Special committee on the European Democracy Shield Ordinary meeting
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EUDS European Parliament
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 9
And I think it's well worth highlighting the role of Frontex as well, its role in this mission, and how it manages to stabilize our democracies. Here, we talk about the importance of youth at this committee a great deal. And I think the nonformal project for education in Lithuania is very interesting in terms of involving young people in democracy and security, teaching them how to manage drones. And it's great that young people, from school age, can understand the importance of dealing with these issues in the hybrid threats and wars we're facing. Thank you.
visit as such, but I.
Speaker 8
Just want to also add a couple of points because I really appreciated also the atmosphere and not only the content of that mission. It was really insightful. So also thanks a lot to the work that the secretariat has done in preparing and accompanying us and making sure that everyone arrives safely where he or she should arrive safely. But I think the main lessons from me for me from that visit are mainly threefold. One is, let's say, the structural question where we also can draw some lessons from it.
Lena DUPONT
So how do member states, which are closer to the forefront than probably some others within the European Union, react institutionally to make sure that they have flexible but also steadfast structures to react to hybrid threats. Second, the, let's say, content question on how do they react specifically to specific types of hybrid threats and what we can learn from that as well. And I think, also part of the mission was actually to make the best use of the money that we have at hand, be it for defense, but also for other purposes. And as we are going into the MFF discussion or already in the midst of it, I think also there are some important lessons could have, could have been drawn. And the fourth point, actually, I also wanted to actually congratulate on the chair, but also the members of including the nonformal education part in the EPLO in Vilnius because this was really one of the, let's say, easy to say, not necessarily rocket science approach to fostering not only the interest in those topics, but really also one of a kind project that we could actually think about enlarging and scaling up also to other countries as well.
Thanks.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you very much, and indeed, a big thank you to the secretariat for helping us arrange this trip.
The next point on the agenda is the exchange of views with the Joint Research Center on the assessment of the research and type of the study entitled Future Obstacles to Democracy. We are at a critical moment for democracy in Europe and in the world. According to the VDEM Institute, the state of democracy at the global level in 2023 was the same as it was in 1985. In 2023, only 29% of the global population lived in a democracy. So is this a temporary backsliding or a deep structural challenge for democracy as we know it?
It's in this context that the Commission's GRC launched their project, Future of Democracy, aiming to better understand the forces transforming democratic systems and contribute to guaranteeing their resilience for years to come. The framing report that we're discussing today is the first step in this process. It identifies 10 emerging challenges that could shape the future of democracy in Europe in three dimensions: citizens, the informational environment, and democratic institutions. To talk about this, I have the pleasure of welcoming Miss Mara Almeida, who directs the research project on the future of democracy at the JRC. So, Almeida, as soon as you've got yourself settled, you have the floor for around 10 minutes.
Speaker 13
Dear chairman, dear honorable members, thank you very much for inviting us to participate in this exchange of views with the JRC on the scoping report future challenges to democracy. Please let me start by briefly introducing the JRC. The Joint Research Center is the knowledge service of the commission, providing evidence-based analysis to inform policy making. Therefore, we are very happy to present this scientific publication that we have published in January. The scoping report that I will be producing, presenting its scientific assessment of trends, risks, and opportunities, is a multidisciplinary and forward-looking analysis of democratic challenges, which combines expert input, case studies, and comparative research.
Speaker 15
Our aim is very much to support the commission by providing analysis of the latest research to try to understand influencing factors, causes, and potential approaches.
Speaker 16
yes. You have it in front. Yes. Thank you. So in terms of the methodology, I think this is important, and that's why we very much have this first slide.
Mara ALMEIDA
We have conducted a systematic literature review focusing on both academic peer review publications, but also supplemented with gray literature and official reports. We have done a very thorough analysis of this literature with the aim to provide assessment of the work that's being done by the scientific community at the international level with the aim to uncover relationships and new ideas. So our outcome of the work is very much focused on finding ensuring that findings contribute to a very comprehensive understanding of the topic, in this case, democracy. So the future of democracy project has started in 2023, and the scoping report that I'm presenting today is basically the first outcome of the project, and we are planning to publish further reports under this project. So the scoping report has been produced by the JRC together with a team of seven international experts coming from different disciplines: political science, philosophers.
The aim of the work that we have done was very much to try to identify what are the factors and root causes, as well as proposing different approaches, strategies to bolster resilience and trust in democracy. What we and the expert team have done was to identify 10 challenges. Of course, we are not saying that these are the only challenges. These are the challenges that the team have identified to provide a better understanding of key areas where, basically, efforts to build resilience can be focused. This said, but is by basically identifying challenges that could be facing democracy now in the future, we can then identify the areas where we can think how best to build resilience in that areas.
Also, what we have done was that we examined democracy across three levels because we think that democracy should be seen as an ecosystem that involves different areas that we should be considering and that, basically, the actions that should be taken forward should be considering these three levels. So the first is citizens and evolving societal dynamics. The second, the information and knowledge environment, and the third, institutions and democratic systems. So this is the 10 challenges that had been identified under the citizens and changing societal dynamics. We identify the erosion of citizen support for democracy, emergence of new and widened representation gaps.
The third, increasing erosion of democratic social norms, and the fourth, unfulfilled potential of deliberative and other participatory processes. On the second level, in terms of information and knowledge environment, we identified increasing fragmentation of the public sphere, living in the world of increasing doubt, as the sixth challenge. And if we move to the third level of institutions and the democratic system, we then identified another four challenges. A more subtle erosion of democratic quality, increasingly transnational cooperation of illiberal actors and autocratic states, the ninth, basically, the illiberal policy spillover and deterioration of political and civil rights, and the tenth, looking into the future with a straw short sight vision. So this has been the 10 challenges that we identified and proposed.
But, of course, I'm not going to focus on the 10 challenges in my presentation. I'm only going to focus on three of them. And then, of course, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have concerning the other challenges or the report itself. So on this, on the three challenges that I'm now giving you some insights, these three challenges have been chosen because, basically, the second phase of the project is focusing on these three challenges, where we wanted to do a more deep analysis of the challenges of these three challenges. And, hopefully, we'll be publishing these reports this year between July and September.
So on the first challenge, which we think is of concern, is regarding the erosion of citizen support for democracy. What the data is showing is that there is a latent support for aspects of nondemocratic governance. The emergence data that we, the experts, were discussing is that this is a phenomenon that is being observed, but it's also a phenomenon that is being observed among the young people. And, of course, the second point that the data is also showing is that there is the scope for this phenomena to be exploited by political entrepreneurs with more authoritarian or autocratic tendencies. So aligned to that, there is also the other challenge where increasing erosion of democratic social norms.
What we again, what the data is showing is that there has been a changing understanding of political norms and accepted practices. I think some of this is already being seen in, you know, in, for instance, in part in different parliaments around Europe where these democratic social norms are changing. What we are seeing is that civility, tolerance for opposing views, and exclusion of prejudice is changing. The question is how much this will change and in which direction this will be changing. Also, work done by researchers is that, for instance, some citizens justify the abuses of these democratic norms to basically justify their party, that is to stay in power and to confine the opposition.
If you see these two challenges are very much connected in terms of support of democracy because there is almost a justification of sit of citizens in terms of erosion of these norms. Because, again, the work that we are doing next is very much trying to understand what are the trade offs that citizens are willing to do to support democracy, and also being able to erode some of these democratic norms due to the parties that they support or the behavior of the political candidate or elected politician that is having this behavior. I think the third challenge is regarding the erosion of the democratic quality. And in here, we are talking about the quality of the democratic institutions. Are democratic institutions being eroded in terms of their independence?
How is the judicial system taking place in countries? And what the data is showing is that, basically, in terms of democratic facade institutions, they look the same, but inside, there is an erosion in terms of how the independence of, for instance, the electoral body takes place, how the judicial system takes place. What the data shows is that for some of these institutions, denomination of these people is not done in an independent way. So what the data is showing is that the institution seems to behave in a democratic way, but inside, there is a hollow of the democratic institutions. Again, this is done by, you know, in the having emphasis of the legality of this institutions.
As I had mentioned in terms of the different phases of the project, the scoping report where the 10 challenges identified has been published, and now we are finalizing three reports which are regarding the three challenges that I just present. So the first report is about strengthening citizen support for an engagement in democracy. The second is about the future of political institutions, and the third is about the impact of AI on democracy. The final report that we hope to have produced next year, which is basically the final report of the project, is building democratic resilience toolbox. So we hope to bring all these insights together to produce a report where, basically, we hope to have insights in terms of actions and also what the data is telling in terms of building resilience.
I think the final point that I would like to make is that what we are basically saying, or at least the data is saying, is that.
Mara ALMEIDA
Build resilience, we should. If to build democratic resilience, we should see resilience in terms of societal resilience, the resilience of the information space, but also the resilience of the institution of the democratic institutions. So it's not about one action, but what we are proposing, or at least the research is showing, is that we should see democracy as an ecosystem where these three levels should be taken into consideration. Thank you so much.
Speaker 14
Thank you very much for this presentation. Now I'll give the floor to my colleague, starting with Leonard Dubron for EPP.
Lena DUPONT
Thanks, madam chair, and thanks to DRC for presenting that very much, not only interesting, but very deep down to the core of our work here, of not only of the committee, but of the house as such, I would say. And while I was listening to you, there were a lot of things that actually resonate with me. There's a, in Germany, there's a famous paradigm, which, in short, basically says you cannot force people to like democracy. They need to understand that they're part of it. And it's very much related to the quality of democratic processes, actually.
And, obviously, and I think that this is something where we all here in the house share a, well, at least parts of the house share, an understanding of that. We, to a certain extent, failed to explain to citizens not only that they're part of the democratic system, but that quality gets better once they engage in and with the system. So clearly, something for us to work on. Two questions, three questions coming out of your presentation. I, well, first ones are basically connected.
When I was listening to you, one question came to my mind that was basically about also the relation to crisis we went through as European Union. I remember when I was starting in politics, we just went through the financial crisis, then there was the euro crisis, then there was a migratory crisis, then there was a pandemic, and afterwards, the full-scale invasion into Ukraine started. So, specifically, young people I mean, I'm of the age where I already know that there was a time before the crisis and that there will be a time after the crisis. But, specifically for the younger generation, that might not necessarily be the case. So is there a relation between, let's say, crisis experience that can be established?
Connected to that, is there also a relation to be established on the broader, let's say, context of a fight between democratic and authoritarian regimes in the sense of, I remember that we had some discussions during the pandemic time of whether an authoritarian regime is apparently or thoughtfully able to be in a better position to answer to challenges than a democratic system. And luckily, we proved that it is the other way around, but I see the pattern of that narrative coming back. And I know in terms of timing, last question, how can we actually address or is there anything that we can learn from your study on, let's say, defragmentation of the public sphere because I see that there is, well, being an expert is not necessarily something that people still want to achieve and is also not seen as something really credible, probably in order to contribute to public debate. So is this something we can also work on there? Thank you.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
For the S and Ds, Juan Fernando Lupes Aguilar.
Thank you so much. I appreciate, I really appreciate the content and the presentation of the work that you have just shared with us on behalf of your joint research center in so many ways. For one thing, it is pretty obvious that it somehow touches, if not confirms, many of the intuitions which are at the hands of each and every one of us concerned about the erosion of each and every of the pillars on which our European idea of democracy is built, the willingness to live together, to respect institutions, to engage into the upholding of those institutions. It all is at stake as never before, and particularly among the young. You have made that point.
And, of course, I guess it's got to do with one of the points that you have referred to, which is the emergence of a new way to communicate, institutional a way to vehicle political communication through the social media and in the digital sphere. And, of course, with the intermediation, which is decisive of the big technological platforms, which are private, are not playing the democratic game, not serving democratic values. So those are the questions I would like you to address explicitly. First, sure you know that one of the main concerns of this committee of us has been enhancing transparency, accountability to the social media. We have put in place legislation, but we've been challenged in that regard.
And in this mandate, we're actually reviewing, let's face it, somehow downgrading the standards that we set in the previous mandate, precisely for the sake of accommodating the European way with the influence of those political and technological platforms and social media. So how are we to secure that we are actually preserving the European idea of democracy despite this preeminence of technological platforms and social media when it comes to interfering with a political game. And the second is precisely how can we do better in order to ensure and even strengthen the consistency of the social fabric, the cohesion of the social fabric, when it comes to the willingness of living together in an increasingly fragmented public sphere, which is absolutely determined by the digital sphere. The social sphere is being replaced, surrogated actually, by the digital sphere. And of course, it leads the way to increasingly individual or encapsulated isolated perceptions of the world, which are increasingly incompatible with any other, eroding the willingness to live together in a democratic and pluralistic social fabric, which is the European idea of democracy.
Those are the questions I would like you to address. But of course, I am willing to take a personal look at those leaflets and books that you showed us on the screen because I am willing to go thoroughly through each and every one of them.
Christine Anderson
Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have to say listening to this report and the speakers, the speaker today, one cannot escape the impression that this is quite simply the commission talking to itself. This is a document produced by the commission's own research service, funded by the commission to provide evidence-based scientific support to commission policy making. So my first question is a very basic one, actually.
Where is the independence here? Where is the external scrutiny, or is this just a closed loop of institutional self-justification? Second, on substance. You repeatedly referred to rising populism and increased polarization as indicators of democratic decline. But millions of citizens vote for these respective parties, which you then pathologize.
So my question, are you analyzing democracy or are you judging voters? Third, on methodology. You present this as scientific, yet much of it relies on broad unscientific narratives, erosion, fragmentation, a world of increasing doubt, so are your words. Where is the hard data on this? Where is the empirical grounding that would justify such sweeping conclusions about entire electorates?
And finally, and this is actually most striking, is what is missing in the report. You speak at length about illiberal actors and threats to democracy, yet there is no serious discussion of state overreach and its implications for democracy. So my final question is this. If this is truly a balanced assessment of threats to democracy, where in your report do you address the role of state institutions in potentially persecuting democratic opposition, particularly right-wing conservative movements? Thank you.
Mara ALMEIDA
Thank you very much, honorable members for the questions. I will start answering the first questions that I got regarding the relation with the financial crisis or economical crisis. Again, the data shows that the financial crisis that has happened, especially in the southern countries, has had an impact on the views of the young generation regarding democracy. So, but again, they are emerging data. There are surveys that are being done recently on that.
So I think, again, these challenges are regarding the short- and long-term future. So the data is very much in terms of trends that we are seeing. So there is the evidence seems to be that there is a relation to that. Also, the report mentioned in terms of economical and cultural grievance having an impact on the way that citizens see and support democracy. So I think that should be especially for young generations, what we are suggesting is that it should be something that we should have in consideration considering the data.
I think the fight between authoritarian and democratic governance systems, again, the report shows where democracy does better. Do you know, in terms of climate change, in terms of corruption, in terms of security? So there is quite a lot of a body of data where it's shown that democracy does better than authoritarian states. So I think maybe that should be on the front, in terms of the advantage of one governance system over the other. But, of course, do you know the again, how democracy is not even defined in our report.
We don't define democracy for a reason because it's, you know, that was one of the main, the first discussions that the experts had. They basically said that could be, you know, more than a book could be written to try to define democracy. The idea is that democracy is by the people for the people, and that's the premise that we started from and also from the premise that democracy is an ecosystem. Do you know that should be, you know, with the idea that it is inclusive, interactive, and open? So I think, again, I hope that I answered your question saying that there is quite a lot of data that shows that democracy as a governance system has much more advantage regarding an authoritarian state.
In terms of the questions of the second honorable member regarding political communications through the platforms. Again, I think what the report tries to do is focusing on the two challenges for the level of the information and knowledge environment by bringing this idea of fragmentation of the public sphere, is that we are not only focusing on the social platforms. The idea is that there are many other ways where citizens can take information. Social platforms are one of the elements that are part of the information and knowledge space, but media has a role also in that. Do you know knowledge producing institutions also have a knowledge role on that.
The question is how these factors are influencing the public sphere. And what the data seems to show is that, basically, they are fragmenting the public sphere, meaning that the debate of public affairs is now being taken a lot by the social media. But, again, in the Eurobarometer, what shows is that many of the citizens still take their information from the traditional media outlets. Of course, the young generations are now being formed more by the social platforms, but still the traditional outlet has an impact on the way that citizens obtain their information. So although there is a very strong focus on social platforms, I think what the report tries to show is that the information and knowledge environment should be seen as a whole.
The social media platforms have a role, of course, but there is also the media. There is also the knowledge-producing institutions. So the question is, which, of course, is for the legislators to consider, is what can be done for limiting the fragmentation of the public sphere. Is it by making the media stronger, open, more free? That's up to the legislator.
But what the data is showing is that there are many other ways that the information and the knowledge space can be strengthened. The other point is that many of these debates are also taking place online. What the report again brings is the importance of the physical spaces where it would be important for citizens to come together using public physical spaces. And, again, the JRC also has worked on that in terms of the public spaces on the importance of citizens being engaged more closely. I think regarding the social fabric, of course, information is important.
We are not, and I think the chapter on the information and knowledge environment starts with that point. We are not expecting the citizens to be experts in everything. What we are suggesting is that it's important for citizens to have information, to vote, to understand what their representatives are discussing, to have a broader view of the issues in terms of public affairs. But the question is, if citizens are taking their information from more and more narrow bubbles of platforms where they are interacting with people that have the same views, then we run the risk of having a polarization of citizens regarding the factual knowledge. And that's the danger that we run of having people basically having a polarization in terms of knowledge, which, of course, will have an impact in terms of social cohesion, but also trust in the institutions.
Regarding the third group of questions of the honorable member regarding the independence of the study, I would like to say that the study has been done with a team of seven experts coming from different parts of Europe. They are scholars who work in top universities and in research centers. So there has been an open call to choose these experts. There was a panel, an evaluation panel that these experts had been chosen from. The report is very much based on peer review literature, and this peer review literature is blind peer review literature, which is reviewed by other experts.
This is basically how the scientific method works. Also, the work has been done by triangulation. This means that research groups working in different parts of Europe have basically come up with the same result. So, and because of that, do you know we assume, or and that's why the report was always very careful in using words like suggest, it seems, because basically we are looking at evidence that has been produced by different research groups. In terms of the words erosion, fragmentation, populism, we tried, again, the team and the JRC very much tried to base all these definitions on academic definitions.
It's not definitions that each individual expert has decided to use. It's basically the definition, academic definitions used by the community, scientific community working on the field. Again, the report has focused very much on academic questions and has put aside any political issues. Again, the premises of the report has been very much the values which are stated in the European treaties, and that has been both for the right, for the left. I think that has not been the purpose of the report.
But happy to discuss with you what are the parts of the report that you feel that are not being, you know, they are being biased in any case. It's never been the point of the JRC or the expert team, which has been very much to try to inform the political debate as best as possible, because I think both the academic community and the, you know, you honorable members, we are all working together to have a strong democracy in Europe. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Thank you very much for that presentation. I'm sure that we'll read the report closely. The report that you have produced, and more generally speaking, will follow closely the work that you do in the JLC. So thank you very much for coming. Now we move on to the last item on our agenda, which is an exchange of views on foreign interference, AI, and online defamation campaigns, as part of or in scope of the Hungarian elections.
Speaker 2
Recently saw the election in Hungary as one which we know is a very important one for Hungarians and for the EU as a whole. I don't need to remind you that Peter Magia and his party, Tisa, won the elections with good turnout by voters, and they won by a fair margin with a clear majority in the Hungarian National Assembly, putting an end to sixteen years of Viktor Orban's government. Now what I'd like us to focus on is the election campaign as we observed it. And even by Hungarian standards under the Orban regime, there were instances where foreign support was involved, right up until the 11th hour to try and convince voters. We also saw TikTok accounts that were pro Orban, which disseminated a lot of content that was generated by AI or manipulated by AI.
Speaker 1
And there were a number of revelations as well that came out during the campaign on the relationships between Victor Albin's government and Putin's Russia. Now I don't need to go into it in too much detail, but we'll remember JD Vance's visit, which is unusual. I think we could say diplomatically unusual in terms of going to a country a few days before a national election. So in brief, the context, I think, deserves our interest, not in terms of taking part in the election, but to look back after the elections and to analyze and to learn some lessons from it. This is why we have invited Susanna Seleny, who is the author of Tainted Democracy, Victor Orban and the Subversion of Hungary, a former MP from Hungary and a foreign policy expert.
Speaker 2
And we also have Alliance for Europe with us, but I'll very quickly give the floor to Ms. Zeleny. I know you have a plane to catch. She is with us. You have the floor for 8 minutes.
Zsuzsanna SZELÉNYI
K. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me. I try to give you my best in this short time.
I'm available because I will have to travel soon. But I give you a couple of pieces of information. I understand you are interested in the interference of the elections, but just some basic information. So first of all, the elections were held on April 12. All kinds of observers approved that it was managed by the authorities in a proper way.
This is actually what we expected. I mean, this is typically the Hungarian ex elections are running well by the authorities. The results are very unequivocal, so it's completely clear. There is a huge majority voted for Tisa party led by Peter Malloyar, creating a 67, 68% majority of the seats. We don't have the very final results, but this is not gonna necessarily be changed, which is a supermajority, a constitutional majority for this brand-new party.
Former Fidesz party received less than 20, 30% of the seats, and the Our Homeland party received approximately 6%. So the final result will be there by the end of this week, but we cannot expect much change. This is a watershed, a landslide change, especially compared to previous elections and these last 16 years, I would say. So, obviously, this is a fascinating result because this was a peaceful and free election. However, as we know, for many years, Hungarian actions were not fair, and they were not fair this time either.
The result was not because of Hungary, such as it was in such a fascinating democracy. It is an autocratic electoral system for 16 years, and there are plenty of proofs why I am saying this. First of all, the result, what came out, is despite all the extra resources and the power of the Fidesz government and the state party basically exercising Hungary for many years. So just a couple of pieces of information. The legal environment for these elections has changed since the last elections.
This has changed before each and every election since 2010. So the legal environment is always different in Hungary. So opposition parties, whoever they are, have to find out what the next election system would be because those legal changes were always favoring the governing party, Fidesz. The other big issue is the media environment. Hungary, in Hungary, the Fidesz governing party was running a huge media environment, not only using the state media, the public media, for its own purposes, but also it was dominating a significant part of other media environment.
And where this environment provided a futile field for a highly divisive, very dirty media campaign, full of disinformation. And this specific, last media campaign, was specifically poisoned with AI generated content, which created fearful narratives and widely spread to very targeted content of the Hungarian citizenry, which basically all aimed to discredit the political opponents. So, it's basically a smear campaign, a negative campaign, and a conspiracy-based campaign, which we actually we've been somewhat used to before, but the new profile and the AI content were something completely new this time. We can also say that the government used state resources, in its institutions, financial resources for its own aims. This was also not completely new.
But what was really new is that, allegedly, intelligence services were also employed by the Hungarian government to subvert the opposition party. I think further inquiries are necessary to figure out what exactly happened, but a number of whistleblowers came out in the last couple of weeks of the campaign, showing evidence that this kind of effort happens. And this is also something that we were not aware of at previous campaigns, but it's a very serious allegation. I can tell that the financial resources were completely uneven. The Hungarian illiberal state basically used the state for party purposes.
So whereas political parties received funding for campaigning, the state party, the governing party, used any other resources of the Hungarian state for party purposes. So it was an incredible, uneven. Basically, international interference. So it's pretty obvious for everyone that very significant political actors from all over the world were supporting, physically sometimes and verbally, the leading party, Fidesz, from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump. American leaders visited Hungary and also a high number of European politicians turned up in Budapest a couple of weeks ago to support Fidesz party, whereas this did not happen for the opposition party.
Tisa actually, Tisa did not even request any visible support from anyone abroad. But despite this, TISAP party was constantly campaigned or completely listed and attached to various international forces and portrayed as agent of foreign forces like Ukraine or the European Commission. So, the conspiracy element against Tisa party did exist, without any evidence. So this was, I can say that visibly, by language, narratives were the ever most dirty campaign we have seen in Hungary in the last 16 years. It was and whatever happened as an outcome demonstrate a huge outrage of Hungarian society towards all these phenomena.
And I think, it's a very clear and obvious result that a huge majority of Hungarians wanted to change this system. I stop here. Whatever you are interested in, I'm happy to answer.
Speaker 14
Thank you. As I know you have to leave at six, I would suggest that colleagues having questions for you would ask their question now. And then after that, we will have the second guest speaker. So colleagues, if you have questions for Mrs. Celeni, I have a list of speakers, and maybe others want to take the floor, starting with Esther Lakos.
Eszter Lakos
Thank you. Thank you very much, chair, and thank you also for this insight. I would not elaborate on that, but just to mention that the pattern that we have saw in Hungary, it's very familiar with the Moldova. Foreign interference did not come as a single fake story, but as an entire ecosystem coordinated in inauthentic networks, AI-generated content, deep fakes, crumbling friendly narratives amplified through friendly national outlets in the context of domestic information manipulation and interference. We had threat of sabotage, smear campaigns, the two designed to be triggered fear, confusion, and distrust.
And investigative journalists reported that the Russian operation in support of Viktor Orban was overseen by Sergey Kilyenko, the principal architect of Russia's political influence and infrastructure at home and abroad, the same one who deployed his services, let's say, like this in Moldova. So my questions would be the following to the experts, Susan Nassalini, or also to the next ones. Where do you see that the most critical vulnerabilities are in this ecosystem? What are the early warning indicators that national authorities and the EU bodies should watch for when these networks move from one country to another, and what lessons should we already be drawing from this experience for future elections across Hungary? And let me just end on a positive note that these attacks happen because democratic choice still matters, and the outcome of the Hungarian elections also shows that voters ultimately make up their minds.
Speaker 26
And we should act earlier, coordinate better, and support independent media and fast-paced, fact-based public debate, and Europe can be more resilient than the force is trying to manipulate it. Thank you.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
Thank you. For the S and D, Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
Yes. Thank you. We appreciate the thorough examination of the constitutional breakdown that has been perpetrated for 16 years by the Fidesz majority in Hungary. That is something we were aware of. And actually, it's been the subject matter of many debates in the plenary in Strasbourg, and resolutions that we have written and adopted.
And of course, even by specific missions that have been sent to Hungary a number of times, precisely on the grounds that it all started with the comeback of Victor Orban to power in 2010 and right after for sixteen years, yes, but it all started with an electoral reform, which provided the securement of nothing less than two thirds to the winner of the elections in the single house parliament in Hungary. And ironically and ultimately, that has been the defeat of Viktor Orban, providing for two thirds for his opponent, now Tietze, led by Peter Maggiar. But having said this, we're all aware about the constitutional breakdown, the capture of the media, public media, of the academy, the streets by repressing demonstrations and opponents to feed this and Victor Urban for so long and, of course, of the judiciary and the constitutional court. But the question goes, does it really make a difference when it comes to smear campaigns, when it comes to slaughtering, when it comes to abuse of social media and defamation through social media against opponents? Does it really make a difference, Hungary, as to any other democratic society or situation or state in the European Union?
Because let's face it, all of the member states of the European Union are witnessing that kind of a rise, emergence of smear campaigns, slander, and defamation through the social media between competitors, which is an erosion of the quality of democracy in all of the member states of the social media. So, yes, we're all aware that Hungary makes a difference. But the question is, does it really make a difference when it comes to slaughtering and smear campaigns? Thank.
No. Very.
Cristian Terheş
Briefly, because I don't think it's really given the findings here about interference. Now there was so much Russian interference. Why were the elections not suspended? I don't think it's worth questioning these elections, which Tisa won very fairly. People voted en masse.
There was a change, and then Mister Orban recognized the defeat and congratulated the winner, which is something that we haven't seen elsewhere. And immediately, there was going to be a transfer of powers because mister Majors has said that he's going to use a constitutional change to sweep through the institutions and get rid of anybody that he doesn't like. So I think the only thing we can say is that what is happening in other countries, if the EU's interference in countries like Hungary or Poland two years ago and the treatment that's been meted out, and when Erasmus is approved for students going to Hungary, all of this interference saying that the EU has a kind of post Brezhnev doctrine saying who their favorites are to change the results. I think all patriots need to recognize this. Anyone who wants to have a sovereign country needs to realize that this is the case.
In Spain, see how the Spanish premier is accused of corruption, but he's being protected, but he's acting criminally towards Spanish people, but there are no consequences or warnings from here. But, apparently, it's us, the conservative governments, that want to get rid of you because you are our enemies. But I think that's why we've ended up with this here, at this committee. Thank you.
Speaker 14
Let me answer you, mister Tertj, before you leave because you're obviously not interested in answers, but more in your remarks. When you say people have stopped the elections in Romania, this is the Romanian Supreme Court which canceled the election. No one in Brussels did it. No one in Brussels supported or did not support this. Aspiration.
Aspiration. I'm speaking. I let you speak. I am answering. No one in Brussels supported this or that candidate, apart from politicians who had their preferences.
But the system is party neutral so much that Mister Orban was able to stay in power for 16 years, to be in the European Council, and to be the Trojan horse of Vladimir Putin, and this is regrettable. Next speaker is if you want to take the floor, Kim for Spire Attack.
Speaker 28
Thank you very much for this overview. I think we've all looked at all the different aspects of interference for and cautiously. We're looking at what the results were last Sunday, and I'm very happy with the results. I was wondering in terms of lessons learned when it comes to foreign interference, specifically in the digital worlds, what do you think are the main lessons we can learn from for all elections in Europe, and what would be your top recommendation? Thank you.
Speaker 14
Okay. So the floor goes back to Missus Celeni for answers to these questions and remarks.
Zsuzsanna SZELÉNYI
Thank you very much. I try my best. So first of all, thank you very much, Esther Lakos, for your comments and complementing what I said with more concrete details. I think there is, incredibly important work that has been done. And this is also probably something I could answer for, miss.
Probably, I I'm not sure I can pronounce properly. But, so, basically, we had constant monitoring at a very high level by a lot of investigative journalists. There was an international collaboration between journalists and media experts constantly monitoring the media space in Hungary and also the spendings until it was possible for financing advertisement at Facebook and Meta and other sources. So I think we've gathered a huge number of information, which still feels need to be developed and analyzed, and there will be a lot of lesson learned from the Hungarian campaign. Probably, it's too early to say that.
But what is important is that already during the campaign, many of the findings were publicized. So there was a very intensive counteractivity from the civic level, which was really interesting because the Hungarian state did not do anything against that. And that was a really problematic issue, of course, also with other kind of foreign interference that a Hungarian state under Fidesz leadership did not basically fail to oppose. This was a big difference compared to Moldova and some other countries, because it was a Russia friendly country. So I cannot give more concrete details at this very moment, but there will be a lot of professional reports about this, and I think that will be very useful for the European Parliament and the Commission.
One short comment on the smear campaign. So there is social science demonstrating that conspiracy campaigns are very efficient. It's a very unfortunate fact, and we have to take care of this. And new narratives should be figured out how to counter the smear campaigns. Not so much smear campaigns, but specifically conspiracy related to related campaigns, which were masterfully produced by Fidesse government and party specialists for many years.
And we also know that when these campaigns are over, actually, understanding of situations of feed of the facts go back to somewhat normal. So the campaigns are very efficient until they are propagated, but not necessarily stay with us for long. And this is also something that we learned a couple of years ago, for example, when migration or anti migration was, in the focus of the Hungarian conspiracy campaign in twenty eighteen elections, when all Hungarians believed during the campaign and the election time that migration is the largest ever threat on Hungary's future, and all this thing disappeared a couple of months later when the propaganda was not on it. So there is a lot of social research, so I think that we should move more onto scientific research in this regard, which should be then used by political decision makers for countering better, conspiracy campaigns and smear campaigns, altogether because this is a reality now in Europe. I think, unfortunately, I couldn't finish or follow mister Terc campaign, because he spoke Italian, and I find the translation button too late.
If there is anything that you believe I should respond, please summarize it to me.
Speaker 14
Not necessarily if I can sum up the feelings of my colleagues. Thank you very much.
Speaker 29
Alright. Thank you very much. Thank you. If I can be at your help in the future, I'm available. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 14
Thank you very much. The floor goes to Henri Price, director general of Alliance for Europe, to share the conclusion of the recently published report on persistent infrastructure and cross-border influence operations targeting European elections on X and especially, of course, on Hungary. The floor is yours for 7 minutes.
Henri Price
Thank you very much, and thank you for hosting this really interesting session. Thank you to all the speakers. I'm just checking that the clicker works. Yes, it does. Thank you.
So Alliance for Europe is a nonprofit organization that has the mandate of defending democracy. We convene the counter-disinformation network. And for this research, we worked with Trellensix, which specializes in behavioral analysis of disinformation campaigns and the hybrid election integrity observatory that's working out of the Netherlands. And just to give you a few slides about who we are, we the counter disinformation network now has more than 110 members, about 450 practitioners. We support a variety of different forums and networks like the EU Code of Conduct on Disinformation and the EAS, Vimi, ISAC.
So we support a lot of these efforts across the community. We bring together different kinds of expertise. So OSINT, open source intelligence researchers, journalists, academics, fact checkers, and more. We really try and support the whole of society approach to countering disinformation. We recently published the Disrupt Toolkit, which outlines how by looking at the behavioral patterns of influence operations, you can take concrete steps to counter them, to disrupt them, to break them apart, and bring different kinds of practitioners to do that.
We've also recently developed a threat intelligence platform that helps bring data together on this, which is compatible also with existing protocols and existing methodologies, all in the name of trying to increase collaboration and make this whole of society approach for democratic resilience more effective. So as I said, the approach is really to look at the technical vulnerabilities, look at the infrastructure, look at the manipulative behavior, and see what steps can be made and taken to counter those influence operations. So this report, as the chair just mentioned, looked at persistent infrastructure that's operating specifically on X. This is something, as I mentioned earlier, that we did together with Trollenzix and the HIO consortium, and the authors are Maria Valencia, Valentina, sorry, and Robert Van Norda. They couldn't be here.
I'm presenting on their behalf, and any errors are entirely my part. And they did an excellent job on this, so thank you very much. So the story here begins ahead of the Dutch parliamentary elections back in October 2024. And TroLensics identified a set of fake accounts of apparent bots or, basically, identities that they were not real and that were operating in clusters coordinating their behavior and amplifying certain kinds of content. And the objective here is not so much the content itself, but manipulating the algorithm.
So to try and create a curated ecosystem whereby users see more of a certain type of content and less of other kinds of content. And these fake accounts come from a variety of places outside of the EU: Ghana, Benin, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, etc., and mostly Nigeria. And these accounts are pretty obviously fake. There is little effort made to make them look real. Right?
So in the Dutch context, we saw more than 23,000 posts that were amplified, skewing towards supporting far-right content and basically supporting a small cluster of x accounts that are just putting out a lot of content and then retweeting content and so on. When this was flagged, x suspended some of the accounts, but some of them persisted. Some of them are still there, hence the title of the report. Then, as the Hungarian election approached, we saw that some of these accounts migrated from engaging with the Dutch ecosystem to engaging with the Hungarian ecosystem. We looked at these accounts and how they were interacting with Hungarian accounts, and then we also isolated these Nigerian origin accounts, specifically looked at their behavior, and then we looked at 21 Hungarian accounts that were seeing, you know, the most interaction with these fake accounts from Nigeria.
So I'm just going to whiz through some of this, but you can always take a look at the report. It's relatively easy to read on our website. We basically see quite a significant overlap in the behaviors and the way that these accounts are following each other and amplifying each other. And we analyzed to see that there's a 16% overlap in unique followers that are amplifying across the ecosystem. And we see, again, that there's essentially a strong pattern of support, mutual support between these accounts.
Just clicking through. So looking at what these accounts look like, I mean, a lot of them are impersonations of Elon Musk or impersonations of the Trump family and their children. Some of them are impersonations of rock stars that you might like. Heath Richard, Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, you know, these kinds of things. So it's not like someone is pretending to be a real persona, but rather a fake Elon Musk and so on.
So looking at what we can draw from this, sorry. Just moving ahead slightly. Yeah. We can see clearly that, essentially, there is a successful redeployment across elections, right, of infrastructure that is there to stay. Right?
So these are assets that have been there, have been cultivated, and then they basically are on tour between elections. And what really needs to happen is more platform action to address these kinds of things and to make sure that the algorithms also are somewhat immune to this kind of behavior. So to just draw up some recommendations, and then I would be more than happy to look at some of your questions and comments. So, realistically, we need the Digital Services Act to take this into account in terms of how the enforcement is carried out and to look at how this CIB infrastructure persists essentially, what can the platforms do to make sure that these CIB networks are not persistent, and then to make clear what do red lines look like in terms of compliance with the DSA. And, again, just to emphasize, this kind of DSA enforcement is the defense of European rights, including freedom of expression and online safety.
So this is wholly compatible. This continues to be a whole society problem. So whether the elections ended up one way or the other is not any reason to sort of look away from this problem. We still need strategic action. We need integrated action between this kind of information integrity measures and how we tackle hybrid threats and FIMI campaigns such as this one.
We need to also integrate this with media diversity and civic engagement efforts, and all of these need to be properly streamlined across the MFF, because if this is not properly resourced, it's just not going to happen. So, things like the competitiveness fund or defense spending need to take these kinds of resilience measures into account, and this needs to be coordinated via the efforts around the Democracy Shield. And with that, I'll close here so that you have a bit of time still to ask questions, and then we won't keep each other too long, I suppose. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 14
Thank you very much for your intervention. Now the floor goes to my colleagues. I don't know who wants to take the floor. Oh, yes. Sorry.
Before that, I would like to give the floor to two representatives of the European Commission, starting with Irina Moesova from DG Trust.
Irina Moesova
Thank you very much, madam chair, for inviting us to participate in this very interesting exchange of views. And as you know, we do not comment on the results of the national elections, but we take note of the electoral results, which reflect the democratic choice of the Hungarian people. As president von der Leyen stated, Europe has always chosen Hungary, and the commission is committed to working in close cooperation with the new Hungarian government as soon as it is formed. Now free and fair elections are at the core of democracy. Elections everywhere must be free from interference.
The organization and the conduct of elections are the competence and responsibility of the member states in accordance with their constitutional and national law, and also in line with European Union law and international obligations. And let me remind you that this relevant European Union legislation includes notably the Digital Service Act, the European Media Freedom Act, the AI Act, or the Anti-SLAPP directive. It also includes as a novelty to political advertising regulation, which helps protect the integrity of electoral processes and also supports an open democratic debate by setting European Union common transparency and accountability standards. It enables citizens to recognize paid for political material, and distinguish it from other contents such as editorial content or political opinions expressed in a personal capacity. The regulation also bans ads by non-European Union country sponsors during the three months leading up to any elections or referendum in the member states.
Now over the last years, with the European democracy action plan and the defense of democracy package, the commission has been providing support to European Union member states to strengthen democratic and electoral resilience through also non-legislative policy tools, and always in full respect to member states' competencies. With the 2,023 recommendations on inclusive and resilient electoral processes in the union, as a commission, we suggested a list of concrete actions to member states with the objective to promote high democratic standards for elections in the European Union in order to also support high voter turnouts, inclusive participation, and making it easier to exercise one's electoral rights. Since 2019, furthermore, the European cooperation network on elections was the exchange of information and best practice and was relied upon to prepare resources and practical tools to support competent national authorities in their work, such as a checklist on the integrity of elections or a risk management metrics for elections, also compendium on e-voting or a guide on the good electoral practices on participation of people with disabilities. In this context, with the joint mechanism for electoral resilience organized and coordinated through this network, the commission can support, including through funding, the operational deployment of joint expert teams and expert exchanges if member states require such a kind of expert support?
Speaker 14
Excuse me. May I interrupt you just for a second? Because we are quite well aware in this special committee about everything you're describing, especially because the legislations, we voted them. But we had asked to have something specific on the recent Hungarian elections. So, would you comment on that?
Irina Moesova
Madam Chair, unfortunately, as I already said in my first sentence, we do not comment on the elections, in particular, in Hungary, in this comment. So, alright.
Speaker 14
But if it's just to remind us about what we voted, I'm very happy to have the commission coming to our meetings, but not necessarily if you don't have any specific things to say. You were clearly requested to come and talk about Hungary. If you consider it's not possible for you to do that, I can fully understand. But then, I'll just say it before. That would be better for your time and our time as well.
Irina Moesova
Madam chair, so I wanted to, of course, follow up on the European democracy shield, but certainly so you are also aware about the strategic framework, putting forward new measures aimed at empowering strong and resilient democracies and the whole of government and whole society approach, which was also mentioned by the previous speakers. I think that what I can express as well there is that indeed, so we are supporting upon the request of European Union member states when they would like to work together with us and with the peers of the member states in order to protect the electoral processes from any interference and to strengthen the resilience. And I think that there was a call for the president of the lion when she discussed these matters with the European Union leaders and the European Council. And we have been requested to work with the member states to further enhance the resilience, and we are very committed as a Commission to doing so. Of course, always with the allocate looking into the allocation of the competencies.
So I would say I would maybe conclude then that the preparation for the elections required building up the resilience and full awareness continues. With the democracy shield, we have now considerably reinforced our capacities, including setting up the new European Centre for Democratic Resilience. We started the work of the center in February, and we are ready to fully mobilize its capacities together with the member states, based on the best expertise and experience. And we are looking forward to working very closely with the member states, but also with the parliament in making the best out of the legislation, as you mentioned, madam chair, but all those innovative tools that we have currently in our disposal, deploying based on the capacity building, awareness raising, and for the awareness of the threats ahead of us. And I will probably stop here then, because apparently, there was not full understanding of our role in this hearing.
Thank you.
Speaker 14
Well, I indeed regret that what was clearly asked for was not well understood by the commission, including explaining to us what the democracy shield is about. I'm not blaming you individually, but please refer to your DG. This is not the way you can have productive cooperation with the European Parliament. Now I will give the floor to Miss Niklas from DG Connect. If and only if, I'm sorry to be a little bit insistent, but I really don't like having the impression that the commission is taking the European Parliament so lightly.
So if you have something specific to tell us about the elections in Hungary, which are the topic, the reason why we are here today at this hour in this room.
Renate Nikolay
Thank you, madam chair, honorable members, ladies, and gentlemen. I think I do. I want to bring you into what we, from a DSA perspective, saw in this kind of, you know, Hungarian election. You know very well. I don't give you that background that we have a setup with the DSA with the code of practice that we have now under the DSA that we can actually have quite an active kind of, you know, monitoring exercise in the context of elections.
Speaker 33
And that's what we deployed here. This always has to start from a request from a Hungarian authority. And here, the Hungarian digital service coordinator, you know the structure of the DSA. We have national authorities working with us, actually asked us to build on the election guidelines that we also issued already before the European parliament elections in '24 to organize a roundtable. So we participated in that roundtable as we participated in many more roundtables in other national elections.
Renate Nikolay
And following that roundtable, that roundtable brought together elections, all the national authorities. I think that was important because we heard earlier that the election was kind of, you know, run quite well. So all the authorities were well equipped to kind of do the necessary in case something went wrong. So also in the context of the setup that we have, the DSA with the code of practice as a co-regulatory approach, the signatories of the code of practice activated the rapid response system. This is the kind of activation that is more kind of, you know, timely monitoring exercise.
Again, we as a commission do not have a role in that. That's signatories like, you know, CSOs, like, you know, representatives we have here around the table, but also the platforms involved in that. Here, the platforms, and that's maybe important to know for the committee, that are very relevant from a perspective of who is kind of leading, were Facebook and TikTok in the Hungarian case. And in our assessment, x played a less important role. And also, of course, x is no longer a signatory of the code of practice on disinformation, so could anyway not have been in that monitoring exercise that we conducted under the rapid response system, or that we observed.
We didn't conduct it. Voilà. So, what have we seen in the rapid response system? And we are still waiting for the finalization because we always start. We do always do it in a five-week time frame, four weeks before the election and then also still one week after the election.
So it's still running, and it only ends later this week as we speak. We also had today, I chaired today the Digital Services Board. So also there, the Hungarian digital service coordinator spoke about it, thanked a lot for the cooperation they had with the commission in the context of the run up to the elections, and also promised that they would, as many other digital service coordinators did after national election processes, do a report on what they observed in this election. What we have observed together with the signatories of the code of practice and also from the regular monitoring that is happening, that we also heard from the previous speakers, was a huge activity in the context of the rapid response system. So we are talking about thousands of flags.
That's very similar to what we saw in the context of the Romanian elections. And a lot has been said already. I think we are really in a situation where the unlabeled AI generated content is moving into a lift different level of sophistication. We already had that trend in previous elections, but here we see that it's really a different level of sophistication, and I come to what we learn from that maybe for the future at the end of my introduction here. So that's a kind of key element that has really been sophisticated a lot.
What we also observed, and it has also already been said, is the hyper tactics. We see, on the one hand, manipulation of the information space, a lot of inauthentic accounts and bots, a lot of what we have said, what has been heard by others, but of course, also combined with, in the offline world, an alleged sabotage attempt of oil pipelines in Serbia. So really, this mix of hybrid attacks from the online space with other realities, I think, is something that we are really seeing. In terms of the inauthentic accounts, what we are observing is actually they are moving. They are moving from one kind of national elections to other national elections.
So quite worth kind of, you know, considering here much more assessment so that we observe that better. What we observed was actually a very active cooperation, and that's the partnership, the cooperation structure that we have built with the code of practice and with the rapid response system, the fact checkers, the civil society, the media, operators on the one side, the platforms on the other side. So there was a lot of reaction. Was it helping a lot? No.
Some of the stuff stayed still on line too long, but there was also reaction. A lot of this was taken down, so I would say it is an example that we still need to kind of amend this further, but that works if everybody plays role. So I would really like to thank, in particular, also players like the civil society, you know, actor we have here with us for the active involvement because that's what we can deliver in this. What to do next on this? Maybe a couple of points, you know, just at the end.
If I may, I think what has been said before, it is the enforcement of the rules. So we will, of course, also look at that election and see if there is anything from our DSA enforcement role that invites us to kind of, you know, look into any enforcement action. You know that we are in the deep kind of, you know, advancement of, for instance, the enforcement action that we started after the Romanian elections regarding TikTok, and you will see more of that in the future. It's also really the importance of keeping systems like the roundtables, the rapid response system, the cooperation structures that we have built, because they help us to learn, they help us to get better. It's really also building on a democracy shield center that has been mentioned, to go to a different level of monitoring capacity.
And here, I really want to stress, especially since we see the AI-manipulated content, that we need to get better into the research framework. We have said in the Democracy Shield, we really want to move into a different kind of scientific approach, and I think we really need forensic detectors for this kind of, you know, AI-manipulated content. We see that this is getting more sophisticated. We need to kind of, you know, gang up, and you have in France very, very good kind of structures. I think we really need to make a jump ahead.
And that leads me to fully support what has been said by others. We need a kind of whole society approach. I fully support that, and we need to have a strategic approach when looking at the next budget so that we put the money in the areas that need support, and that is civil society and that is the research in these areas so that we get better equipped and getting better in the monitoring and the assessing of the trends because this is not a one off. We are having the next election in Bulgaria. We are having the rapid response system there.
So we are actually the monitoring hasn't stopped. We are constantly in the monitoring, and we can, of course, then also comment report on what our findings on that are. Thank you very much.
Speaker 14
Thank you very much. This was informative and sometimes unexpected, I would say. So I give the floor to my colleagues for questions or remarks. Estella, because you have questions or remarks?
Eszter Lakos
I would not drive into the remarks because we could stay here quite a long time, because we experienced it on our skin. It's just a few because we had the deep fakes, and you said that we should go towards the forensic. Could you just elaborate a little bit more on that, because we are talking about now quite a lot? Thank you.
Speaker 14
Thank you. Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, you want to take the floor on this?
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
No. We followed the lengthy explanation and presentation with interest. And at this stage, as we're running out of time, the only comment I would allow myself is that we, of course, are willing to keep an eye on the developments ahead, because, yes, we have seen an election just recently, last Sunday. We have seen political change finally brought about in Hungary. We, of course, were aware about what's been going on for much too long, and particularly with the intensity of the latest campaign.
But the thing is that Hungary has been put on hold under EU law and by the EU institutions in every possible way. Article seven, conditionality regulation, and nothing is to be deactivated just out of the blue. And overnight, of course, those preventions and cautions are already there, and they should be on the way until we see actual change being unfolded before our very eyes. That's it. That's the point I was willing to share.
You. Kim from Sparentag.
Speaker 28
Thank you very much. My question to the Alliance for Europe. So I think we can all agree that the kind of interference forensics uncovered is pretty basic. Could you maybe say anything about whether you think that algorithms based on clicks interactions are actually just too vulnerable to these kinds of basic attacks and that we should intervene in them. And to miss Nikolay, I was wondering if because this is a discussion that we're also having very often with the AI office.
Wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the kind of collaboration you have on this because they're now in the process of making this. Thank you.
Tomáš Zdechovský
Yes. Perfect, madam chair. Everyone is tired. Also, I will tell you one joke. So what I have it, only two people on the planet had it 10,000 likes on his profile one hour before they publish any photo, and it was Chuck Norris.
He dies, and it was Victor Orban. Also, he is still surviving. But, it was thanks to Russian propaganda and me as a former person who was engaged in the cybersecurity of the Czech Republic. I have to say that we were follow every time the troll farms in Hungary, and it is the school for everyone from Europe who failed the state. If you have a close cooperation with GERU agent, if the people from GERU follow prime minister on all meetings, and we have clear evidence that Russian were presented everywhere last half year in Hungary.
That means that we are losing democracy and our sovereignty. And at the end, I would like to thank openly JD Vance to tell that EU is traitor. Thanks to JD Vance for support, for support of Victor Orban because he helped him to fall down because only two interferes in the Hungarian election were from the Russian and from US. Also, thanks to US, mister Trump, mister JD Vance, that you are helping us to put down any other dictator. Also, I think it's a very good message after Maduro, he put down also the Orban.
Also, JD Vance is my star.
Speaker 14
Alright. It was almost a conclusion, but I would like to give two minutes to mister Price and two minutes to missus Nicolet. There were more remarks than questions, but there were still questions. So if you want to answer, Mister Price and Missus Nicolet. Thank you.
Henri Price
Sure. Thank you for that. And I do wonder how Chuck Norris did that. And JD Vance, I'm sure, will get his due credit. You know?
So, thank you. Regarding the question on algorithms and these kinds of tactics, indeed, this is not rocket science. This is something that needs to be addressed by having transparency on how these algorithms actually operate. So I think that this is something that we need when we tend to pretend that these platforms are some kind of a public square, but they're not because we don't actually know how they operate. We can only assume.
It needs to be clear that the algorithms need to be immune to this kind of manipulation. So, basically, CIB needs to be designed out of the system. And if the platforms are required to do so, it's not something that is so difficult to do. And I also think from our perspective, we need to keep throwing the kitchen sink at this metaphorically, in the sense that we need to put in all the resources to address it rather than go, okay, well, that election wasn't so bad, then, yeah, move on to the next one. What we're seeing is that the autocratic side, they keep trying stuff.
They do basic stuff. They do advanced stuff. They are playing on all of the fields, we need to keep our eye on these different fields to really provide a whole of society approach and not sort of tell ourselves, okay, well, that election was sort of okay, fine, next one, You know? So we need to keep our priorities straight in democracy defense, essentially. Thank you.
Renate Nikolay
Maybe to add to that, I think also that the integrity of the online information space remains kind of a key theme. From one election to the other, it's not unique to this election. And here, technology is abused or is kind of used as a weapon. So if you want to kind of hit that, you need to come with, you know, your best top notch knowledge about that technology development. And that's where the research kind of aspect comes in.
It's good to have networks with fact-checkers. But we need to be armed in a different way because the sophistication of the manipulative kind of, you know, structures changes. And we need to be on our toes. And that's what I find the most important message, also in the democracy shield, that we really want to get better in this assessment and that we bring in the research community. And that's what I mean with, you know, really looking at technology can also be used to detect difficulties, and that's where the forensic detectors come in.
And on the AI office, indeed, so very soon, we will actually have the obligation for the labeling of AI generated content. That will be an additional tool because so far, we only have it in our soft law election guidelines, because it's not a rule from the DSA. It is a rule from the AI Act. We simply anticipated it in our election guidelines. So I think that will only strengthen our hands.
And I know, as was also said, I think in the current AI omnibus that we are negotiating here in the context of the final dry dock, hopefully on the twenty-eighth, it's also very clear that we want a harmonious kind of coherent enforcement structure between the AI office and the DSA platform directorates. Since we are all, first of all, it's the commission anyway. And since we are all in one DG, it shouldn't be so complicated.
Speaker 14
So thank you very much to all of you for this discussion today. It was, I think, really interesting, really needed. Next election is next Sunday in Bulgaria. So let's cross fingers not on the results, but that the election itself is immune from foreign interferences. Thank you very much.
Have a good evening.
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