key, and that's what we mean with being more operational, and, in the end, truly operational. So no European FBI, but working together and supporting the member states and sharing the different things they learned, the learnings on the one hand, but also the data, of course, that goes with it.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, commissioner. Senor Lopez Aguilar, two minutes for you.
Answers questions.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
Thank you, chair. Thank you, commissioner Bruno, for your presentation and for the will of this proposal of enhancing and strengthening Europol. Many of us here, certainly members of S and D, have always been convinced that freedom and liberty have to be in balance with security, and that's the purpose to which the strengthening of Europol and the new mandate and the new regulation should actually serve. And, of course, we endorse it beforehand. But I have some specific questions.
First, it's only obvious that when it comes to organized crime, which is the crime of the present day, it's drug trafficking. Almost every form of organized crime has some kind of link with truck trafficking. And the main problem when it comes to being effective against truck trafficking, let's face it, is that truck trafficking somehow infiltrates law enforcement agencies and police forces. And, of course, there are internal security and internal affairs departments in every law enforcement agency and police department all across Europe. But is there something that you have in mind that the strengthening of Europol could do actually to strengthen that so-called internal affairs dimension, so that we prevent infiltration and corruption across the law enforcement agencies and police departments all across Europe with the involvement of Europol.
Is there anything that any added value that Europol could contribute to that good purpose of preventing corruption in police forces, when it comes to combating drug trafficking, which is a major thing in all of the member states? You know what we're talking about. You also have it in mind. Then a second question, of course, we are concerned about Europol's fulfillment of its fundamental rights mandate. That for sure.
But you have already addressed the question of truly operational agency in Europol. But the thing is that there is also in the political guidelines and in the internal security strategy a point made as to the better cooperation of Europol with other agencies. Just in the previous point in the order of the day of this Libya committee, we addressed a number of agencies. Do you have some specific point in order to enhance Europol communication and cooperation with other agencies, namely Eurojust and the fundamental rights agency? Those are my questions for you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. You, senior Robert Jagdara. Gracias, comisioner Brunner.
Magnus Brunner
Yeah. Thank you very much. Maybe starting with the drugs part. Yes, Europol already plays an important role but has to play an even more important role. And yes, what are we doing in that respect?
For instance, if you look at the drugs strategy they are and also the port strategy because they are linked with each other. And, Europol will be there, that's in our strategy, to play a more important part when it comes to background checks, for instance, in ports. That is important also to fight the drug traffickers, which come mainly through the ports. And that's also where we have the international cooperation with the Latin Americans, for instance, as I mentioned, Brazil and others. And I was in Colombia at the drugs summit, I would say, where we also had a big and strong presence of Europol because they are the cooperation with third countries.
That's what I meant in the beginning, working together with third countries is key. In our EU action plan against drug trafficking, Europol is actually already responsible for the implementation of some actions, I think 10 altogether, including measures addressing the online sale of drugs. That's one thing. But also, as I said before, the maritime drug trafficking where the ports then come into play. So in drugs trafficking, fighting drugs trafficking, Europol will play a more important role.
And also in the strategies, as I lined out, they are also already included. The cooperation with the other authorities and other agencies, especially, what we want to do is strengthening the cooperation between Europol and the two EPPO is one and Eurojust. You mentioned that. With Eurojust, together with my colleague Michael McGrath, of course, because he's responsible for that, we actually aim to ensure a better European coordination altogether. That has not always been the case in the last years.
I was mentioning this Brazilian example. But this is much better now. So that should be a better cooperation, a better European cooperation and coordination of prosecution services, actually altogether. And then it's also about enhancing the information sharing possibilities, be it by an automatic system, an automated indirect hit, no-hit system, that could be explored as well. So cooperation, I think, is key.
It makes everything more efficient and more effective. And that's also important when it comes to money and when it comes to the budget of Europol, but also, of course, of the other agencies like Eurojust.
Fabrice Leggeri
Thank you very much, Chair. I will speak in French. Thank.
Thank you very much indeed, Commissioner Brunner, for your comments. You talked about Europol that needed to be operational and provide support to member states. Thank you, Commissioner, for your comments. You talked about your objectives with regard to Europol. You talked about an agency that should be operational and support the work of the member states.
That's an objective that I welcome. You also talked about the need to cooperate under international agreements, and my group supported these initiatives, and my colleague who was the rapporteur for a number of these agreements. I wanted to come back to some of the problems we've observed today. You talked about the information gap. We need to ensure that information can be shared in a more fluid manner between National Services, Europol, and the different agencies.
My first question is how can we free up Europol from the administrative burden, the red tape, which the agency is dealing with? And I'm thinking particularly about the European Data Protection Supervisor issues, which put a stop to cooperation between Europol and others in several different areas. Now I'm thinking about applying the principles behind the omnibus regulation to the justice and home affairs issue. So how could we make good use of Europol's reform to do this? Secondly, will we have the option to have a complete overarching review of all the cooperation architecture between the different files, the interoperability of the different files between the member states and the EU?
Can we integrate the customs issues when the customs authority is created? Furthermore, we've seen there are some gaps, loopholes. We have to ensure that legally speaking, this interoperability is possible, but we also have to ensure that it's technically possible as well. Then my last question, will there be an option to make Europe more resilient when faced with terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, and hybrid threats of all nature? Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Sorry. Yes, thank you very much. When it comes to cutting red tape, this is, of course, well, important everywhere, and we are working on a sort of home affairs omnibus. We don't know whether it has to be an omnibus or whether it can be sort of in all the different parts. But it's about the substance, and it's about cutting red tape.
So it's not about if we talk about whatever data protection and all that, that is, of course, important. But it's not about giving up data protection. It's about getting more aligned, I would say, with other institutions, with other agencies, also. And what I also learned from Europol in different meetings is that it is also important to get rid of irrelevant data sometimes. That was quite interesting.
But, of course, the guys and the experts from Europol will know more about that. But getting rid of irrelevant data and concentrate on the data you actually need, it also has to do with cutting red tape and concentrate on the really and also distinguish between important data and not so important data and maybe even, as I said, getting rid of some data you don't need. The second part, close coordination, I think, with the forthcoming customs authority is key, of course. That will have the primary responsibility for detecting drugs at the external borders. So pretty obviously, there, a cooperation between Europol then on the internal side and at the border with the customs service is key and is key for the next mandate as well.
Yeah.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. And now I give the floor to the ECR Group. Missus Kanko, the floor is yours.
Assita Kanko
Thank you very much, chair, and thank you, commissioner Bruno, for your presentation and your answers to the questions here already. You said in your speech that Europol is a European success story, and I totally agree. Together, we are all also aware of the fact that there are still a lot of challenges, especially when we look at what is going on in our cities regarding crime, organized crime, and cross border crime, terrorism, all kind of threats that actually have a serious impact in the daily lives of people, but also in how in the way in which our police forces have to operate, beings severely under pressure. I gave examples of, we know, Brussels, Antwerp, what is happening in our country regarding drugs. We have so many drugs also in schools.
It is destroying society in general. So, of course, we welcome, strongly welcome the idea of improving police, especially Europol, and also the way in which you highlighted that we will improve cooperation to fight to tackle such crime. And to achieve that, I have a couple of questions for you. First, you rightly stressed the fact that we need more integration and more information sharing. I would like you to elaborate on how this will be translated into the upcoming Europol proposal to achieve to avoid silos and achieve more efficiency while protecting the data and within the framework that we have.
And second, you also explained more about how Europol would become truly operational. And there, I would like you to clarify how do you see the complementarity between such a new Europol and our national police forces? How is that going to work? Because, of course, the goal is to strengthen Europol to bring that success story to the next level, but the goal is not to replace our police forces. So in that dynamic, maybe you can highlight.
And next is about the resources. Of course, Europol will need in that capacity more resources, and we already know that in our local and national police, there is already a big struggle to attract new people because the job is just not very attractive. Nobody wants to be punched every day just for the job that you're doing, and police are under severe forms of violence. And, also, they ask really for better cooperation. They cannot find people easily enough.
How are we going to improve the attractiveness? And I'm going to conclude here. Don't worry. Please. But this is it, you said earlier it was important that we have enough time to speak.
I'm just going to add one question here. In the model of cooperating currently with Europol more in a coordinating role, how is the role of Europol in that model in the interaction with the member states going to be in the new framework that you are intending to work on? Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. Information exchange, starting with your first question and maybe, a concrete example, also there, what we mean with that. We have the EU regulation on explosive precursors. And there, via this EU regulation, national authorities receive notifications from online and offline shops and also from companies, from Internet companies, on the purchases, on the suspicious purchases, in this case of chemicals, which can be then misused to make homemade explosives.
And such notifications allow, actually, the national authorities to start investigations into terrorists and also criminals that are trying to manufacture these homemade explosions. And the system has actually delivered very good results, quite tangible results, contributing to dismantling actually several different illegal bomb-making facilities in the European Union. So this is what we actually mean with this information sharing part. Europol is there to how should put it? We all of us are there to help the people in the citizens in Europe.
And Europol is there to help the national police. And Europol has to help the national police making use of all its services. As I said in the beginning, sometimes the national police forces don't even know exactly what sort of the possibilities are of Europol, and that's what we have to tell the national police probably in a better way. And Europol also, I think, has to go to the member states and train the national police there. That's something where we can also support the national police.
And, also, a third point is that we could invite national police officers to Europol, to take part in different missions, I would say, and to learn more about the different things at Europol and then for them to return to their member states and bring the things they learned, their experience then back home. About the attractiveness, yes, that's a very good point, I would say, and the difficult point also to answer because we cannot fix all the challenges of attractiveness, I would say, of police as an employer also, but we can help the member states in building the police sort of building their possibilities and building the police resources also in a better way. But we can't actually make it on a national level more attractive. But the cooperation, I think, is one of the possibilities to make it more attractive. So the cooperation that Europol is is more present in the member states to support them, but also maybe the possibility for national police officers to come to Europol, get experience there, and exchange with other national police officers.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, commissioner. Now renew group, Missus Bill Mess. You have the floor.
Sophie Wilmès
Thank you, chair. I will speak in French, so you have time to take your headphones. Commissioner,
Thank you very much indeed for your intervention and for your commitment to Europol, because it's true that European citizens expect Europe to protect them. That's true. They expect protection from international conflict, and that's what's occupying the headlines at the moment. But they also expect to be protected from criminality, which is in our streets, our neighborhoods, even if the criminal minds are no longer restricted to national borders. So criminality is becoming more international, and a national approach is no longer functional, and that's why acting on a European level makes more sense.
So our priority when looking at legislation should be to strengthen Europol. But I believe, on the one hand, in the institution itself, but also in its mandate, its scope for activity. Now you talked about the technological challenges. We know that criminal networks are very creative. We often get the impression that they are always one step ahead of us.
So if we want to keep up, Europol has to have the necessary tools. You talked about a puzzle when you talked about the criminals. And yes, you're right. So I'd like to hear a little bit more about AI, because when used properly, it offers considerable options to tackle massive amounts of data, to detect patterns, and speed up investigations. So I'd like to hear a little bit about AI, but I think it's also worth looking at the added value on a societal level.
You didn't mention the AI in your introductory comments, so it'd be good to hear a little bit about that. Second point, the very nature of the threats. We're talking about hybrid threats, which are a lot harder to identify, to pin down. We've seen that with drones in Belgium. So I'd like to hear more specifically about what you're suggesting about how we can adapt our activity or Europo's activity, and how the new mandate for Europo could tackle these new threats?
Magnus Brunner
Thank you very much. You're perfectly right. I didn't mention the digital part and the AI part, which is which is true and which is, of course, incredibly important. And we saw that in all our meetings also. For instance, there's this high-level group on access to data for effective law enforcement.
And they're actually experts, of course, as you mentioned as well, the experts called for strengthening both Europol's digital forensic capacities, and also Europol's capacity to pool the resources, there, the knowledge, the expertise. And then that's what the member states actually called for, then member states can share solutions and also the different digital forensic tools. So this is important. I've been visiting police agencies actually to learn more about their needs, also because it's about the practical needs they have. And also we heard in the past weeks this wish every we heard this wish everywhere we actually went.
And AI is a key factor there, I would say. We have, I think, a very good framework in place when it comes to the AI Act. Now I think we need to make sure that our law enforcement and also the judiciary can also use it, that they can actually be able to use the AI. As you mentioned, the criminals are already using it. And without it, we would be, of course, even more steps behind the criminals.
And to give you an example where I think it is really important to use it, that's illicit financial flows. I think in the financial parts, the digital part and the AI part altogether can play a very important role. Today, and that was also surprising for me today, financial intelligence units get PDF documents still, which is ridiculous in a way. They get PDF documents from banks when banks notify suspicious transactions somewhere, and that is just not, that's outdated a little bit to be very polite. So definitely, AI will play.
And with the help of AI, actually, we can, I think, speed this up to come away and get away from these sort of paperwork and PDF documents? So we can speed this up and go after the money more also effectively and follow the money, go after the money, I think, is important. So that's the AI part. And when it comes to the digital forensic part to support the member states there, we also want to strengthen the deployment of digital forensic experts to actually help the member states there as well. And also investment in enhancing decryption capabilities.
That is also important to keep, actually, to keep pace with all the technological developments we see, and also factoring in research on quantum cryptography is important there. So the AI part, yes, sorry, I forgot that in my introductory note. And then the hybrid threats part, sorry, but two important questions, of course. That's a significant challenge, of course, from undersea cable, infrastructure, energy grid, all that is, of course, under stress at the moment. And I think member states want, and that's also what I heard in the last weeks, they want more support for fighting hybrid threats.
I think Europe will provide that in the future also. For this, I think two points are key. First of all, I would see the role of Europol there in rather maybe creating a digital platform where member states' authorities can actually truly cooperate and also put together the puzzle pieces I was mentioning in the beginning. And secondly, also strengthening Europol's capabilities to cooperate with the private sector. I think this is also could also be a part of the new mandate, sector cooperation, so that it can also include that very important part of the picture in a way in all the analysis they are doing.
So the private part, I think, is also important when it comes to fighting hybrid threats. Sorry.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, commissioner. Now the group of the Greens, Madame Brigmont.
Saskia Bricmont
Thank you very much. Dear commissioner, thank you for being here and talking with us about this important topic. And you asked us what's a Europol of the future. Well, I think we share the idea that it's a key component of the justice and home affairs architecture, and also of police cooperation in the EU, but also at international level. You touched upon key areas: data protection, the operational support to close investigations.
And I think there, of course, drug trafficking and criminality related to this area will be key in the coming future, but also without losing focus on other priorities, of course, and this is always the risk when there's a lot of growing attention to one sector. Also, the race of technologies and that Europol can provide support to national police on this matter and the expansion of the youth network, very key areas, I think. But a Europol of the Future is also an agency that is operating in a legal framework that is embedded in principles such as necessity and proportionality, and also the full respect of fundamental rights and EU law. You will soon come with the third reform in 5 years. I'm somehow relieved.
I don't have to ask again for an evaluation and an impact assessment because this was not available for the previous reforms. I'm quite happy to see it's coming. Can you tell us what's the agenda when we will receive the evaluation to prepare? Also, I'm wondering how Europol is coping with these different and successive reforms. It will be about time to also lift the agency the time to implement the this reform, the previous reforms already, and also to perform its tasks.
We've already discussed this many times, but we also think that enhanced powers for the agency also mean enhanced democratic scrutiny and oversight. So what are the commission's plans in that view? And coming to the expansion of the EU network, cooperation with the other agencies, we also think it's key. You mentioned EPPO and Eurojust. We also just had exchanges with the EUDA and the FRA.
We know that the budget share is 49% for Europol and Frontex, and the other DRA agencies have to share the rest of the cake altogether. So I think from our committee, there is a strong willingness to also increase the budget of all the agencies to make them able to fully cooperate with Europol, but also to fulfill their own missions. Chair, do I have time for one more? Yes.
Great.
Just one more, very briefly.
Saskia Bricmont
Thank you. So Europol of the future is also, you said it, in alignment with and between the data protection frameworks. But I want to stress that this has to be without undermining data protection safeguards, also in full respect of data subjects' rights.
Javier Zarzalejos
Madame Brigmont, that should be a question, not a statement. So please, yeah.
Yeah. We want.
In your question.
Saskia Bricmont
So my question is, is the commission willing to also enhance and support the EDPS, contrary to what we've heard previously from the far right, but to also strongly support EDPS work in this sense. Thank you.
Thank you, madam. Commissioner.
Magnus Brunner
Yeah. It was a bit of a line between the statement and the question, but you're right, of course. And I think it's important to hear your statement actually because that's what we have to build on. So, thank you. Thank you for that.
You were mentioning the lawful and proportionate way of using the possibilities also of Europe, and I totally agree with you there. We definitely need to ensure Europe's security in a lawful and proportionate way. That's pretty obvious and in full respect of the fundamental rights, of course, and also of a sort of democratic accountability that goes with it. Coming to your question on the evaluation report, I would say that comes up with the proposal of the new mandate of Europe. So in June, we will come up with the evaluation.
The budget part, of course, yes, that is, I totally understand. In our proposal, of course, I'm only sort of in charge of the agencies I'm dealing with. But there is an increase also in other budgets, well, in our proposal, like SEPOL, for instance. But, of course, yes, you're right. You the Europol increase is much higher.
That was our sort of perception of the situation where the needs are bigger. But yes, it's always, of course, possible to discuss maybe to give more to the one agency, less to the other. Yes. But I think the Europol needs and what we hear today also and what we hear from the discussions with the member states, the needs for Europol to double, that's our proposal, to double the budget there, I think, is key and is actually needed because of the challenges, the new challenges we face at the moment. So, yeah, budget, it's difficult to, you know, sort of have a different view on what we actually proposed in the in the MFF.
But, yes, the Europol increase is bigger than maybe in some other parts, but we think it's the right way forward.
Giuseppe Antoci
Thank you very much, Chairman. Good morning to you, Commissioner Bruno. It's always a pleasure to have you here to speak to us. I wanted to thank you for the commitment that you've shown over the last few months, particularly when it comes to strengthening the agency, which we feel is central when it comes to combating organized crime. Europol, of course, I mean.
And we know that you are commissioner at a very important time for the legislature, which will be looking at transnational organized crime. An awful lot of agreements have been reached. There was one recently with Ecuador, for example, and we know that you and your team are working very hard on looking at the rules and the legislation that we have for cross-border organized crime. And I think that in September or October, we'll be seeing a proposal on that. So, at the moment, you have a lot on your shoulders.
We think we're at a watershed moment. There's going to be a before and an after with respect to the legislation on this particular issue on the proposal you're working on. What I'd like to know is, what do you feel about crypto chat and the balance between protecting privacy and the work to be done on encrypted charts, but also on cryptocurrencies. One of the main tools, which we need, is how is a way of dealing with that illegal monetary flows. I think it's also important to remember how strong Europol needs to be in its work with Eurojust and the EPPO.
Do you think in terms of the agreements that we've reached over the years, unfortunately, a lot of them are not hugely effective, but do you think that during this parliament, we could make them more effective? We know that there's a huge difference, for example, within these agreements when it comes to the transfer of data. So there we are. That's what I have for you today. Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're right. We are going to present the new rules fighting organized crime in autumn.
This will be really important, I would say, as you know, perfectly well, of course, better than we do. Coming back to your questions. First of all, the access to data question. And it's always also the question how we can actually improve the lawful access to data, also with the revision of the Europol mandate. I think on a more general level, without lofi axis, data cannot be effectively used for the operational purposes.
And there are two key dimensions, I would say, in this regard. One is the technical part, the technical dimension. So I think strengthening Europol's capabilities also in the digital forensic is key, including the tools and also the expertise, which is necessary to ensure this lawful access to data. And secondly, it's about lawful access to information also. And there, I think, building on the existing legal framework rather than starting from scratch, while addressing also the persistent obstacles we face that limit access to relevant information for these purposes, for these investigative purposes.
When it comes to cryptocurrencies, this is really key, and that's what we learn almost every day. I just visited the, what is it called? The complexity hub. Thank you. The Complexity Hub in Vienna.
It's a sort of, yes, what is it? It's university instrument where they focus, and that's what I wanted to tell you, where they focus also on how to use intelligence and also AI in order to, yes, fight the illegal transfers of cryptocurrencies because cryptocurrencies more and more go into the organized crime dimension. And we also, in that respect, are working together with the cryptocurrency businesses because they want to have rules. The ones who are really serious, of course, want to have rules. And we just next week, I think, I have a video conference with some of the cryptocurrency businesses in order to hear from them what they can actually do to help us altogether to strike down these illicit transfers of money with cryptocurrencies.
I think cryptocurrencies will be really key because more and more we see a shift towards cryptocurrencies when it comes to the financing of organized crime. Sorry, the third country dimension, you mentioned in the last part of your question and counterterrorism, I think, was the yes, and Europol's role there. I think Europol plays a key role in the European Union's counterterrorism architecture by supporting the member states through different things. Information exchange is one, analytical parts, analysis, and also operational coordination. And under the current legal framework, the exchange of personal data with third countries is subject to international agreements, of course, ensuring a high level of, I would say, legal certainty also and also of data protection.
And in the long term, we need to enable, I would say, more flexible and also secure information exchanged with trusted third country partners, of course, always fully respecting the European Union's data protection, also the fundamental rights standards. So yes, being a bit more flexible and on our cooperation with the trusted third-country partners, I think, is key for the future.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, commissioner. Now I will give the floor to the members who have requested the floor for the second round. I will group all the interventions. There will be just one minute, and then I will give back the floor to the commissioner for his concluding remarks. So, mister Leners, you have one minute.
Jeroen Lenaers
Yes. Thank you very much, and dear commissioner Bruno, thank you also for presenting the four main ideas for the revision of the Europol mandate, which I fully support. When it comes to the information gap and closing it, of course, we've had the recent experience with the revision of the mandate for human trafficking and migrant smuggling, where sort of a more encouraging language for member states to actually share information was not acceptable to the member states. So how do you see this will now go with the new mandate? And secondly, how would you also include private partners in this?
I think the amount of data, the amount of information at private partners is also crucial. Second question, on fully operational, if I'm not mistaken, now about 10% of capacity at Europol goes to oversight and control. If we're now going to double the staff at Europol, how we're gonna make sure that this actually leads to more police work and not to more paperwork.
Charlie Weimers
Thank you, chair. My office has spoken directly with practitioners across the chain, from all over Europe, police, prosecutors, customs, judges, specialist units, and EU level actors working on organized crime. And the message is consistent. Europe does not mainly lack powers on paper. It lacks execution in practice.
We all know the bottlenecks, information that still doesn't reach the right authority fast enough. Digital evidence is too slow to preserve, route, and use across borders. Financial investigations and asset recovery remain too weak, and so on. So the question is, my questions are, if Europol is to become a real information hub, then what does that mean in practice? Are we talking about faster case linking, better intelligence sharing, more usable support for investigators?
If operational support is to come closer to investigators, how is that going to happen? Faster case support, better specialist assistance, better joint analysis. And let me mention one final point, asset recovery. If criminal money keeps moving, organized crime keeps regenerating. Thanks.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Thank you, commissioner. Thank you for coming here today, and thank you for coming to us for inspiration on what it means to be truly operational. I understand what you don't want to see in European FBI, but I'm happy to provide ideas on how it could be truly operational. And one area of the mandate is very important, and that is corruption investigations. If I look at the working program of Europol for the next three years, I see that there's a lot of attention to supporting national authorities in corruption investigations.
But we have a problem when national authorities interfere in corruption investigations. And I do think that Europol, like EPPO does, should have increased powers to intervene in a more proactive way and not necessarily only on request of national authorities, especially when it covers the financial interests of a union. On efficiencies, I am a member myself of the joint scrutiny group, and I also believe that with a strengthened mandate, we need to have strengthened oversight just like, President von der Leyen said at the beginning of the mandates. And, I would like to hear from you if you have any ideas on how to improve the efficiency of the joint scrutiny group because I sometimes have the feeling that it's a bit of a repetition of sets as we see in Liebe, and I think that we could all do better. Thank you.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you for allowing this cash DI to happen despite the time constraints. Dear Mr. Commissioner, we completely share Europol's and the Commission's concerns about the operational efficiency, and we want to help address them in this revision in the best way possible. For instance, we've seemed to hear from Europol and the EDPs that the EDPs' prior consultation process under Article 39 can be a real burden operationally. But what we are trying to understand better in this case is that there's already another urgent procedure available under Article 39, Paragraph three.
This was introduced back in 2022 under this revision, precisely designed to provide faster turnaround in time-sensitive situations. But from what we know, this procedure has not really been used yet. So could you help us understand what the barriers to using it in practice have been? Because if we can identify them and address them in this revision, that could be a much more targeted and effective solution than removing the prior consultation process. Thank you very much.
Malika Sorel
Just let you put your headphones on, commissioner. There we are. Could you tell us about the state of the terrorist threat in EU countries? Which countries are most at risk, and what kinds of threats do they face? Secondly, do you think the better coordination and better information exchange and better visibility for Europol would have prevented the butter clan attacks in Paris, which caused 100 deaths?
The terrorist came from Belgium. And then thirdly, you talked about what's going on with Brazil and two European agencies, one falling after the other. That doesn't seem too serious, and I think that shows that there is some overlapping of activities. We're seeing an increase in the number of agencies, and I think that undermines our effectiveness and our credibility. It also, I think, calls into question the way that taxpayers' money is being used.
What is your opinion on that, commissioner? So as I say, more services, more agencies, and less efficiency.
Javier Zarzalejos
The floor goes back to you for your answers and your concluding remarks.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you very much, Chair. Was busy in noting and getting all the things right, but I do my best to answer, of course, the question. If I don't answer all the questions in very detail, please, maybe we can afterwards exchange a little bit because there was one question where I think you asked, well, we have to go in a sort of technical detail a little bit, and I'm very happy to do that, of course, and to share that later also with our expert. But the things I realized and I sort of noted, hopefully correctly, the private industry part, a very important question, I think, because we see that the cooperation with the platforms also is really key, the digital platforms, online platforms, because the online component is growing, of course, as we all know. So strengthening Europol's cooperation with the private sector, with the private industry to be able to receive on the one hand, but also then to process and share the data in an effective way and directly with and from also the private parties to actually facilitate then the cooperation in fighting crimes and terrorism online, which by now, of course, as I said, virtually all have an online component.
That is, I think, really key. And that's why we have a focus on also working together between the member states on the one hand, and the platforms, the online platforms, on the other hand. We just had our EU Internet Forum also a week ago, where we brought together the online platforms, the private industry, the Metas and Googles of the world, together with the member states to find solutions how we can cooperate because there is, I would say, room for improvement there as well. Mr. Weimers, yes, exactly.
I would say yes to all the examples you actually mentioned on information exchange of operational support, definitely, yes, also to the asset recovery part you were mentioning. That is key because we have the situation at only 2%, we only seized 2% actually today. And this is a key priority also where Europol, I think, can play a very important role. And asset recovery should also be, in my view, at least, part of the possibilities of Europol in the next mandate. Corruption part, I think there, it is there's an important role of the rule of law mechanism, of course.
And Europol's possibilities are quite limited, I would say, there. There, of course, the cooperation also with Eurojust, I think, is important. So we, I think, have to concentrate on that rather. And then the second part of your question, I think, was the governance and scrutiny part, yes. We are looking into how to streamline the processes.
I think that this is also important in that respect, without, of course, and that is important without reducing the safeguards. So looking into a more streamlined process, I think, is important, of course, not leaving out the other part. And the last question about the cooperation and coordination between all the agencies. That is actually precisely why we are reviewing the mandate to look into how we can make better use of all the different agencies and streamlining there as well, and coordinating better, jointly working more closely together. And I mean, you recall the examples I mentioned in the beginning from Brazil also. And there, of course, as I said, working closer together with my colleague, Commissioner McGrath, is important when it comes to Eurojust and Europol, but there are, of course, other possibilities to improve.
And you mentioned the budget part or the money part at the end. Yes, this is key. But I have to say, and I mentioned that in the beginning, that with Europol, we saw with the auditors, also with you in the parliament that, actually, the use of the money in the past by Europol was very effective and efficient. That's what you actually always said in the last years, and which is good to hear, of course. But there's also always room for improvement and to use it in a more effective, more efficient way.
That's what we need. Of course, that's what we have to do because it's the taxpayers' money, and we have to use it in a very effective way. But, fortunately, with Europoel, that actually happened like this in the last years.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, commissioner. This concludes our important item on our agenda. I thank the members for their contribution to this, I would say, intensive exchange, but very, very fruitful in view of the upcoming commission proposal on the Europulse Monday. Commissioner, again, thank you.
Thank you very much. Thanks very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
So please, we need to move on to our next point in our agenda. We have taken some minutes from this item, and hopefully, we'll be able to make up for it so we can finish our meeting on time. So we now move to a feedback on the activity of the Schengen and Borders Scrutiny Working Group. Let me recall that the working group was established in the Libe Committee at the beginning of this term, and missus Lena Dupont was elected as chair of the working group. The working group has a general mandate to scrutinize the functioning of the Schengen Area and the European integrated border management.
So the group holds regular meetings, usually once per month, in principle in camera. And in line with its mandate, the chair of the group is supposed to report back to our committee at least every six months. So I will now give the floor to Missus to present the activities of the working group for five minutes. Missus DuPont, the floor is yours.
Lena Düpont
Thanks, chair. And as you already mentioned, the mandate of the working group is to scrutinize the functioning of the Schengen Area and European Integrated Border Management, that includes, of course, all aspects of the functioning of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. Frontex, the results of the Schengen Evaluation Mechanism and the follow-up on the implementation of the action plans, as well as the question of internal border controls and their temporary reintroduction, the implementation of the multi-annual policy cycle for European Integrated Border Management, and, of course, the question of the implementation and the use of large-scale information systems in that field, and also the related funding questions to that. Since we last reported back on June 25, the working group met 7x. We just approved the work program for this year.
And the next meeting is scheduled for March 24. And just to give you a bit of an insight on what we had been discussing and have been doing in that period since we last reported, we discussed with representatives from the commission, NGOs, Frontex Fundamental Rights Officer and the Consultative Forum, the monitoring at external border and the functioning of the fundamental rights border monitoring mechanism in member states. We reviewed the Frontex strategic risk analysis and the situation at the external border. And we also heard both from the Danish presidency about their plans back then, and of the Cypriot presidency just a couple of weeks ago. We discussed the developments and challenges for the common visa policy, and we heard from the Joint Research Center about their activities on research projects in the area of border control technology.
Actually, a very insightful meeting and highly recommended also for other members to have a look at their work because there are really, really interesting things to see. We as well had an exchange of view with the commission, but more importantly, with the members of the group on the revision of the Frontex regulation, and discussed already a bit the possible future mandates and the expectations within the group, especially when we look at the extension of the standing corps and related capabilities. Lastly, we also focused on the state of play and the progressive start of entry, exit, and the implementation of ETIAS as the kind of, let's say, ground-laying infrastructure in the area of Schengen and border management, specifically with an eye to interoperability as part of it. In January, we had an exchange on the temporary border controls at the internal border, both with representatives from the German and Polish interior ministries at hand. And at the same time, an information exchange with the Joint Center for Franco-German Police and Customs Cooperation situated in Kiel about the practical implications of cross-border cooperation and what we can do there to better support the officers on the ground.
Lastly, in our last meeting, we examined the implementation of the EU funds, mainly the BMVI, and had an outlook on the new proposals for the union support for the Schengen Area with the commission, and additional input by a study on the topic done by ECR. And there, we also had the superiotic presidency and heard about their plans for 2026. A short outlook for the next meeting. As I mentioned, in March, next week, actually, we will have a look at the Schengen governance and the Schengen evaluation in 25. And we will also discuss operational and logistical challenges for lorry drivers stemming from the entry into force of the entry exit system, together with the commission and the industry and transport sector and national authorities.
Thanks.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Missus DuPont. I now open the floor for representatives of the political groups, members of the working group, starting with S and D. Who's taking the floor? Okay. Then at the PFE.
Yes, Mr. Dejourri.
Fabrice Leggeri
Thank you very much, chair. I will speak in French.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Lena Dupont. Thank you for chairing this working group. Very efficient group. We had regular meetings.
They weren't too long, and the agenda always allowed us to speak on specifics. I think on the SBSWG and when it came to looking at the overall picture, well, we have to look at this whole space of freedom of justice, and that's why we need to strengthen our external borders in the EU, but especially the Schengen external borders. We were also able to delve deeper into what the bringing in again of internal borders. This is because of a lack of trust in some of the states when it comes to how the external borders are working. So I think it's a working group we need to maintain.
Over the next few months, we'll be talking about or following up on the review of the mandate for the large agencies and internal affairs. Europol, for example, will have the Frontex mandate review soon. So for all of those reasons, I think we should keep this habit as started by Leonard DuPont, have these regular meetings. Obviously, speaking to the right people on those occasions. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
I don't see any CR speaker here. So from Prenu or Ms. Garcia Armida? General Garcia Armida, the floor is yours.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Thank you, Mrs. DuPont, for this presentation. I'm sorry I had to miss the very beginning, but I was wondering if in the group you also discussed the internal border controls that we see across the union. And again, if you said this already, then I apologize for that. But I am very interested in knowing a bit more about the proceedings and especially what you're expecting from the evaluation of the commission of the national requests that have been introduced in the last few couple of years and few months, especially those for extension of the border controls.
Thank you.
Thank.
Tineke Strik
You, Chair, and thanks a lot to the Chair of the Scrutiny Group as well. And I really must give my compliments to the fact that the meetings have become more regular, more structured. We would have preferred to see the agenda a bit more at a bit earlier stage than we have sometimes now. But still, it's really good to have so many meetings. We always push also to have several perspectives of the specific topics, and I'm really happy that recently, we also got more possibilities to hear NGOs or other external experts in the meetings.
I think that's really enriching to have not only the governments and the commission or agencies, but also outsiders with knowledge. I would also like to plea for, once in a while, have these topics also in the Liebe Committee meetings as well, because it's good that we have this in a scrutiny group. But both Schengen and Frontex also serve a big public interest. And I think it's really good to take that into account and to make sure we have this type of scrutiny as well. It's also very much important that we pay attention to the upcoming revision of the Frontex regulation, really looking forward to a further elaboration on that, also with hearing different perspectives.
And we just had this previous point on the agenda, was the upcoming revision of the Europol regulation. I think it would be good to have a similar topic on the Liebe agenda as well in the upcoming weeks. Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Strick. I don't see any speaker from the left or ESN. Then, Missus Zepong, you have the floor for your concluding remarks.
Lena Düpont
Well, thanks, first of all, to the members of the group for their continued work and the good cooperation we have been establishing. You know that sometimes, there are constraints when it comes to rooms, where there are constraints specifically in timing when it comes to participants being invited. So, of course, we try to always send around the agenda as soon as it is fixed, and we'll, of course, go on to do so. We ask within the work program for the next year a bit of flexibility because we might have some additional topics on the agenda once topics occur. But in principle, the work program already shows what is going to happen at the next meeting.
And to your question, of course, we had an exchange, like I just mentioned at the beginning, in the January session, and there is another one foreseen in September, if I remember correctly, for the question of internal border controls again. And of course, happy to engage with all the members interested, but specifically with the members of the group, on further ideas for our work of that working group. Thanks.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you, Missus Zepohn. Thank you, the group, for the work. We have another in our item 18. We have another working group reporting back to the committee.
In this case, this is the working group on asylum and the implementation of the pact on migration and asylum. This working group was also set up at the start of this parliamentary term, with the general mandate for scrutiny and monitoring of the common European asylum system and, in particular, the implementation of the pact on migration and asylum adopted in May 2024. The working group, I understand, holds regular meetings, usually once per month, in principle in camera. And, also, it is supposed to report back to the committee every six months at least. So now I will give the floor to mister Birgit Sipple, who chairs the working group for reporting back to the committee on their activities of the it.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much, Chair and dear colleagues. You may remember that the commission presented a common implementation plan to be well prepared for June year, and also documented the state of play in two reports. A final one will follow. The implementation of the pact remains a top political priority for the parliament, and we insist that member states are obliged politically and legally to fully engage in its implementation. And we therefore continue to underline the importance of keeping parliament duly informed, in line with the principle of mutual sincere cooperation. But while additional documents have been made available to the members of the working group, there are still substantial gaps, especially concerning the national migration strategies and contingency plans.
Since the last reporting back, the working group has held 10 meetings, holding exchanges of views on the state of play with the three presidencies, the commission, as well as the former five presidencies of the council. As a matter of priority, we have also addressed the delays in the adoption of the first annual asylum and migration report and the first solidarity pool, including the determination of member states under specific pressure and the methodology used for this assessment with the Danish presidency, commissioner Brunner, and the solidarity coordinator. In the council implementing act establishing the annual solidarity pool, the solidarity contributions compared to the commission proposal were substantially reduced, and questions remain whether the first solidarity pool even reaches the thresholds established in the AMMR, even though this is essential for the effective functioning of the pact. One meeting was dedicated to the preparations by the asylum agency in view of supporting member states and EU institutions in the implementation of the pact and the monitoring mechanism to ensure fundamental rights during screening and border procedures. On the latter, the working group held an exchange of views with the FRA and Slovenian and Polish Ombudsman.
At the beginning of this year, the working group revisited the issue of resettlement following the adoption of the union resettlement and humanitarian admission plan 2026, 2027 by the council. Nine member states provided 10,430 pledges over the coming two years, reducing the number initially proposed by the Commission by roughly a third. The focus should now be to ensure that these pledges are implemented and do not remain unfulfilled. The working group was joined for this exchange by Leo Luca Orlando, the parliament's representative to the high-level committee on resettlement and humanitarian admission, as well as representatives from Belgium and French authorities, commission, and UNHCR. Particular attention has also been given to the five-year European asylum and migration management strategy, including integration.
The commission presented details on the funding instruments and budgets in view of the continued implementation of the pact, especially for 26-27. As part of this presentation, we had the opportunity to discuss with Miss Sylvia Michelinie, who has, in the meantime, been appointed as the new solidarity coordinator. Lastly, just this week, the working group continued its examination of the external dimension of the pact with representatives of the Kingdom of Morocco and Bosnia Herzegovina, Frontex, and the external action service. In this context, it has been particularly valuable to discuss cooperation directly with third-country representatives. Looking forward to the rest of this year with the implementation deadline less than three months away, we have meetings scheduled including further exchanges with member states, presidency of the council commission, and EU agencies on the state of play, a joint meeting with the working group on Schengen and border scrutiny on the screening regulation, and the second annual migration management cycle to be launched by commission in October.
Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Missus Cippellar, chair of the working group, and I'll give the floor to Missus DuPont, EPP.
Lena Düpont
Thanks, chair, and thanks to Brigitte Sippela as chair of the working group there for the fruitful and valuable work that has been done over the recent months, I would say, specifically in the run up, of course, to the counting deadline to the implementation of the pact, especially the exchanges with the Member States representatives was very valuable there. And to cut it short, really looking forward to the continuation of that work. Of course, also looking forward to the joint meeting of both scrutiny working groups because I think it's very essential that we also combine the work and join our forces there. And of course, with an eye to the indeed looming deadline, happy to engage with the working group but also with the Member States representatives until then, and, of course, also later on because we then need to check whether the technical implementation, so to say, of the pact is also sufficient in reality. Thanks.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Missus DePont. I think now the floor goes straight to the Greens, Mr. Dirk.
Tineke Strik
Thank you. Thank you very much. I speak on behalf of my colleagues in the implementation group. I would like to thank the Chair very much for the work, and also the meetings. And it has the scope of the scrutiny group has grown a lot, which could be useful.
But my colleagues also experienced a lot of impediments for the scrutiny by the lack of documents from the commission, really the underlying information that you need in order to really exercise this scrutiny role. And that's not something against the chair. I think that the Chair maybe also shares this concern, but it would really be a call upon the commission to work more constructively with the European Parliament because we, as co-legislators, and in our role as political control bodies, need to have the information in order to also criticize or just be informed and play our role in the scrutiny. So I really hope that will be improved, specifically with the implementation of the pact by several member states, because the commission has the role in overseeing how this is going and where possible violations are occurring. And this is something where the parliament should be involved as well.
And also here, I would like to make the point that apart from the group's scrutiny work in the working group, it would really also be good to have once in a while these kinds of topics on the agenda of the Lieber Committee as a whole, because all MEPs are interested, and this would also facilitate involvement of the audience. Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Miss Stick. I take good note of your suggestions. Miss Sippelle, any further comments?
Birgit Sippel
Thank you, chair. Let me just underline again and remind everybody that the pact is a set of a number of different legislative files, and there is a fine balance between solidarity on the one hand and a fair sharing of responsibility. And we need to be aware that the whole system can only work if all the member states are really committed to fulfill and do the implementation, respect the rules, and that the commission remains vigilant as regards the enforcement. So after this pact receives a broad majority, both in the council and in the parliament, we should make sure that no instrument, no member state may lag behind, to ensure that this system can work. But let me also take the opportunity to simply thank both the members of the working group that have steadfastly supported our work. But the same thing also goes to the secretariat who was always very supportive to us and was very helpful for our work.
And as implementation is just in front of us, we have to trust the commission that they will further support our work. And all the more, as I said, implementation is quickly in front of us. And also thanks to the colleagues who just commented on the work. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thanks so much, Missus Sippel. And, we conclude that item, and we move to our last item on our agenda in today's meeting, which is the workshop addressing the topic: what Europeans think about immigration and why it matters. Let me recall that this workshop is organized by the policy department of the Libe Committee following a coordinator's decision based on the partnership agreement between the parliament and the European University Institute. Can I proceed with the introduction of our experts? So I'm very pleased to introduce our speakers.
Our guest speakers are from the European University Institute of Florence. We have, first, mister Andrew Geddes, who is a professor of migration studies and director of the migration policy center at the Robert Schumann Center. And Mister James Dennison was a Pierre Keller professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a part-time professor at the Migration Policy Center at the Robert Schumann Center. Both Mister Geddes and Mister Dennison will present scientific evidence regarding public perceptions of micro immigration's effects and on the causes and effects of attitudes towards migration across Europe, and how this can inform potential political communication strategies. So without further ado, I am pleased to give the floor first to Mr. Andrew Geddes for his presentation for a maximum of ten minutes.
Speaker 47
Thank you, chair. Thanks very much for the kind invitation. I'm also on behalf of the European University Institute just to say how grateful we are for this opportunity and also appreciative of the opportunity for the EUI to engage with the work and hopefully support the work that the European Parliament does. What we wanted to talk about today is the issue of public attitudes towards migration, and it's based on years of research we've been doing at the EUI. But the aim of this presentation is to present broad trends and to present the information relying on high-quality long-term data that looks at attitudes over quite long periods of time in Europe.
Speaker 46
What we are not doing is discussing what attitudes Europeans should have to immigration, or what the kind of correct view about immigration is. What we are interested in doing is looking at the factors that shape attitudes to migration, how that then plays out in politics, and also how that could affect issues such as strategic communication around migration. We, of course, recognize that immigration is a deeply contested issue and is contested at the level of values. And so what we want to do is look at the causes and effects of attitudes, obviously, present this evidence in a way that is designed to hopefully encourage engagement with this work and inform the work that you are doing. So, in order to facilitate the discussion, what we've tried to do is condense our presentation into three thematic blocks.
The first of which is labeled how Europeans actually think about immigration. And here, sometimes we find that it can be can appear counterintuitive because we maybe have the impression that immigrant attitudes to immigration are highly turbulent. If we look at attitudes to immigration over a long period of time, they're actually remarkably stable. And in a sense, social science would, in a way, explain to us why attitudes are relatively stable, and we'll go into that a little bit more. Also, again, perhaps counterintuitively, attitudes over time have become more favorable to immigration across Europe rather than less favorable.
And we look at the reasons why that might be and we look at the factors that could contribute to this stability. But what we also need to address is why when immigration becomes politically powerful. And here what we focus on is the level of attention that the issue gets, what can be referred to as the issue salience. And so we our second block, we'll look at this question of salience and the factors that can shape salience, the level of public attention to the issue. And the third block, we'll shift the focus to communication and address the issue of what can work in communication around migration.
So we in the work that we do, we would identify only a small space for attitudes to shift, but we look at what we call values-based messaging. We'll explain what that means, and how frames of communication built around competence, order, and fairness can actually be quite effective and resonate across different audiences. So how do these blocks fit together? Well, we would identify firstly that research suggests a political landscape where attitudes are relatively stable, but that where issue salience, which can be much more volatile, can have very important effects on political outcomes. I think we've seen evidence of that in Europe across at least the last 10 years.
Speaker 46
Could we go back? Thank you. Second, that communication is most impactful when it reinforces shared values rather than trying to persuade people to adopt new ideological positions. And, again, we'll go into a little bit more detail about what we mean by that. And, also, political actors who understand the difference between attitude levels and issue salience are able to navigate the debate more effectively.
And, again, we'll explain what we mean when we say that. So block one is how Europeans actually think about immigration. What we're doing is dipping into the research here. And, also, we appreciate that the last thing people tend to want is lots and lots of data and figures and charts. What we're gonna try and do is focus on kind of explanation, but we do have to present some data, I think, just to reinforce some of the points we're making.
And this is one chart derived from the Eurobarometer data. And the point of this chart, it's about stability and attitudes. This is people's attitudes towards free movement within the European Union and whether it conjures up a negative or positive feeling. And this is looking over the last, well, between 2014 and 2025, but that it can be extended back as well. Attitudes are relatively stable and have become more favorable to free movement within the European Union over time.
We would expect attitudes to be stable because they're formed relatively early in life. And once our attitudes are formed, they're quite resistant to change. So attitudinal stability is something we would expect. We also see trends toward favorability. But this is for free movement.
What do we see for migration from outside the EU? Well, again, we see stability. And that in a sense, that might be surprising, but we would argue it's not. We would expect attitude to be relatively stable because our attitudes are formed relatively early in life and can be resistant to change. We see that there's less favorability to migration from outside the EU, but over time, there has been greater favorability.
So I'm in a chart which I promise we won't replicate this kind of chart too often, but this is looking at every member state of the European Union, favorability and positivity in every member state. But you will see on the left-hand side a box for the European Union, and you'll see a blue line, which is favorability to free movement, and a red line which is favorability to migration from outside of the EU. What we see is relative stability, and we see over time greater favorability. Now that is often quite a counterintuitive thing. People don't necessarily expect that because of what they see and encounter in the debates about immigration.
And, of course, whichever member state interests you, you can look at the box, and there's a story to be told about every member state. And, of course, we included The United Kingdom and And Kingdom until it left the EU, where there's a kind of striking increase in favorability both to free movement and migration from outside the EU. At the moment, the UK had decided to leave the union. So the implications of this before I hand over to my colleague James, we would expect stability in attitudes because people form their views of immigration early in life. We form our views on all political issues relatively early in life, very powerfully influenced by our early life experiences, family, education, our own psychological makeup.
So these early influences create the foundations of how we all see political issues later in life. And once our worldviews are formed, it can be quite resistant to change. So that has big implications then for political debate and communication around migration. And we would argue, and I think there's quite solid evidence to support this, that changing attitude is difficult because of their stickiness. But that's why we need to think then about the strategic space for communication.
Please.
Speaker 49
Good afternoon, everyone. And, let me also echo Andrew's thanks for the invitation to speak here today. It really is an honor, of course. So Andrew's sort of outlined one type of attitude to immigration in Europe, which is sort of general positivity or negativity to both immigration from other EU member states and from outside the EU. And we see, at the very least, some counterintuitive trends in, on those questions.
In our research, in our forthcoming book, we look at perceived effects of all sorts of types of effects of immigration from jobs to quality of life, to crime, to the economy, and we see how those are perceived across Europe. We also look at policy preferences and see how those are changing. What type of immigrants do Europeans want, under what criteria, and what sort of numbers? But one sort of central puzzle that we seek to unravel in the book, because we think it's been so central to Europe over the last decade and will be for forthcoming decades, we argue, is given a sort of shift towards more positivity, at least on those things that Andrew was pointing out, why has immigration been so transformative to European politics and policy during the last decade or two? And really central to that is if I can make this thing work, let's see.
Is so sort of this question, when immigration, despite stability, structural sort of stability, becomes politically powerful. So we focus directly on this issue called issue salience, on this construct called issue salience, and that's highly distinct from other forms of attitude. This is not about whether you're for or against. This is about how important you consider the issue of immigration relative to other issues affecting yourself, your country, and Europe as a whole. And we see very important trends on those three things across Europe.
So whereas we see relative stability in terms of sort of predispositions towards immigration, in terms of the salience of immigration, the perceived importance of immigration, we see nothing but stability. And I'm just going to skip these texts, go straight to the chart. So sorry to go into kind of, like, lecture mode. Oh my goodness. Can we go back one slide, please?
Okay. Great. So on the left-hand column, one down, we see the European Union average. And I want you to focus on, if you can see it, the blue line. Now the blue line is the percentage of Europeans between 20, 2005 and 2025, so twenty years of data is sorry.
The red line. Excuse me. The percentage saying that immigration is one of the most important issues affecting their country. And we see between 02/1952 thousand and fifteen or so in on that red line across the EU, immigration is a relatively second-order issue. So about 20%, not even 20%, of Europeans say it's the most important thing affecting their country.
Now during the so-called migration crisis in 2015, 2016, that skyrocketed. And in some countries like Germany, you can see, which is on the same row, a couple of columns to the right, that went really high, and that meant the following. Those stable predispositions, which Andrew already outlined, were activated in a segment of the population. Now, why a segment? Because it's not evenly distributed who considers immigration important.
Overwhelmingly, those who consider immigration important when there is a so-called crisis or whatever it might be are those who are already and stably opposed to immigration. In fact, they're a shrinking segment of the European population across these 20 years, believe it or not. So on that red line, we see that go down. COVID, other issues overtake the importance of immigration, and attendant parties, essentially right wing anti-immigration parties, suffered during that period. What we've seen since 2022 or so is the return of immigration.
That red line, the percentage of Europeans saying immigration is one of the most important issues affecting their country. Briefly, if you can look on that on the blue line, remember, this is the first row, second, sorry, first column, second row down. Something remarkable happened across Europe during this time, which is that Europeans began to see, at the beginning, they saw immigration as, they were more likely to see immigration as one of the most important issues affecting their country. After the so-called migration crisis, that switched, and they were far more likely to see immigration as one of the most important issues affecting the European Union. And that stayed the same.
The blue line remains higher than the red line. Europeans are more likely to see immigration as one of the most important issues affecting Europe rather than their country. Essentially, the issue of immigration has been Europeanized. We could talk a lot more about this graph. There are all sorts of stories in here.
I will say briefly, though, there's a black line at the bottom, which you'll see is low and is low throughout the time series, and that's the percentage of Europeans saying immigration is one of the most important issues affecting you personally, and that very rarely even breaks five to 10% across these European countries. Does that mean that Europe, that it's all fake and Europeans don't actually care about immigration? No. What it means is that immigration is a sociotropic issue. That's academic language for people who care about the effect it has on their society, not really on them personally as individuals.
So we have to think about immigration when we're talking about it, and so on, in societal terms. That's where the concern comes from. Okay. I'm gonna dare to try this. Let's see what happens.
It's this one. Implications. So people interpret what happens regarding immigration through the lens of their prior experiences, values, and world views. We go into far greater detail on this book, and we didn't want to get into too much theory for the purposes of this debate. But that, as I've already said, means that the people who are animated by immigration, who consider it one of the most important issues, and what's vital is humans are very limited in the number of issues they can consider important in their own life, in their political life, at any one time, number one.
And number two, for your behavior to be motivated in a certain direction, you have to consider the issue important, urgent, and so on. So that's why people with these right wing typically predispositions have moved towards far right parties when the salience of immigration is high, and are more likely to go towards other parties when it's low because they say, well, I don't really care that much about this issue at the moment. It's not motivating my behavior. Now, okay. The same event can trigger very different reactions in different groups.
What changes is not the underlying attitude, but whether it becomes politically more salient, emotionally charged, or politically mobilized. Little sort of just to briefly say, this is not to say that attitudes don't change at all. This is not to say that everything stays the same. Far from it. If you have highly specific issues, policies, politicians, the more specific, the more likely an attitude is to change.
This immigration is not special in this. This is typical across all social sciences. But broadly, immigration is more than ever a strong issue, so it's firmly fixed in our psyches, our attitudes to it as a psychological object. If we cease to, we're more likely to see stability than ever before as a broad predisposition. Okay. What does all this mean for communication?
Excuse me. I'm speaking far too quickly. So what this means for communication, as Andrew has already pointed out, is by identifying the causes of our attitudes to immigration, we're better able to design interventions on anything that we where public opinion matters. So that could be things like communication. That could be things like designing policies that are likely to be robust and sustainable over time.
And, a big part of that is we focus on two things in the book that define where our attitudes to immigration and other things come from. One of those is early life socialization, so the things your parents teach you, what you learn at school, and so on. And the other thing is your own psychological predispositions. And both of those things explain well the levels of stability we see, and the fact that, and this is where communication comes in. How people interpret the same event is highly dictated by those two big building blocks of our political attitudes, our early life socialization, and our political psychology.
So the same information can be interpreted in highly different ways, number one. And because of those two things, we select into we expose ourselves to different types of information. So a key part of our psychological predispositions are indeed our values, so our broad motivational goals in life. These are deeply rooted, they're stable, and they're different across individuals. The effects of values.
Values act like a compass. These are things like need for security, things like need for tradition and conformity on the one hand, and then on the other, things like benevolence and universalism. So values act like a compass. They don't tell people exactly what to think about a specific issue, but they strongly influence the direction of their actions, reactions, sorry, in both cognitive and emotive terms. Okay.
So these are just some examples of how your values might affect your immigration preferences. I'm gonna cut to the chase on the implications of what this means for communication. Shifting attitudes is difficult, but you can shape how people react to things by appealing to their values as they are. You can shape, you can frame immigration, for example, in terms of not being, if you've tried to frame immigration in terms of a universalist, bene as of benefits, universalism or benevolence, you will appeal to those people who care about those things a lot. But those people are rarely the people in the middle.
Those are people who are sort of a select group of society. If you're going for a certain target audience, you need to target their own values, which are likely to be far more balanced and include, yes, things like universalism and benevolence, but also things like security, conformity, and tradition. Now I will, because I think I'm over the time limit already, I will go straight to the takeaways. Okay. So some of the takeaways from our book.
This is just a few. Public attitudes towards immigration in terms of our predispositions, in terms of even our policy preferences, are fairly stable and often more positive than assumed. Most people are at the extremes, actually. Attitudes are rooted deeply in early life experiences, so that's things like socialization and psychology that are fairly stable themselves, or if not totally stable thereafter. The political impact comes from actually an interaction, a combination of the stability, the structure on the one hand, with what is considered important, pressing, urgent on the other.
And that's highly volatile because many issues are competing for our attention and a sense of urgency. Events tend to activate existing beliefs rather than create new ones, and values are the core drivers of how people understand migration, or at least one of them. They're a big part of our underlying psychology. What we consider, how we value things, the currencies we use to value events in life, and what we should do. And then finally, the most effective way, and this is a lot of research has shown this, the most effective communication works with existing values.
So that can include things like competence, order, and fairness, rather than trying to change those things and point towards different values. You have to target the underlying values of your audience as is, on immigration and beyond. So I think we're happy to take questions at that point. So one more slide. Yes.
Thank you for putting that on, Andrew. And this is the cover of our forthcoming book in which we go into far greater detail on all of these topics. Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thanks to you. Thanks to Professor Geddes and Professor Denison for your presentation. I'm sure there's quite a number of elements that trigger a very interesting exchange with members. So now I will give the floor to members and particular groups present. And for ten minutes, for two minutes, there will be two minutes intervention from the groups and two minutes answer from you.
Starting with EPP, missus DePaul.
Lena Düpont
Thanks, Chair, and thanks, first of all, to both of you for not only doing the study but also for telling us about it. And I think what actually I was reminded of when you were speaking about the time period where you were conducting the studies and comparing the numbers. I was actually a bit reminded of integration policies, well, the European integration, not integration policies as such. I'm going to say a word on that. But like you'd call it the Europeanization of policies because I actually, one of the first questions that came to my mind is the Hann and the Egg question because we've seen in that time further steps for European integration in the field of asylum and migration policies triggered, of course, also by events, large scale events, smaller events. But do you have an assessment on, let's say, the links between them?
And on integration policies in the member states, knowing that it's mainly member states' competencies there, do you also have an assessment on if successful or non-successful integration policies in member states also lead to reflections in the attitude? And third point, actually, quite upheld by what you're mentioning with I think you mentioned it like the frames, competencies, order fairness, because I think that this is basically what we have been trying to build in the recent years at European level, also in combination, of course, with the member states here in respecting the competences between the European level and the member states. But, of course, also really always pointing at capacities and capabilities of member states because you have to have a humane, but you also have to have an ordered system of asylum and migration policies. And, of course, last remark from my side, which is, to my understanding, very, very deeply connected to the question on asylum policies on one hand because they do have a very different target group, so to say, and legal migration on the other hand because the intro instruments, the causes for that, the policy tools we have at hand completely differ from the first one.
So highlighting here the need to really differentiate also between those two points. Thanks.
Speaker 49
Thank you very much, Miss DuPont, for those interesting questions. So on European, I think I understood you were talking in terms of the chicken and egg. Was that the analogy you gave, which was it, the Europeanization of policy that led to public issues or the other way around? I don't think that you would be able to identify a clear chicken-or-egg situation. I do think that probably coming out of the 2015, 2016 migration crisis, there was a learning process at elite level that took quite a few years until you actually had the policy responses we've ended up seeing.
I would say this, though, in terms of changes on the popular side. The last 15 years, if you look at a key driver in the book that we didn't talk about in this presentation, European identity, we've seen that go up massively, an emotional attachment to Europe. We've seen that go up massively across Europe, both in and outside the EU, actually. That undoubtedly facilitates a lot of policy responses that wouldn't have been possible before. Then I don't doubt that voters are informed by the policy framework that exists, though.
So I think that you make a good point, and it becomes apparent quite quickly that some things will have to be dealt with at the European level if they're not already. So I don't think, I think both are in constant public attitudes and public policy, or in constant feedback with each other. So I don't think you can identify one. I don't know if you want to take, if you want to go ahead with the integration questions.
Speaker 47
Just having if I understood, it's a very interesting question. I suppose we could discuss it for quite a long period of time. But one of the things that I think we would see is now the increased attention to the Europe immigration issue across Europe represents this, look, commissions representing this Europeanization we referred to, but then exposes the EU also to precisely the same issues around perceptions of competence, order, fairness. And I suppose then also exposes the EU itself to some of the dilemmas that the member states face. And so some of the research that we've done looking at how European citizens perceive Europeanized issues, say, around asylum, we see that actually there are very core dilemmas which should move from the national to the European level.
Speaker 46
So if we look at debates about asylum, it's not just about the process of recognition. It's also about employment, work, family rights, and things like that. And these dilemmas are also becoming dilemmas which become part of the debate about the European Union. And I think this, but I suppose it's an issue, I think, and we say in the book is gonna be more, perhaps more fully articulated over time because this is quite a powerful trend that you've identified, which we would see as something that is likely to become quite an important component of attitudes to the EU itself. And the EU, I think, because of Brexit has kind of internalized quite a powerful immigration debate in ways, which I think didn't exist prior to Brexit.
I think there's been a change in the dynamics of debate because of the way Brexit has played out. And just another thing we discussed. I mean, these are huge topics that you've raised, but I think very important ones. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Isn't the group who's taking the floor? Miss Sibyl. Thank.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much, and thank you for this very interesting presentation. Because, when you started by saying that, most citizens still have a more positive view on migration, I first felt confirmed because that's what I also feel when talking to citizens. And I wonder if maybe the reason why in the headlines there is another impression could be that some messages are very broad in the headlines. Some are very loudly outspoken, and it might be that others who still have a positive view on migration are simply no longer talking about it. So you don't have these different views, and that's something we are discussing for a while.
And I would like to know if you could also go into that. I also feel confirmed when you were talking about tapping into values. And sometimes my experience is that people say, oh, you are talking about fundamental rights. We are not interested in that. But the question is, obviously, how you frame it, because every single person wants to be safe, wants to be respected, wants to have a chance.
And if you go into that and ask the question, don't you think that everybody has the same feeling? Everybody wants to be respected. You want to be respected. And if your neighbor is not respected, don't you feel the same thing might happen to you tomorrow? So to make it personal, this question of democracy and fundamental rights, and maybe you have also looked into it.
And to that extent, last point, it's also a little bit linked to security, but not security in the sense of criminal law, but just to be confirmed from your surroundings that, yes, we organize things the same way as we organize your life. We organize the integration of new people that are coming from different areas, and therefore, you can be sure you can continue your life without being in danger. So that's another aspect of security maybe that we have to conform to all of societies. And I also have the impression that the local level is very important in this context because the local level organizes all these things. Maybe you also looked into that.
Thank you.
Speaker 47
Thank you very much for those questions. Maybe I'll deal with the first question, think is a really important one. This because we've been doing this work for a number of years now, and people often find it surprising when you say that actually it is not only stable, but also become more favorable. But that's not to say that there's a kind of tidal wave of favorability sweeping across the European Union. It is a deeply contested issue, and it contests the level of values.
Speaker 46
And also, I think very relevant to the point you make is that people who are maybe more favorable or more opposed may feel it with greater levels of intensity. And there is evidence that people who are more like to be concerned about or opposed to immigration feel it has more mobilizing effect. So the different differential effects of these feelings. So, yeah, we don't want to oversell it. The data we're using is good, reliable, long-term data.
It's looking at long-term dispositions. But I think it's a very relevant point to think about the intensity and its capacity to mobilize people, and as evidence that people are more likely to be concerned. And this also goes to your points about values as well, because people who are concerned, it exists at a deep level. It's linked to their values and their world views. And so you cannot, when trying to communicate about these issues, imply that people are wrong, mistaken, ignorant.
These are things that matter to people. And so I think it's a very good point about the intensity and the mobilizing effect of that. James?
Speaker 49
I would really just echo that, but I would also say, on the point of so firstly, yes, indeed, one of the reasons for the trends that you point out is just because people who are opposed to immigration care more. And as I've said, if you see something as important, your behavior is much more likely to be motivated by it. And we have very limited capacity to care about stuff, as everyone does. So what you choose to care about really does dictate your behavior, including your voting behavior, quite a lot. The other thing I would say is that we try to emphasize in the book, particularly in the conclusion, is treating immigration.
And this is something I do think is happening more and more. More is just the normal issue, and that includes public opinion. So on most broad areas, redistribution, defense, whatever it might be, health, you see in public attitudes a normal distribution from opposition to favorability. So most people can choose a side, but they're broadly in the middle. Very few people are at the extremes.
And on immigration, we see the exact same thing. And the idea that public attitudes to immigration are somehow different than formed in a different way or special that they're, and we see that in terms of contact theory or all sorts of things. That has led to an idea that policy really should be different as well, and we unpack those linkages quite a lot in the book. And normalizing the idea of immigration. That doesn't mean high or low, but just that this is another policy issue to be tackled in the modern world, from an academic point of view and from a policy making point of view should lead to better outcomes.
And so a big motivation for the book was just sort of under correcting certain misperceptions that elites often have about what the public think.
Marieke Ehlers
Thank you very much, chair. Also, many thanks to the two speakers for presenting their findings to us. I will continue in Dutch, so I will give you a chance to put on your headphones before I continue. The left.
Liberal majority is pushing forward with a multicultural society. They say they want to be in.
in favor of
Marieke Ehlers
Diversity, but in specific areas, then they want to move away from what we've seen currently. We see a multicultural school, for example, in Amsterdam. And for some people, things have gone too far. For example, in Bloemendal, it's one of the richest parts of the Netherlands. And there, an asylum center and AZC is supposed to be set up.
And what did the people do in that very rich village? Well, Friedrichs, for example, when he heard about this AZC, he had to phone his lawyer friend in order to block this asylum center. They wanted them as far away as possible. So the question is, where can we put these asylum centers? It's where, basically, people can't get in touch with rich lawyers.
These are normal people with normal jobs, and they get these sorts of sentences. They get all the ills of society and an asylum center. These are normal people who often vote for my party, for example, who are called racists, xenophobes by the left. But the reality is different. They're just normal citizens with everyday concerns.
And, you know, unlike the rich neighbors, they don't have the sacks of money just to do away with these centers. So, the two professors there, Geddes and Denison, in your survey, did you look at the link between wealth and not in my backyard behavior? And do you think the same as me that the negative aspects of immigration are unfairly distributed across the society? Thank you.
Speaker 49
So, thank you very much for the question, first of all. On the final question of are the negative effects of immigration unfairly distributed across society. We didn't look at that in the book specifically, but undoubtedly, yes, just because the negative effects of practically everything are distributed unfairly across society. So, but I do think that the point you raised on schooling is really a key one. And this goes back to we were talking about values before, and one of the key values of those sort of moderates, let's say, all those who are opposed to immigration, is the deeper value of conformity and concern that when you have less conformity, negative sort of group outcomes can happen.
And, yes, we can think of it in terms of things like language that can be a case of that. So that fits in very much with the research we're saying, that we've outlined. I don't know if you want to expand any further, Andrew, on that.
Speaker 47
I think it's indicative of the passion that the immigration issue can induce, but also I think the second block of our presentation was looking at when immigration becomes politically powerful. An earlier set of questions talked about the kind of way the local power of these issues, the way it affects, because we may talk about immigration as a national or European issue. It primarily for many people, effect will play out as a local issue, a powerful local issue. And we know that this is the there's a much longer history, 40, 50 years, 60 years in some European countries of this powerful local resonance. And I think what we would highlight over the last ten years is the issue has become more salient, more mobilizing, and often activating people at kind of a powerful emotional level.
And so, I think that was what we wanted to emphasize when we talked about when immigration becomes politically powerful. Thank you for your question.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. I don't see any CR speaker. So, Renew Group, madam Keller.
Fabienne Keller
Thank you so much. Thank you, mister professor, to be there. I will switch to French, if that's okay with you. Let.
Me apologize, first of all, for arriving late, and I am very sorry. I wasn't able to be there for the whole of your presentation. I will read your book with a great deal of interest because, well, I really want to thank you for working on this topic and for speaking about it with such calm, because as you've said very often, immigration leads to passionate debate, polarization, and indeed violence. So three questions from my side. On values, I come from Strasbourg, it is on the border between France and Germany, and our values will really date back to the Second World War.
And among these values is the respect for individuals. No one should be discriminated against for the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation. But when it comes to migration, I have noted that there is a type of dissociation between a collective problem, an invasion, or words like that. And then, on the other hand, we're talking about human beings, people. Do you have anything you could say on that topic?
Second question, perhaps you already answered this to a certain extent. Is it a weaponization of fear when it comes to immigration? We have fake news using tools such as social media, influencers. What's your view on this weaponization of fear rather than using more rational tools, as we said? If we need workers.
The labor market needs migrants, a reasonable number in order to ensure full integration. Could you say something about that? And then a question more for Mr. Denison. Delighted to have met you.
The influence of the MAGA school of thought, the way migrants are dealt with or spoken about in federal politics in the US, and the influence this has on Europe?
Speaker 47
Thank you very much for those very interesting questions. The first part, I suppose, here, but, well, I'm happy. We do try to promote calm debate. I mean, but, I mean, we need to recognize our role. We work in a university, so we need to recognize that we work in a particular kind of environment, which will affect the way that we see the world.
Speaker 46
We shouldn't just assume that people share our values and beliefs, because they don't. We need to be aware of our own position in this debate. And our role, we would see, is to try and present evidence based on our capacity as researchers. We're not policymakers. We're not decision-makers.
What we want to do is to try and present evidence which can promote engagement by people who are more directly linked to decision making than we are. And we don't and I certainly wouldn't pretend that I am well qualified to be involved in decision making. I try to do and we try to do the job that we've been assigned and so try to do it calmly. And the point about values is really fundamental. And I suppose you're referring now to values which in a sense are constitutive part of a society, of a country, of a sense that people may have belonging.
And these are clearly very important. We would also point to kind of maybe more deep-seated values which we have as individuals. And as we try to emphasize that what we find there were many people in Europe who might see themselves being in the middle on these issues is this kind of the values which around order, competence, and fairness. And migration for people who have a disposition to be concerned about it can be seen by some people as a source of disorder, of challenging competence of government, and having elements of unfairness about it. There are those kinds of perceptions, those kinds of maybe clashes at the levels of values. So I think it's a really important part of, well, you know, obviously, for political leaders, that's an important part of the debate that they will try to navigate, obviously, from the perspective of their own groups and parties.
And on weaponization, briefly, that's a really important point. I don't think we will call ourselves experts on the media, but we all can see what's happening with the media, the way that the media landscape has been transformed. I think the point we would make is that what the media tend to be doing is activating existing dispositions. The media aren't making or remaking our attitudes on a daily basis. We often choose the media sources that might conform to the views that we already have.
But what we've seen is the capacity of the media to mobilize. We're all familiar with these people being taken with the new media being taken rabbit holes, is the word that's used in English. I'm not sure how that translates. You know, be information which conforms with the views that they already have. And fear, maybe fair I suppose people here are probably better qualified than me, but I think the fear and concern and attempts to drive fear and concern can be quite powerfully used by some by some forms of media.
Speaker 47
But it is a much more complex debate, but I think it's, you know, the trying to elicit concern perhaps through fear is, I think, a very valid point that you raise. Jane?
Speaker 49
So I would just say on the fear points. So I think that's really important, but that really speaks to this idea of the role of emotions in attitudes. And we really break down in the book what attitudes are. And psychologists have been trying for a hundred years to understand when it comes to attitudes. Is it emotion causes our cognition about is what how we feel, does that cause what we think about an issue?
Or is it the other way around? Does what we think cause our emotions about an issue? And the conclusion is really that the cons, the two are constantly informing each other. There's no chicken and egg there. So I would argue that the outcome of that we should really resign ourselves to is that emotion is an inevitable part of politics and that we shouldn't try and take fear or any other emotion out of an issue because emotions are a key part of us understanding the relationship between ourselves on a more profound level and the world around us, including politically.
So the idea of going down a purely cognitive route instead, with no emotion, I think, is not going to be a good way to convince people ever. You have to speak to emotion. And then finally, on MAGA. Well, the book is actually called What Europeans Think About Immigration and Why It Matters. But North America.
Yeah. But, look, I think that what is MAGA? I mean, MAGA is a subset of the Republican Party that essentially took over the public Republican Party. That's something that I think is fairly typical of a two party system. I think in most of the electoral systems we have in Europe, there's room for both of those parties, those two exist as two separate parties, is essentially what we see.
So I think I mean, it would not be news to anyone in this room, but the MAGA equivalents in Europe would be different parties than the historic center right ones. So I would say, though, in terms of economics, immigration, and beyond, the big value that those groups and MAGRA appeal to are security. So, there, we can see parallels, which I think should be fairly obvious in terms of political appeals between MAGA and European parties, not least on immigration.
Thank you. Now Greens, Mr. Strike.
Tineke Strik
Thank you. Thank you very much to both of you for the presentation and your work, and you really contribute to at least that we have the possibility to make evidence-based policies. And it's also reassuring to hear about the stability of the opinions, and also that they are actually more positive than you would sometimes think in the media. And I think that's also good to realize because especially populist parties, extreme right tend to say that they represent the population. And it's really good to debunk that as well, I think.
It's really interesting that you say that those who worry apply these concerns to the society as a whole and not to their individual problems, because this is what you often hear in media, that, like, who fear they have to wait longer for a house or whatever, you know, that this relates to individual problems. But apparently, this is more having an impact on how people look at other people that may have problems. So I wonder how that works. And the other thing is if you mention the value fairness, it also includes, I think, solidarity and humanity. And I wonder to what extent it would be important in terms of communication to enable people to identify with those who we talk, of whom we talk about.
Because I see a lot of attempts to dehumanize, actually, migrants and asylum seekers, which apparently makes it more easy to, you know, to be critical on or to reject. Could that also play a role in the communication to humanize versus dehumanize the subjects of the debate?
Speaker 49
Yes, indeed, attitudes to immigration, we call it sociotropic. So people are mostly in what their policy preferences are informed by the perceived effects of immigration on society as a whole rather than for themselves personally. That doesn't mean, though, let's be careful. That doesn't mean that they're somehow fake or that they don't matter. It's just that they have the people are naturally, when they're voting, concerned about what's going to be the effects on their society as a whole.
Some issues do tend to be more egocentric, which are typically economic ones. And I would go back to one of the MEPs who spoke earlier. The idea that rich people tend to be very pro-immigration and poor people tend to be very anti-immigration is a little bit of a misnomer or a little bit of a myth. We find in our book and the literature in general that attitudes to immigration are pretty weakly predicted by economics. They're much better predicted by one, as we say, socialization, generational change, that's where that great positivity comes from, and psychology.
On the fairness, though, I would be a bit careful the other way, because the thing about values is, and this is why they're so central to communication. Any of those values that we've spoken about could be used to make a pro- or anti-immigration argument. So even one was sort of given earlier in terms of fairness. So fairness isn't necessarily fairness to the migrants. It could also be fairness to people within societies.
Our central point is simply, and we do this in other papers, not just in this book, understanding, thinking strategically about who your target audience is, understanding their values, and then crafting a message to resonate with those values. Because we all in this room value things differently, and how we value things is, of course, how we decide what's good and bad. Anyway, I'll pass over to Andrew.
Speaker 47
Just very briefly, I realize that there has been elements of self promotion in this talk because we talk about our book, but also our director center of European University Institute, the Migration Policy Center, and colleagues, including James, have gathered hundreds of information campaigns about migration, hundreds from across the European Union campaign of all kinds of persuasions, trying to persuade people about all kinds of different things. And I think it's really important when thinking about these issues to try and ground it in values as they are, attitudes as they are. And what we would find is, and particularly from a pro maybe even more pro immigration side, a tendency to communicate, a mistaken tendency to communicate in ways that don't resonate with people who have concerns about issues to under to, in a, in a sense, pathologize those concerns, delegitimize those concerns, stigmatize the people who have these opinions, which is massively counterproductive and very damaging, I think, to the politics more generally. I think this is and so, you know, it's kinda put simply, communicating to people who have concern about migration and feel that concern deeply and see it as an important part of the way that they see and understand the world.
Speaker 46
But communicating in ways which are maybe more progressive can be deeply alienating to people because they don't share that world view. I think this is one of the obviously, for all political leaders, these are issues that they have to face in which they have encountered in their daily work. And I think that's what we try to do in the work that we do, is to think not only what are the cause and effects of attitudes, but how does that then play out in political terms? And I suppose what we're trying to do here is share this information with people who are much more at the front line of this, engaged in the public debate in ways that we are not. But I think we would say that a lot of the communication on migration, you know, communication which is just kind of shouting facts at people, doesn't work.
Things that we're trying to understand how facts and emotions can interact with each other and not stigmatize and pathologize groups in society who see their concerns and their voices as legitimate, and they think they should be heard. I think that's, you know, a necessary part of it. You know, that's why we think attitudes to immigration also matter quite profoundly for the future of European politics as well. So these, we would certainly think these are very important issues that you've identified.
Cecilia Strada
Thank you very much for this presentation. Really interesting. Just yesterday, I published a post on Facebook about the episode of search and rescue in the Mediterranean Sea. And this morning, I had 1500 comments. And now I'm trying to reread the comments with the lens of your presentation.
So I would say that one third of the comments were based on values, fairness, in a positive way. Like, what if this happened to your family? You would want someone to save you. One third of the comments was sealed values against search and rescue, with an argument that I will now define as order and competence. And so here, the main reasoning is we cannot welcome everyone that is fleeing from Africa.
We can't. How is this going to work? But one third, we're completely like false profiles spreading disinformation. In Italy, we have a huge campaign of disinformation on this since at least 2017. So my question is, and now I'm thinking that maybe if I get this right, this information will not create new attitudes, but it will maybe be effective when it resounds or resonates with preexisting values.
So my question is, do you have any idea or insights about the effectiveness of misinformation? Sometimes it's just ignorance. Sometimes it's an organized campaign of disinformation. Do you have any insight about this?
Speaker 49
So that makes me really think of two areas of the book in particular. So one is, of course, on communication, which we've already spoken about. But I'll focus a bit more on narratives actually, because we haven't actually spoken about that so far at all. So we dedicate quite a lot of the book to narratives, which are quite different from attitudes. That's really stories, typically quite generalizable stories used to make sense of a complex reality.
Something and like online comments is just, of course, a narrative manner from heaven. That's exactly where you would find narratives, typically. Are they likely to change people's attitudes fairly rarely, certainly according to the very things that we say. But let's, of course, not exaggerate that because there are, of course, still people in the middle in these, and there are, of course, undecided people. And as I said briefly before, while people's broad predispositions are stable, their attitudes to specific policies, specific votes, specific elections, sometimes specific politicians are far more, the more specific, the more fluctuating they are.
So narratives could push people in one direction or another there. I don't know if you had anything that you particularly wanted to say about that, Andrew. Well, I mean, on the communication side of things, would say, of course, and the disinformation, we don't go into a huge amount of disinformation about disinformation in the book. I would just say disinformation, misinformation, like all forms of communication, is filtered indeed through our existing attitudes, number one, and values, and so on, on the one hand. And we select which information we receive according to those things as well.
Where online comments might make a difference is, of course, if you're sort of attacking people, you get an audience you wouldn't normally get. I suppose online has allowed us to do that a lot. Second, there is an attention economy online, and a lot of that is about emotion. So emotion is even more central than cognition when it comes to those sort of venues than ever before. Andrew, if you have anything.
Speaker 47
In fact, it's almost like it was on a daily basis. You're kind of doing scientific case studies as you post, and you see the reaction you get. And it raises so many issues. But one thing, just a little thing to add, is that what we also find, and I think, you know, researchers have found, is there can be polarization even at the level of factual beliefs. So we may be there can be polarization in terms of political beliefs, how we feel about other members of society, but also in our response to factual evidence, because you may have the idea that putting the facts into debate could kind of change the way people feel.
Speaker 46
But, actually, what people often, well, maybe particularly online in that particular context, but that's also more generally, is that even the factual evidence can just play into people's existing beliefs and be a driver of polarization. I think it has big implications to political communication and the way in which elected representatives try to communicate because even at the level of factual beliefs, there can be polarization. Even the most what might seem kind of relatively straightforward and uncontested evidence can be contested and play into people's prior beliefs and activate. So I think, you know, this on a daily basis, you'll be seeing this, I suspect. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you, Professor Garrison Denison, for your valuable research and your presentation. I'm sorry? Madam Sorel, yes, briefly please.
I will speak in French.
Thank you.
Malika Sorel
Thank you very much for coming here to present your study. I have a question concerning your method, though. What is the size of the sample that you used as your basis? And what is composition? A few years ago, from Paris, some researchers studied, carried out a study where the sample concerning the numbers with immigrant backgrounds was very far from what's reflected in reality.
And I think that, given that immigration is increasingly a part of European demographics, that concerns or is of a concern to EU citizens. I think that this kind of thing distorts perception, and I wonder about some of your conclusions. I'm a bit skeptical about these. I'm actually an engineer, so I come from a scientific background. I think there could be a blind spot in your study.
And the last point, you talked about the perception which is linked to sociable, so sociability at the beginning of the year, sociological predispositions, and so on. But you didn't mention the age. Does age have an influence on the perception of immigration, or not at all? Thank you.
Merci, madame. Sorry.
Speaker 47
Thank you for those questions. On the first point about I think it's a very important point, and obviously, we didn't go into great detail about method, but I'm very happy to clarify. These are not our surveys that we are drawing from. These are long-term surveys such as representative surveys in every member state, which have been conducted for decades, asking similar kinds of questions to generate what we would see as high-quality data over long periods of time. It's not just opinion poll snapshots, which we'll be skeptical about.
Speaker 46
Long term, longitudinal data asking similar questions. So, we can observe general trends. So, Eurobarometer, which obviously is from within the European Union, with nationally representative samples. We also use a European Social Survey. Again, a kind of high-quality source of data gathered over long periods of time.
So, I would fully share your concern about opinion poll snapshots, which can mislead. What we try to do is focus on longer-term data and use those sources. So, data and our own surveys. I think it's a very important point you make about method and being clear about the methodology and sources of data. But maybe, James, on the question of age.
Speaker 49
So I'll just echo what Andrew says very much on the quality of the data. I mean, this is that we use a range of data sources going back at least 20 years. So we're dealing with millions of Europeans being sampled. Of course, it's not really about the sample size. It's about the quality of the sample, the representativeness of the sample.
And that really is gold standard, in terms of sort of random sampling methods across the EU and by member states. I can go into more detail on why we should think that this data is reasonably reliable in terms of the outcomes being predictable. We see fairly steady trends. If this was low-quality data, we wouldn't see that steadiness. And even better, the data is highly predictive of events.
So the fact that the responses people are giving were able to use to predict things happening, so for example, who they vote for or election outcomes and so on, of course, not with absolute precision, that suggests at least a reasonable level of accuracy. Your point on there are all sorts of biases, though. This is not to say that this is absolutely perfect. This is prediction. And you said that migrants have been argued to be under-sampled in certain samples across the EU, undoubtedly true.
And if you look at, for example, in Germany and Britain, in both of those countries, they have done really high quality top ups of existing surveys of just migrants to try and get a better idea of what these people think and do and what other questions we might ask. On age specifically, we devote a whole chapter, the longest chapter, I think, of the book to the thousands of findings of the causes of attitudes to immigration both in Europe and beyond. Age, like all sorts of sociodemographics, matters. I would say the broad trend in age, though, is by your thirties, we see a great degree of stability. So age stops mattering so much.
Of course, we know the trend of people moving to the right as they get older, and that's true. But it's also not to be overstated. Finally, I don't wanna turn it too much into an academic seminar, but there's age on the one hand and generation on the other, and we try to separate those things. So your generation affects how you think throughout your life. You went through the same socialization experiences, whereas age should be the same for everyone.
I think generation matters more than age, actually. So we might not see the same aging effects by every generation.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Professor Geddes, Professor Denison. Thank you for your valuable research, for your contribution. And, I'm sure that many members would like to dig deeper in your expertise in the upcoming book. It's perfect right to have a bit of self promotion of the book here. And I think that's been a very, very fruitful debate on a very an extremely important subject as the one you have touched.
So thank you very much. And there we conclude our meeting as there are no other businesses. The next meeting will be held here in Brussels on the eighth and the 9 April. So our Liebe meeting is closed. Thank you.
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