Special committee on the European Democracy Shield Ordinary meeting
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EUDS European Parliament
Ihren Sitzungen folgenYes.
Velizar Shalamanov
I have five slides as it was agreed, in order to be able to easier present our experience. So if you could project them locally in Brussels. Okay. Next slide, please. So this is about the arrangements of the process of monitoring and defending our elections from potential foreign information manipulation and interference.
And it was established under the order of the minister of foreign affairs as a horizontal coordination mechanism. And, of course, we proposed to the prime minister to arrange such a coordination on the whole of government level with the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of E Governance. For the first time, we invited all active academic institutions, Soffe University and others, including companies dealing with media analysis, to participate in this effort. And, of course, we activated rapid award system of European external action services to use capacity that is available on EU level with the ambition to have weekly reports for the period of elections to prime minister office and, if needed, award reports. And, of course, fully transparent to president and parliament because our reports to prime minister were shared with our president and the chair of the parliament. You see the result of the overall effort for integrity of elections.
It was higher actually, the highest turnover in the last five years. It was a high level of integrity of elections recognized by practically all stakeholders, especially the focus of foreign ministry elections abroad. There was a bigger turnover even with fewer voting sites abroad. No serious FIMI incidents were reported, and it was really positive news because our effort was kind of a deterrence measure for such types of activities. And on the cyber level, attacks were really limited, especially only for the last several hours.
Next slide. This is how the institutional approach was implemented mostly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with several different directorates that are specialized in information analysis from our embassies, from media, from international organizations. And it was integrated through the fusion process under the leadership of ambassador Spasova, sitting next to me today. And the report presented, as I mentioned, to the prime minister office where it was integrated with the reports from other ministries with a role in the area of information resilience when it comes to elections. And, of course, for the cases that need to be verified through special services, it was the decision of the prime minister to task them for such analysis and verification tasks.
Next slide. It is about the whole society approach. As I mentioned, we invited Sofie University, Academy of Sciences, people working on different projects related to information resilience. We used to work very close with the Center for Study of Democracy with Identrix. It is a media analysis company, with Humanitarian and Social Studies Foundation, and DFMI as well, because we're working close with SENSICA here in Bulgaria.
Even informal organization as Bulgarian elves. But the rules of the game were very simple. We are just identifying the key areas for analysis. It is about elections abroad and the integrity of our foreign policy, and we expect it from partners that are on the screen. They report on a weekly basis or more often in order to take them into account through our analysis.
Next slide. When it comes to other ministries, it is first on the level of the ministry of foreign affairs. We received information from the other ministries in addition to what they report directly to the prime minister, and it is mostly for aspects related to cybersecurity from the ministry of e governance and from the ministry of justice and ministry of interior for the cases that we don't have capacity and competence to verify. So it is an effort to do as much as possible on the level of the ministry of foreign affairs reporting to the prime minister. And, of course, being the ministry of foreign affairs, we put a lot of effort to use all instruments available in the European Union, working with some of our allies, especially UK embassy was very supportive, Netherlands embassy, embassy of Ukraine, and working very close with observers missions from OSCE and parliamentarian assembly of European Union.
Next slide. So these are lessons that we could share. Key disinformation that we were able to identify was mostly focused on discussing a potential Romanian scenario, and it was focused on disinformation against the efforts of the government to provide protection of our elections from Fimi and the integrity of our elections. Most of the disinformation was DIMI, not Fimi, and it was in the area of building mistrust to the efforts of the government for machine voting, video monitoring, and activities of the Ministry of Interior to really suppress people that are trying to buy votes for one or another party. There was a very active use of political advertisements, but we were not very capable, according as it was mentioned, the digital service act to identify all the cases and to work with the platform.
So it is the area to improve. Mostly, sentiments in Bulgaria were neutral towards different foreign and even internal influences. But because we were monitoring media in about 55 states, there were certain states you see on the screen with quite negative publications for the elections and the overall situation in Bulgaria that were influencing indirectly our citizens. Efforts of Ministry of Interior and Ministry of E Governance being more visible were highly appreciated when the efforts in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our strategic communication, assess as a kind of preventive action deterring more active use of Fimi in Bulgaria. What I'm ready to share is that the commission on regulation of communications, that is our national coordinator on DSA, at least from our perspective, was not very active.
And there is a need for more coordination between the government and such regulation entities like this commission, Council of Electronic Media, and Central Electoral Commission. Because at the end of the day, elections are not responsibility only for the government, but mostly for the central electoral commission. And DSA implementation is mostly the responsibility of the commission on the regulation of communications. And last but not least, I want to stress that this cooperation with academic institutions, with IT companies, with non-governmental organizations was very positive as experience for the ministry of foreign affairs because we received excellent reports that were adding value to the efforts of our team that is with limited capacity being activated for the first time. So we look forward to improve this mechanism, and it is exactly what we will recommend to the government that we hope parliament will elect already this week.
So thank you for your attention. This is a short review of what we were doing during the elections, and I'm ready, together with ambassador Spasovo, to answer any questions you could have.
Vasile Dîncu
Thank you, Mr. Minister. Stand with us, please, for the question. We can continue with Christo Grocev.
Christo Grozev
Thank you. I hope you can hear me. I wanna say that I was really honored to be invited to the advisory committee of the civic society that the interim government created in order to pull all resources and create a stream of information and brainstorming on prevention of FIMI. And it is unprecedented in the history of Bulgaria and largely in the history of Central and Eastern Europe. And I do agree with what the minister, Sholmano, said that a lot of what this committee did and a lot of the publicity around it certainly acted as a preemptive and discouraging signal to some of the international bad actors, which we can already see from some leaked communications after that.
Before the vote, there was a legitimate fear of a Romanian moment. As we heard, a single external actor, a single platform, an overwhelming TikTok wave for one particular candidate. But as we will hear the problem in much more detail from Antoinette from VFMI, the tick tock tracker organized by the DFMI found that Bulgaria did not experience manipulation of that particular type. But this is good news. The bad news is what it found instead, a very distributed pattern of manipulation affecting almost the entire domestic political spectrum where different actors used similar techniques mostly borrowed from best, or should I say worst, practices developed by international bad actors such as Russia that have been deployed previously both across the ocean on American interference in American elections and more recently both in Romania and in Hungary.
So there was no one actor. There was no one platform, not one party, and this made the whole operation harder to detect, harder to attribute, and harder to counter. As I'm sure we will hear in more detail, three major political parties showed coordinated inauthentic behavior and activity. These were primarily DPSNN, Progressive Bulgaria, the Victor, and ITN. They differed in the approaches they had.
DPSNN ran purpose-built TikTok networks with purchased news, and TikTok stepped in and removed 34 accounts with over 60,000 followers after civil society flagging. And Progressive Bulgaria benefited from much more sophisticated layering, identical content drops among different accounts, repurposed Facebook groups that used to have pro-Russian histories but were renamed multiple times in order to inherit the existing audiences. Very good customization of the messaging depending on what the inherited audience is, so not necessarily focusing on anti corruption on an audience that is inherited from pro Russian Facebook groups because they understood well that these are completely different electoral segments. Hashtag hijacking, the hashtag woman rather alone exists, exceeded 90,000,000 TikTok views. ITN used networks of almost more than 100, 120 AI generated fake Facebook profiles driving half of the shares of key posts.
On the content side, the manipulation was not just structural. It was designed to trigger emotional reactions rather than to inform. And there were many documented examples, including a fabricated UN polling chart showing Roman Rabbit with implausibly high leads. Take all the overlays placed on real opponent footage, a technique that has been used by Russia's disinformation campaigns for many years. I've actually seen many videos of myself spread by Russian media with fake audio superimposed on it.
Decontextualized videos of civil unrest are attributed to rival partners. And then we saw the coordination. The one area where we saw some activity was timed task releases in Bulgarian that were fed directly into local Telegram channels, which we package as the content as domestic commentary. And then there was the AI slot model, low cost, high volume synthetic material that does not need to be convincing. You just need to crowd out reality.
Again, a very typical Russian approach that we have seen ever since 2014, in fact. And underpinning it all were over 1,600 opaque websites and blogs forming a laundering network, with Russian TV content adapted into Bulgarian Telegram channels accumulating hundreds of millions of views. And when the EU activated the counter disinformation mechanism, Russian-linked accounts deployed a mirroring strategy, this year reframing the EU actions as censorship and interference. So it was not only misunderstanding by domestic political actors, but clearly explicitly fed narratives from Moscow that all of this is interference and censorship, which then circulated as domestic Bulgarian content in return. Bulgaria, I'm really proud that Bulgaria activated the DSA rapid response mechanism and formally requested EAS support.
That was the right call, frankly unprecedented, but the EU governmental response, from my point of view, was not fully operationalized at this time. The Center for the Study of Democracy concluded that Bulgaria has one of the most permissive information environments in the EU for hostile manipulation. I totally agree with this assessment. There's a perception that nothing that relates to speech can be considered unlawful or illegal despite the existence of European clear European legislation that just happens not to be operationalized, and no good examples exist on how that can be done with a clear distinction between enforcement and censorship. Bulgaria Central Electoral Commission opened an investigation into the purchase. They have opened no investigation into the purchase and repurposing of social media pages despite the evidence being public for weeks.
And, critically, the different commercial parties and networks responded differently, showing that there's no central standards for what is unlawful and inauthentic and what is not. TikTok did the right call and removed content based on feedback from civic groups, whereas Meta said that it cannot identify coordinated inauthentic behavior, demonstrating the inconsistent enforcement standards that are currently defined cross platform manipulation. And this is probably one of the key low-hanging shifts for this committee. We're no longer dealing primarily with foreign actors pushing a single candidate on a single platform. We're dealing with domestically embedded multi-party cross-platform manipulation, tooling best worst practices from bad actors, but all of it woven into normal competitive politics.
It is definable by design. It serves the foreign actors, but it is deniable, and it exploits the gap between platform policies, national regulations, national context, and EU mechanisms. One researcher described Bulgaria as combining prolonged political instability, weak regulators, and low public trust with a strong domestic network that spreads and amplifies manipulated content, and this combination is not unique in Bulgaria. Three things that I think the committee should push for based on the Bulgarian evidence. First, standardize the definition of coordinated inauthentic behavior across different platforms and enforce them on the platform owners.
Meta's narrow standard is currently a big loophole. European democracy shield must close that loophole. Second, originally operationalize the national digital services coordinators with real data access powers and dedicated election-period capacity. Civil society cannot be the first and last line of defense. And third and last, treat Bulgaria not as a closed case, but as a light case study.
The same dormant networks identified before April 19 are still active. And, again, we are in our investigations, we're seeing chatter suggesting that Russia as one actor that we're monitoring has drawn lessons and has made plans for actual semi in the next elections based on what it's on Bulgaria. And I'll stop at that. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Vasile Dîncu
Thank you, Mr. Grocev. And finally, madam Antoinette Nicolova. Please, Chairman.
Antoinette Nikolova
Members of the committee, thank you for event for inviting us. Our organization monitors structural manipulation and also media capture across Southeastern Europe. I'm very grateful to Christo Grossif, who very well explained what actually is in our reported trackers. Probably, you can display them on the monitor. Ahead of the election, we, with our technological partner Sensica, conducted a real time monitoring on the Bulgarian digital environment.
Redner 6
Bulgarians, as you mentioned, voted 8 times in five years, creating fertile ground for manipulation. So one month before the election, we already show what the results later confirm. On social media, a candidate who appeared at the very last moment with almost no public appearance, no traditional media presence, communicating only through a Facebook page, was already the winner at scale. So it was not organic. The handling we found was generated domestically, amplified by algorithms.
We identified three operational tactics. The first one is active sleeping networks that was massively renamed. I'm making Facebook pages, coordinated endotheotic behavior across the platform, as Christo mentioned, and so-called opponents hijackings. Just quickly to explain what exactly that does. First result, the hashtag of the new candidate reached 90,000,000 views.
To give you a sense of scale, Bulgaria has around 6,500,000 eligible voters. Engagement of the same candidate increased by, I want to stress that, 83,000 times percent upscale and presence. And this is also not an organic behavior. The key phenomena we observed was what we call audience laundering. All Facebook pages, sometimes years old, have been renamed.
Their audience, their algorithmic credibility, were transferred to new political content. Years of organic growth are simply skipped. And to be clear, this is a lot under the current policy of the influence by information space according to the rules. Another very important tactic is the hashtag hijacking. Instead of building their own audience, some actors flooded the opponent hashtags with hate speech.
As a result, the rivals abandoned their own hashtags and were focused on their personal profiles. What does it mean? It means you cannot reach beside. You mostly speak to your traditional supporters. After our reports, after we published our first funding, we were contacted by TikTok and put down several networks and accounts.
So Renee, my colleague, probably, we can explain in detail about this. Did not identify any kind of coordinated inauthentic behavior. And here is the problem, by the way. The same behavior is treated differently across the platforms. What does it mean for democracy, shield?
The civil society channel was active. It was effective in the rapid response system. The government channels did not. In this particular case of Bulgaria, I mean, it was a new, early-appointed government. It was the first time the mechanism was activated, so they did their best.
But beyond Bulgaria, we have this contradiction between the policies of the three campaigns. So we are talking about a new phenomenon that is where it's very difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is manipulation. Designation is not a capacity. So, I mean, Bulgaria's digital service coordinator was designated in November. But in practice, during the elections, he couldn't change anything.
Second, we need harmonization of the rules of the policy across the platforms. And third, we need operational readiness before the election, not during, not after. The rapid response system should be, in our view, work in a preemptive way. The Bulgarian case also showed that this kind of handling can be domestic and not as normally we used to say that it's coming from Russia or from somewhere else. It also showed that real time ground level evidence from the civil society actually works.
The democratic shield is especially the resilience center, is a good step in that direction. But as I said, only if linked with the real-time monitoring and the dynamic. And finally, if the water system was contaminated as our information system is, there would be an emergency protocol. The same must be applied here. Otherwise, we will stay just with the reports.
If the reports are just not enough, the information space environment must be treated as a critical infrastructure. Thank you. We are ready to respond.
Tomáš Zdechovský
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had many questions, but I think that you some of them responded. Also, I am absolutely sure that some of the accounts were activated before the election. They were sleeping. I have it here clear evidence that really, about 370 compliance and alerts were reported, and it's also mentioned claim of vote buying and pressure on voters.
The online campaign was also a problem. Rules for online campaign were very weak, and we see it in Bulgarian election many errors. I was, in last two years, the chief observer in the election mission of European Union, and I have to say that many of election in outside the EU were much more transparent than Bulgarian, and especially civil society like you found almost 49,000 telegram posts in Bulgarian language channel linked clearly with pro Kremlin networks, and I have it many other things. Also, I would like to ask a simple question. Do you think that this election was manipulated by the Kremlin?
Thank you very much.
I would.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
ask the commission, particularly, as to the gaps that have been detected as to enforcement, because the thing is that we keep discussing with every occasion. We keep discussing foreign interference in electoral processes despite the fact that we have actually put in place a number of legal instruments and, of course, new tools, regulatory tools in order to subject the platforms, the big platforms, to EU law, compliant with EU law. So which are the gaps that have been detected? And as to Bulgaria, the point that I would like to see more elaborated is that we saw a situation in Romania. And in Romania, there was a big discussion and even a legal case brought before the Constitutional Court.
But that has not been the case in Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, we have seen that all political actors, including those in the opposition, have actually accepted the outcome as a valid outcome. They have accepted that actually, Drummond Radev did win. So it means it doesn't prevent interference in the electoral process. But I mean, does it make a difference when there is such a dispute and legal case aroused as to the result of an electoral process, and a case in which all actors agree that the result happens to be a valid one?
Thank you.
Merci, thank.
Fabrice Leggeri
You to our guests who have presented the situation in Bulgaria when it comes to foreign interference in the most recent elections that were held there. I have a question on the countries that would, that have purportedly interfered on the 55. I noted 55 countries that made comments, more or less negative comments. Turkey was not included there yet. 10% of the Bulgarian population is a Turkish minority.
Therefore, I should like to know if Turkey tried to interfere politically to try to sway the vote of this Turkish minority? So that's the first question. The second question, I would like to know if there are nonstate actors, including NGOs or associations that might be working on behalf of criminal or terrorist organizations and that might have intervened on social media? Thank you.
Nikola Minchev
Thank you very much, chair. I'll speak in Bulgarian. As all guests, guest speakers today are Bulgarians.
Nikola Minchev
In the first place, I would like to thank all our participants for their presentations. I'm here to present the coordinator of Renew Europe in this committee. Also, I'm a member of the European Parliament. Actually, we have organized this hearing because of one particular thing. We can call it integrity, integrity of the election process of the institutions, but also social media, information media, free and fair elections suffer in more than one place in the European Union.
We are concerned about the rule of law in Bulgaria. This is why we fight for having it in Bulgaria. I think that we should talk about these elections also as an example of what worked in the coordination of the whole process, what worked well, what we can use as legislators. Let me outline a few things before I ask my questions. In the first place, for the first time, a member state has activated the coordination mechanism, which shows that the caretaker government was quite active.
As I said, this has been the first specialized unit that coordinates our response to foreign interference, and this was under the DSA. The Bulgarian government said that there should be meetings with social media representatives in order to follow the campaigns. Now we are here in the European Parliament. We should think about the coming steps. What follows logically?
My first question, what was your cooperation with the institutions? Perhaps I should ask mister Solomanov what works well, what didn't work so well, what should we do better next time? What can be our conclusions in this case? Secondly, we witnessed a record number of cases of preventing vote-buying. However, it is concerning that there are still attempts to buy votes in a member state.
Redner 18
So my question is, what can the European Union do in this area? How can it assist us in the third place to the Balkan Free Media Initiative representatives? Your report discusses the so-called nonauthentic online behavior. You mentioned your cooperation with Meta. You said that your cooperation with Meta was different compared to the other social networks.
Nikola Minchev
Would you like to elaborate? I work on the DSA, so I'm quite interested to know why it is that your cooperation with other media was not as good. Another question. Was there any direct interference coming from Russia? After all, we know that Kremlin propaganda is sometimes used in Bulgaria.
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Some of the hashtags you mentioned, do you know where they come from? Thank you.
Vasile Dîncu
And finally, Elena. Please, Elena. Excuse me, Elena. Excuse me. Peter Volgin.
Excuse me.
Petar Volgin
Thank you, chair. I'll have to ask Mister Grosev two questions, but first, I would like to say something. Because, according to the Bulgarian government, these were the fairest and most transparent parliamentary elections ever held. That was stated by the same people who, before the elections, claimed that our country was under threat from imminent Russian hybrid attacks. They even requested the activation of the European early warning mechanism against disinformation.
In the end, it turned out that no one had organized hybrid attacks against Bulgaria, neither the Russians, nor the Chinese, nor the Martians. However, the victory of the new party, Progressive Bulgaria, triggered the publication of rather unintelligent articles in western media. The winning party, as well as its leader, former president Rumohradev, were immediately suspected of wanting to take Bulgaria out of the EU and NATO and place it into Russia's orbit. Only people deprived of the ability to think rationally could write such nonsense, because Rumin Radov has never said that he would align Bulgaria with Russia. The only thing he has consistently stated is that he wants our country to maintain normal relations with Russia, and that the sanctions against Moscow are negatively affecting Bulgaria's economy.
The troubling parties that even such completely logical statements are labeled by the Brussels elite, as well as by its narrow-minded subordinates in Bulgaria, a hybrid attack against European institutions. The decisive victory of progressive Bulgarian elections shows that most Bulgarian voters want the country to be governed by politicians who are not trapped in the swamp of ideological dogmas. Most Bulgarians want our country to maintain normal relations both with Washington and Brussels, and with Moscow and Beijing. And this is not foreign disinformation, believe me. That's how all normal people think.
Petar Volgin
Mister Grozef, in April 2022, in an interview with BTV, this is a Bulgarian television, you said, and I quote, we have evidence of payments made by the Russian government and representatives of the Russian intelligence services to Bulgarian media outlets that portray Ukraine in a negative light. And later, you continued that topic, insisting that Bulgarian journalists were receiving money to spread Russian propaganda. And also, and this is very important, you promised to reveal the names of these people. More than four years have passed since then, and you still haven't said anything. When will you announce the names of the journalists and media outlets who, according to you, are receiving money from Russia?
And if you continue to be silent on that topic, some people may guess that you are spreading fake news. And the second question, mister Grosef, do you still stay by your previous statement that Rumin Radhev is Russia's preferred candidate and that the Kremlin is salivating over the hopes to make up for its humiliating loss in Hungary. You wrote this on X. What exactly did you mean by that? Are you accusing Mister Radev and Mister Orban of working for the Kremlin?
Thank you.
Redner 25
Thank you very much for giving me the floor. As a Bulgarian MEP, I would like to thank the guests for their speeches. And I'd like to say that there was an excessive use of power during the Bulgarian elections, and there were breaches of many fundamental rights. The rule of law, legal procedures, the presumption of innocence, freedom and security of individuals, violation of privacy, property rights, and the right to defense and dignity. I can be a little bit more specific, but we don't have a lot of time at our disposal.
Redner 28
So I'd like to talk about illegal detention up to 24 hours without sufficient evidence, a use of handcuffs, pressure to sign warning protocols, and interrogation based on unproved anonymous allegations, interrogation based on reports from anonymous persons or from what was said in the press, psychological pressure and intimidation. We provided all this detailed information to you. I'd like to know what our guests' opinion is on all these breaches of fundamental rights. This is completely unprecedented for Bulgarian democracy. Thank you.
Redner 8
Thank you. Thank you, Elena. For question for session for answer, we begin with Mr. Shalamanov. Mr.
Two, three minutes maximum.
Velizar Shalamanov
Okay. Thank you very much, chairman. Mister chairman, so about the first question related to evidences for manipulation from the Kremlin, our conclusion is that this influence is deeply embedded in networks that are existing in Bulgaria. And, actually, this influence is mostly through already existing internal domestic networks, and there was very little direct influence, mostly focused on publications of Russia Today on potential European Commission interference and foreign intelligence services working with the government to manipulate elections. All other domestic influences were very much aligned with Russian narratives, but they were not directly initiated through Russian channels.
About the enforcement, what I want to say is that enforcement is for the Ministry of Interior and special services, especially state agency, national security, as well as our national coordinator for digital service act. And from the ministry of foreign affairs point of view, everything that we were able to identify through our capabilities and in cooperation with the academic community, with our allies, we reported to the prime minister to be verified, to be checked through the instruments of special services, and we didn't receive feedback for something that is identified as violation of the rules. When it comes to foreign countries, our assessment following the media in these 55 countries is that in Turkish media, the sentiment was either neutral or very positive for elections in Bulgaria, very supportive for high turnover and opportunity for people to have elected government that will provide stability. So we didn't identify any direct influence through publications in the Turkish media. But for non-state actors, the question is very interesting because we received a very detailed report from our Ukrainian colleagues, non-governmental organizations and the ministry of foreign affairs of Ukraine about paramilitary organizations, non-governmental, non-state actors in Bulgaria that are quite active in Bulgaria and European wide.
And, of course, this report was sent to our special services for further analysis and confirmation. For mister Nikola Minshew for cooperation institutional cooperation, what I want to say is that, obviously, the focus was more in physical world. So what the Ministry of Interior used to do to prevent buying votes and influence through physical means, including ministry of e-governance in the area of cybersecurity. And we were quite effective as government in this area. It was recognized by all participants, all the stakeholders.
What is going on in the virtual world? Obviously, we as a state don't have enough capacity to deeply analyze the information environment, to analyze information resilience. It is why we invited the academic sector business. We activated a rapid award system in order to strengthen our capacity. And in the future, this is the area we have to put more effort to build capabilities and to fully integrate all aspects of defending the integrity of elections in the physical world, but in the information environment as well.
I will skip questions of Mr. Volgin. They were to mister Grosef and same from missus Elena Yonceva because they were mostly related to activities of Ministry of Interior, and I'm not in a position to answer. What I want to say is that in the media, practically, activities of Ministry of Interior are highly appreciated, and there is full support from all stakeholders of what Ministry of Interior achieved in providing security for the elections in the physical world. Again, when it comes to the information environment, it is a real challenge. And the biggest challenge for us in Bulgaria is that, obviously, there are existing networks of influence that are developed during the years from Russian Federation that without being identified and deactivated, it will be very difficult to provide resilience, information resilience to the influence coming through these networks.
Thank you.
Christo Grozev
I will address briefly the general question about whether there is any observed evidence of Russian direct interference, and I will answer the two questions from Mr. Volgin. As I said earlier, we do see certain evidence at a much lower scale than expected of direct interference, but we do see monitoring by the Russian intelligence services of what exactly happened in Bulgaria and what the capacity and the capabilities of the government response and the EU response was during this election. Clearly, this monitoring would be useful for them to find loopholes and vulnerabilities for further elections. But if we focus only on what we've observed during this particular election campaign, I'll give a couple of undeniable examples. There's a series of publications that were initially published on Russian state-run websites such as Russia Today that in order to obfuscate the origin or to make it appear as if it's a general sentiment of many journalists around the world.
In particular, one of these articles was editorializing against the EU's attempts to disable disinformation networks. Such articles or editorials, I would say, were placed on dozens of, I think, in one case, we observed at least 14 different media around the world, which were the mushroomed media type, media that do not really exist. If I remember correctly, one of them was the Zimbabwe star or some other nonexisting, a non mainstream media that they spread these narratives through. Obviously, the best practices which we see very well correlating to what Russia has done in other countries are another form of lending support, but we cannot necessarily at this point in time show the origin of these training manuals from Russia. We can see it's sufficient for them to exist and have proven themselves.
They become open source and copyable after that. Coordinated timing of publications by Russian state media and immediate pickup by domestic Telegram channels is another form that we could definitely establish. And last but not least, we have confirmed direct work of Russian intelligence services with Bulgarian civic organizations who then became very vocal in support of one or another candidate, in particular with paramilitary or former-officer organizations. And as soon as we obtained this information, we informed the prime minister, and I hope that this information has been passed on to the law enforcement and domestic security services. And now if I can answer briefly the questions from mister Volkin, I think they are easily answerable.
On the first question, yes, I did preview my finding in 2022 of Bulgarian media and Bulgarian journalists receiving funding directly from people associated with the Russian intelligence services. It is not true that I have not followed up on that, because I'm currently being threatened to be sued by three individuals who were named by me in that connection. One of them is mister Darko Todorovic, a Macedonian or a person residing in Russia and traveling on multiple trips with confirmed GU disinformation experts to your Eastern Ukraine. And we confirmed that he has paid for information to Bulgarian media. One particular media that we saw witnessed significant amounts being sent repeatedly for publication of unnamed articles in which doctor Todorovic would not be named as the author is public info.
And doctor Todorovic threatened to assume he has not done that so far. Earlier, several months ago, I published a very detailed investigation in which we name a Bulgarian journalist who we allege and present evidence has spread the Russian disinformation narratives about the existence of so-called biolaboratories in Ukraine. This was all coordinated activity that we claim was coordinated by the TRU, and this journalist is now challenging that in court in Bulgaria. And, clearly, therefore, I have not named people if they're suing or threatening to sue at the moment, and I'm looking forward to the day in court. Last, on the point of my statement that on Twitter or next step, I believe mister Roman rather, president rather, former president rather was Russia's preferred candidate.
I stand by this assessment, and it is more or less proven by the fact that two days before the elections, Russia Today published an editorial in his support, looking forward to the normalization of relations with Russia and defeat of corruption, quote, unquote, in Bulgaria with this new president with this new prime minister. And I think I do not need to give you more evidence than that of who the preferred candidate is. At the same time, I have never, in any of my statements, quite on the contrary, suggested that mister Rabbit has invited or sought that support. On the contrary, in a recent interview to Russian independent media, I stated that if history is any benchmark, mister Radhak is likely to actually continue his pro EU and pro NATO policies. And that my hope is that all of this rhetoric was simply rhetoric in order for him to increase his electoral margin.
Antoinette Nikolova
Rene, Miss Rene Traykova, who is a part of our organization. He conducted very well the, I mean, the conversation with social media platform can give details.
Redner 29
Thank you. Mister chairman, I will respond to the question of mister Mince first about the collaboration with the platforms, as this is very critical as part of the DSA. If the DSA, the Digital Services Act, is the framework and the implementation of this framework and this regulation and safeguarding the electoral integrity depends, first and foremost, I believe, in this collaboration, this collaborative whole of society approach and with all of the stakeholders. It was mentioned by previous speakers and by mister Shalomanov and displayed visually as well all of the stakeholders that were included. Now one of the most critical stakeholders here is the platforms, in fact, because our collaboration depends on them.
Redner 30
It depends on the, you know, they are the ones who are moderating this dialogue. And it's very important to note here that TikTok contacted us, our organization already, after the first tracker, but we were in touch with them throughout the entire process, almost weekly, if not sometimes daily, by writing. So we could say that we had an excellent collaboration. We saw excellent collaboration with TikTok. In fact, also responding very proactively to some of the findings in our reports.
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Not only that, even after the conclusion of this election, they were actually reaching out to us and asking to collab to continue to collaborate for other elections. Namely, we will continue to collaborate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has upcoming elections. And they reacted. It's very important to note. On our collaboration with Meta, we had more difficulty reaching out to them and establishing contact.
However, when we did establish contact, we had several meetings with them. In fact, they were a bit more OPEC and obscure in how they responded, and they did not give us precise data on how they reacted and what how they complied with the DSA regulation, what accounts, if any, they removed, and etcetera. They did state that they did not find any evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior, and this is important to note here. This is on the collaboration with the platforms. On your questions on the Kremlin interference, mister Mintchev, I wanted to say that our role in the report is not to make attribution, but what we do focus on the facts.
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And the facts were that during the campaign in March, notably after March 10, we did see a hashtag called our practice by the piggybacking hashtag, you know, the practice of that, which is basically the use of a very popular hashtag by influencer circles. And this was the hashtag, which was used by the progressive Bulgaria campaign and also during his official accounts. Out of the videos, what we noticed is out of the 84 official videos that were used in this account on TikTok, I'm referring to TikTok here. 83 used this hashtag. This is not a Bulgarian hashtag.
Recommendazi is when we checked. It actually is a hashtag used in predominantly Russian-speaking TikTok accounts and environments. And when we put in and researched the we actually said that we noticed that there is an entire new world of influencers, you know, and it and it's and there were 350,000,000 publications in Russian speaking environment with this hashtag. And it was used in 83 out of the 84 official videos, and the unaffiliated sites that were not the official sites of this party, I think it was in 16 out of the 17 videos. It was used. This hashtag was used.
So this is one area that we noticed and we report. Now we cannot make attribution whether that meant this was coming from the Kremlin or where, this is not our job. We just post the facts. Another thing that we noticed is on the Facebook pages that were repurposed, that Antoinette mentioned. There, we also mentioned that some of these Facebook pages actually in the previous iterations, they were pro Russian sites, you know, whether it was Bulgaria, Russia, Slavic brothers, or Bulgaria, the Russian friend, or just various names of this type.
Then later, or webs that were Facebook pages that were used by another political party, and now during this campaign, they were repurposed and used by Mister Radev. Again, we cannot say that this was done by Mr. Radev or where it came from. This is not our job, but we're just stating the facts, and they were obvious. Thank you.
Vasile Dîncu
Thank you. You all thank you for all our guests. Thank you, Mr. Shalamanov. Thank you, Mr. Grocev. Madam Nikolova, thank you for your discourse for our presence here in our special commission.
Thank you.
Go ahead. Thank you.
Vasile Dîncu
The last point of our discussion, it's we continue in the Romanian.
Why can't you talk about the tendency to limit academic freedom in the European Union? So, colleagues.
When.
Vasile Dîncu
We talk about academic freedom, we can think of this as a specific sectoral issue affecting universities, research, and science. But article 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says that the arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint. Academic freedom shall be respected. Whether researchers can follow evidence and where it leads is really a question that is linked to democratic governance, and falls within the remit of our committee. The parliament academic freedom monitor of 2025 gives us an overview of the state of academic freedom in the European Union.
The monitor includes, assesses the situation in eight countries. There are three points I'd like to highlight that have been shown by this report. First of all, foreign interference. The report's analysis of Chinese entities, Confucius Institute, the Chinese Scholarship Council, and universities with the people's documented ties to the People's Liberation Army are operating within European higher education systems. Have we given enough thought to the vectors of foreign influence in our universities and research centers?
So that's the first question. Secondly, the American dimension and the US administration and its role in research funding. For example, directing funds to research can form both an opportunity and a threat, where, for example, the freedom to conduct scientific research could be affected. Thirdly, this report shows that there is harassment of academics in universities and on campuses. There's interference, and this has a chilling effect on democracy, and it's not something we can ignore.
So I wondered how we see this and whether the European framework that we currently have really provides adequate responses to the situation. I wish to welcome professor Peter Marsen from the University of Oslo who has led the series of academic freedom monitors right from the inception, and gives us an overview of the trends across the European Union. Also, I'd like to welcome doctor Vicky Costa from Leiden University who has coauthored the reports on Chinese interference in European higher education. So first of all, allow me to give the floor to Professor Marcin.
Peter Maassen
Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting us to present our report, our 2025 report for the STOPA panels, the European Parliament's Academic Freedom Monitor, to you, to your special committee. I hope that you can see the PowerPoint slides that we have prepared. Here is our opening. And the study, as the chair was referring to, was conducted in 2023 by a team of three universities. And of the team, Professor Costa and I will present the main results.
Can I have the next slide, please? What is important to highlight is that this monitor is a mature monitor. It was established by the European Parliament in 2021, 2022. And since then, a number of studies, 7 in total, have been produced, studies that have received a lot of attention also outside Europe. And on the basis of feedback, internal meetings and meetings with the sounding board of the monitor, we further developed the studies and the methodology and made it more sophisticated and more mature.
The continuous components include an annual update of academic freedom measurements covering all 27 EU member states, an in-depth set of studies each year in a selected number of countries, making sure that these in-depth country studies are updated every three to five years, and also, policy options. The parliament, the store panel has asked for specific options that we could identify, through our studies, and we've been updating the options each year. We will share the main options with you at the end of the presentation. What is new in the 2025 study is that we've undertaken a number of thematic analyses. The chair already mentioned a number of them, and we will briefly go through these thematic analyses and share with you the main findings of relevance also for your special committee. Next slide, please.
And then I'm happy to give the word to my colleague, professor Costa.
Vicky Costa
Thank you very much, also from my side. At the outset, I would like to correct one point. I was not in charge of the Chinese foreign interference part of this study. That was professor Matei who, unfortunately, cannot be with us today. I shall let this part, make a little overview on academic freedom and its link to democracy, as already set out by the chair.
Indeed, declining academic freedom is typically regarded as an early warning sign of illiberalism and democratic backsliding. There is certainly no doubt that academic freedom and democracy are inextricably linked, and, therefore, it may also not be surprising that the topic for the European Parliament's high level conference of March year where this study was presented was titled academic freedom in support of democracy. This link between the two has been noted for some time already in the Council of Europe context, where academic freedom and institutional autonomy are characterized as essential values of higher education which serve the common good of democratic societies. Or, in the words of the concurring judges of the European Court of Human Rights case Mustafa Erdogan and others, there can be no democracy without free science and free scholars. Next slide, please.
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So academic freedom is a cornerstone of democratic societies, and democracy, in turn, is one of the principal arguments for justifying the protection of academic freedom. And this is so for three reasons. Firstly, science produces methodically and scientifically secured knowledge, and democratic political processes need this knowledge, ideas, and suggestions in order not to make arbitrary decisions. The public, government, and other decision makers, they can also be corporate, for example, all need this knowledge to assess suggested policies. And relatedly here, it is necessary to produce knowledge and evidence not just on what seems currently pressing or useful.
Vicky Costa
Academic freedom protects the pursuance of knowledge on the entire range of human experience, ensuring the long-term generation of ideas and providing for a knowledge reservoir. And the reason for that is obvious. What seems of little interest today might become of vital importance in the future. Secondly, academia educates the democratic system and creates a culture of democracy. As it has been put already in the literature, academic inquiry exemplifies rational inquiry needed for democratic deliberation, and students learn to pursue that kind of inquiry in academic institutions.
In other words, they learn how to think critically. And this is important not only for the individual, but also for the collective. And then thirdly, academic researchers in a democratic society have a watchdog function. This is similar to the press or the NGOs. They contribute to the public debate, and they scrutinize the state of public affairs.
And that has also been already recognized by the European Court of Human Rights. And related to that, academia and the university is a place where dissent can be and is practiced before and after policies are adopted. So academic freedom provides mechanisms to assure independent and critical thought, informed public debate and insights, an evidence base that is indispensable for democratic decision making, and it provides a place for dissent and mechanisms for accountability. And therefore, undermining academic freedom broadly directly impacts and weakens democracy more broadly. I shall pass the floor back to Professor Massen.
Peter Maassen
Thank you. The results of this year's report include both an update of the existing measurements. So where are we in Europe in the European Union when it comes to the state of academic freedom as well as thematic analysis? When it comes to the state of academic freedom, the indexes, monitors that we've consulted and used and interpreted show, on the one hand, a relatively stable picture for the EU in the sense that the average score, the average state of academic freedom, is relatively positive compared to most of the rest of the world, seems relatively stable. But if we look a bit closer, we get a worrying picture.
An academic freedom index has, for example, shown that the average score for the EU member states on academic freedom is quite dramatically declining, with all in all 11 EU member states showing a statistically significant decline in their score for academic freedom, and they include countries like Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia. What we also see is that Scholars at Risk, which looks at incidents, violations, is also showing a growing number of cases in Europe, which is quite worrying. What we also in the 2025 report have covered is in detail the developments in four countries, Belgium, Finland, Italy, and Poland, where we see different types of trends that are worrying from what the chairs already referred to: growing internal harassment, but also harassment by societal actors, disagreements between political parties. We've seen the political interference growing in a number of ways. So all in all, the picture that comes out of the existing measurements required us to look into more depth into the impact of specific trends, and we have highlighted four in the report, starting with political polarization.
The political polarization includes, amongst other things, a growing disagreement between political parties within the same member state, but also among member states on academic policies, on the level of academic funding, protection academics need in their institution, and on academic freedom, which in essence leads to a growing instability for the academic systems within the EU member states. There's also a growing concern about the impact of polarization inside academia. We've seen that also parts of academia are politicizing and becoming less tolerant towards other opinions. What we also see is a growing skepticism among EU citizens towards scientists and towards the role of science in public policymaking. There's less trust in it.
What we also have identified is growing radicalization among a relatively small part of the electorate, but it has a major impact on science policies in many countries in Europe. And finally, an important point, post illiberal government challenges that we have identified, for example, in Poland, the assumption that a liberal government, a liberal democratic government, like now also in Hungary, can relatively easily and straightforwardly repair, so to say, the damage done to academic freedom and other aspects or the basic values in academia, is not in line with reality where major challenges are faced. If we then go to the next point, academic freedom, decline of academic freedom in The US, not the next slide. Sorry. The next point.
So if you can go back to the previous slide. Thank you. The US was already mentioned by the chair. What we've seen, without going in too much detail, but what we've seen is a dramatic change in the funding of public research in The US, in the funding of the funding agencies staff composition, peer reviews being replaced by political judgments of proposals for research. So it's quite a dramatic change, which has an impact also on science in the EU.
US-European research collaboration is under serious pressure. There are restrictions on data access in the US for European academics, even for data that were partly funded by European taxpayers. The US administration forms an inspiration when it comes to its science policies and its attacks on academic freedom for certain politicians in EU member states. And very importantly, the National Security Strategy of the US administration published in November is strongly aiming at discouraging adherence to academic freedom and global science collaborations, also science collaboration initiated by EU scholars and institutions. The next point, the next trend that we looked at has already been mentioned by the chair.
It's an important trend. It's foreign interference. We focus especially on China and the way it undermines academic freedom in the EU. We looked at various data and, amongst other things, analyzed data from the Confucius Institute, the Chinese scholarship schemes, high-risk universities with close ties to the People's Liberation Army. And we've come to the overall conclusion to summarize that in its science relationship with the EU, China is moving from using soft power to using hard power, funding, intimidation, etcetera.
So to highlight the findings, we can say that there's growing concerns about collaborations with high risk universities in China, the seven universities that are linked to the People's Liberation Army, the way that the Chinese authorities use the scholarship council and identify potential spies among their PhD candidates that they sent to Europe. And, crucially, we see divergent policy approaches across EU member states when it comes to managing these threats, which also leads to responses of China to these diverging policy approaches in adapting their hard power efforts to undermine academic freedom in Europe. And with that, I give the floor again to my colleague, Professor Costa, who will address some legal issues.
Vicky Costa
Well, thank you. In relation to the thematic analysis concerning academic private sector collaborations as an aspect of the commercialization of academia, we conducted here an abstract legal conceptual analysis trying to identify what dimensions of academic freedom could be in principle interfered with here, and how those interferences could principally be justified. We noted that overreliance on private funding, which can be caused by decreased public funding, may increase risks of interference with academic freedom. But at the same time, we also now note that collaborations with the private sector can and do benefit academia, for example, by providing additional funding for expensive research or by providing access to data that might otherwise not be easily available. Possible interferences here can involve interferences with the freedom of scientific research, for example, when there is suppression of research results or undue restrictions on their dissemination, interferences with freedom of education and learning, for example, when there are restrictions preventing the incorporation of research results in educational activities, and there can also be institutional systematic concerns.
For example, if private sector participation in establishing or managing higher education institutions or research institutions narrows teaching and research agendas. Now, in case such interferences are established, those could be justified based on article 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Such justification would require invocation of a legitimate interest listed in the Charter and would have to be subject to the principle of proportionality. Legitimate grounds include limits inherent to academic freedom itself. For example, when the different dimensions of academic freedom and the institutional and the individual collide, or other fundamental rights.
One may think here of fundamental rights standards limiting research practices such as respect to human dignity, privacy, or other economic rights, or objectives of general interest, and some of those have already been recognized in relation to article 13 of the charter in the case commission in Hungary. So, there, what was recognized was public order, preventing misleading practices, guaranteeing the quality of higher education. Now positive obligations have also been recognized by the European Court of Justice and the case commission in Hungary. And as many commercialization threats relate to funding or the conditions of collaboration, one could think of the following obligations that may become relevant in this context, such as to provide material conditions for an independent and scientific system or to protect individual academics from commercialization pressures that lead to pressures on or infringement of academic freedom. And these require organizational and procedural frameworks to mitigate them.
In other words, to balance the benefits and risks of such collaboration, one needs organizational and procedural safeguards, such as, for example, the systematic introduction of no-influence clauses into agreements between academic institutions and private funders. And with that, I will pass the floor back to Professor Massen for concluding the presentation.
Peter Maassen
Thank you very much. Next slide, please. Thank you. The key findings highlight a number of important trends that we've been studying and reporting since 2022, and each of these refers to a trend that in itself might not represent a crisis, but taken together, they form a serious threat to the state of academic freedom in Europe. So the last point here, I think, is important given the what we refer to as the erosion of the state of academic freedom in the European Union.
We want to recommend an action. Action is needed and possible also with a role for the European Parliament, but action is also needed at other levels, national and also at the institutional level. And with that, I wanna go to the last slide and the policy options. Yes. Please show the policy options.
Yes. Also, next ones. We've developed throughout the years a number of policy options that are still relevant, which have to do, for example, with the lack of understanding not just within the larger society, but also within academia, of the importance of academic freedom, not just for academia, but also for society. But the trends that we have highlighted in 2025 have led us to identify three new policy options that we also want to highlight here. The first is foreign interference and the handling of research security risks form important obligations and responsibilities for the academic community, but there is a need for more transparent, more coherent, and clearer strategies and guidelines for how the academic community are expected to handle growing, intensifying foreign interference, only from China, also research security risk in their international relations.
The second point is the second option is also important. We get more and more signals from other parts of the world that Europe is the last major science region in the world, which is still adhering to the basic values and especially academic freedom. So it would be appropriate to develop a strategy for promoting Europe as a core region for protecting and promoting academic freedom, amongst other things, by forming alliances with like-minded countries, and also by making sure that in academic scientific relationships with countries that do not adhere to academic freedom, we emphasize why academic freedom and other basic values are so crucial for Europe. And finally, a challenging point but important, the impact of political polarization is intensifying, the impact on academic freedom. So here, we've identified possible options for developing and implementing adequate measures that can counter this impact in a way that also leads to more coherence in Europe and more stability for the academic community.
And with that, I wanna thank you for your attention, and we are more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you.
Vasile Dîncu
Thank you, professor Maass, and thank you, doctor Costa, for your explanation for this report and for your coordination. Without moderator role was possible only in academics probably. We begin the session of question from S and D. Let me make two questions. The report finds that not a single EU member state has shown a statistically significant improvement in academic freedom over the past decade. Should academic freedom monitoring have a place in that broader academic resilience architecture, including the newly set up center for democratic resilience, or should it continue to be addressed in the existing higher education frame?
And the second question, the report documents self-censorship as a growing but largely invisible phenomenon. Researcher avoiding topics, adjusting findings, declining to publish. From a democratic resilience perspective, that may be more corrosive than direct interference, precisely because it leaves no trace. How do you propose this committee on the parliament think about a threat that is by its nature designed to be unmeasurable? Thank you. Okay.
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Please, professor mentioned, we don't have any more question. Professor Marcin and Doctor. Costa, please, okay. Excuse me. Another question from Mr.
Fabrice Leggeri
Léger. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will speak in French. Thank.
You, Chairman. I should also like to thank, obviously, our presenters who presented their studies to us today. I think it's unfortunate that there aren't more members of this Parliament here today. It's surprising because madam Loiseau isn't here even, and she made a big point of stating that this committee should continue its work all the way up to February 2027. So my question would pertain to academic freedom, and it focuses on a very important point, I think, that has been raised, and that's polarization in some universities and some research institutions.
I'd like to know why the study isn't more precise when it comes to polarization. It is precise when it talks about foreign interference. China was cited as an example of a country. However, I'm wondering why we do not name something that we have noted very often. I'm from France, and I've noted that in Sciences Po, many professors are physically threatened when they do not follow the Islamo-leftist ideology that is very much fashionable, and it doesn't follow the wokest line.
Why don't they name this? I think naming things is a way of fighting things, and a way of restoring independence. Perhaps the researchers could explain that to me. Thank you. You, Mr. Legere.
Peter Maassen
Okay. Thank you very much for your questions. First, the issue of lack of improvement and monitoring context in which the state of academic freedom is evaluated and followed. I think that you raise an extremely important point, and we have also in discussions with the store panel indicated that it would be good if the monitoring of academic freedom would be, on the one hand, continued within the academic context, but on the other hand, also be integrated in broader democratic resilience monitoring initiatives. So we hope that it's possible that academic freedom and the study of academic freedom, the evaluation, the monitoring of it can be integrated, as said, into a broader context where it also would be possible to analyze trends in the links between academic freedom and other aspects, both of the academic community.
And good example here is quality. We have since the nineteen seventies very dense structures and procedures for measuring the quality of higher education, but academic freedom is not part of it. But also in society where we can, for example, see comparable trends in threats to media and threats to academic freedom. So a broader frame is absolutely relevant and, in my view, necessary. The second point of self-censorship, you're absolutely right.
Self censorship is dramatically undermining academic freedom, especially when we look at the data that are available on self censorship. Unfortunately, not European-wide data, but there have been some national studies in EU member states on the state of act of self-censorship. And there we see that especially early career researchers, minority researchers, and female researchers are pressured and are then, as a consequence, censoring their academic activities in a way that is not in line with academic freedom. So what we would need is to, for example, through the Horizon program, to be able to do European-wide analysis of this phenomenon of self-censorship to get a better understanding of what are the factors that influence this apparent growth of self-censorship. What role does internal harassment play? What role does external harassment play?
Are there other factors that influence the growth of self censorship? And also importantly, is self-censorship especially taking place in specific academic areas, or is it a broad phenomenon in the community as a whole? The final point, we've been since our first report in 2022, we have been pointing to internal tensions, harassment within the academic community. There have been various examples in our reports. We've also got criticism on the way in which we covered this issue because it's, of course, a very sensitive issue, as also was indicated in the question.
But we've identified it. In 2024. There was a chapter on France where we pointed to the issues that were raised in the question. But also there, in order to have a more detailed analysis of the way in which polarization affects academic freedom and the academic community, larger studies than the one that we can do for the European Parliament Academic Freedom Monitor for the STOHAP panel are necessary. We write our reports and do the academic work for our reports in three months with a limited team, we see the need for further elaborating the understanding of the state of academic community both when it comes to internal harassment, external harassment, political interference, foreign interference, etcetera.
Because as I said, the state of academic freedom in the European Union is eroding, and we have to make sure that this erosion doesn't develop into a structural undermining of academic freedom, because we've seen enough examples of that in the rest of the world. I don't know if my colleague wants to add to that. But.
Vasile Dîncu
Thank you, Professor Massen. Thank you, doctor Costa, for our explanation and for to be with us in this meeting. Thank you.
Thank.
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Thank you for all of us for being present in our meeting. The future meeting, Euds, will be in February, Brazil. Thank you. I close the meeting.
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