Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Ordinary meeting
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LIBE European Parliament
Follow its sittingsNicholas A. Ioannides
They do not exist in complete isolation from one another. Experience shows that a member state's ability and willingness to further develop legal migration schemes is often linked to the overall effectiveness of its migration management system and its capacity to respond to migratory pressures in an orderly and sustainable manner. It is therefore important that we now have a stronger and more effective framework for managing migratory pressures, preventing abuse of the system and reducing irregular arrivals. I am confident that this will further contribute to the creation of the conditions necessary for member states to develop well-managed legal pathways. Honorable members, one of the pact's more significant elements is that it finally gives concrete expression to the principles of responsibility and solidarity.
This balance lies at the very heart of the new framework. We have all witnessed the consequences of situations where frontline member states were left to manage disproportionate migratory pressures largely on their own. The pact seeks to address this drawback by establishing a more predictable and structured system of solidarity among member states. It is therefore essential that solidarity functions in a fair, credible and tangible manner. While the pact contains important safeguards and mechanisms, we must remain conscious that no common system can succeed in the long run unless all member states assume their fair share of collective responsibility.
In this respect, I'd also like to underline the importance of ongoing work on the return regulation. Interinstitutional negotiations will continue later today and we sincerely hope that an agreement can be reached. The regulation is often described as the missing piece of the pact architecture and the conclusion of this file would further strengthen the coherence and effectiveness of the overall framework. As we approach the 12th of June, it is important to recognize that the entry into application of the pact is not the end of the road. The pact will ultimately be evaluated not by the legislation adopted, but by the results on the ground.
We are all aware of the different views regarding certain aspects of the reform. Nevertheless, what is undeniable is that the foundations have now been laid. We must now build on this momentum. Together, we will identify and address potential gaps, operational challenges or areas requiring further improvement, ensuring that the pact is being implemented in a manner that responds effectively to realities on the ground. I'd like to express my sincere appreciation to the European Commission for its unwavering support throughout the implementation process, as well as for its continuous monitoring of progress.
Thank you also to the European Parliament for playing an important role in the adoption of the pact and demonstrating immense interest in the proper implementation of the new legal framework. I'd also like to thank the European Union Agency for Asylum, whose expertise and operational support have been invaluable in assisting member states. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the contribution of all EU agencies involved in implementation. Their cooperation and dedication have been instrumental in supporting member states throughout this demanding process and will remain essential as we move into the next phase of application. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, thank you Minister Ioannidis for your presentation.
And now Commissioner Brunner, the floor is yours also for eight minutes for your initial presentation.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you very much, Chair, and let me also start with thanking you, Nicolas, for this great work I think we all did together in the last half year, but also before already, but under your presidency and thanks to the Parliament, of course, as well. I think, as you mentioned, Nicolas, it's quite an important period of time, I would say, for the implementation of the pact. The 12th of June is tomorrow, or almost, but it's there quite soon. And as you mentioned as well, it's not the end, it's the start, actually, of everything. And of course, implementing the pact is not an easy task, not at all.
I think we all agree on that, but I'm very confident that the core of the pact, of course, will be operational by June the 12th. As you mentioned as well, Nicolas, 10 years ago, we as a European Union, we did take a lot of responsibility, but we didn't have any rules, we didn't have a system. And that's exactly what changes now. Not everything will be perfect on the very first day, of course not, we are aware of that, but it's good, of course, and it's important to have this specific date. I think the foundations now are quite solid.
We have put, I would say, our European house in order, which is great. And now it's, of course, I think also across the Member States, across the agencies, you mentioned them as well, institutions, all stakeholders, I think everyone is very committed to the implementation of the pact and the new system. Where are we on the implementation? And just to recall what the pact is actually about in a couple of sentences, because it's always, I think, good to know what we are talking about. First of all, of course, it sets a common framework, pretty obvious.
It strengthens our external borders. It gives us a fair and firm set of asylum rules also. And it strikes, and that's what you also mentioned, it strikes this balance between solidarity and responsibility. We have 10 interlinked legislative acts, of course, very open there. This still requires, required already, but still requires significant work.
But let me really also thank the Member States for the work done so far. It was, and I said that in the beginning, and it still is not a very easy task. Where are we on the pact itself? To answer this question, as you know, on May the 8th, the Commission published the third report of the state of play, that was also mentioned by you, Nicolas, and it actually confirms the important progress made across all areas, what, as I said, we call the 10 building blocks. And at the same time, there are still some gaps to fill, of course.
I've recently, well, always in touch, of course, with the Member States, but recently explicitly on this topic to point the main issues that need to be addressed in each Member State. And each of them reassured me also of their full commitment to be ready. But I think we also should put some things into perspective. This is the most complex reform of EU legislation on migration and asylum ever, I would say, not to overdo it, but I think that's the case.
The main pillars are in place, that's good. And now I think we need to focus as a priority on the points most needed for the system to function. And that's in particular, of course, Eurodac, that is important. It's the border procedure and the screening. It's the responsibility rules and together with that, of course, also the solidarity.
And as we said in the beginning, the work does not stop on the 12th of June, it actually starts. Some more elements maybe I can give you. First of all, on national legislation, this is of course also key. Member states all together are, I would say, well advanced in adapting their national frameworks. And of course it develops from day to day.
As we know, for instance in the Netherlands, the Netherlands just adopted its national laws the other day, almost. Italy, France, they're using a decree to go forward. So things are going forward every day, I would say. There are some missing pieces. We have an issue with a couple of member states who don't have a government at the moment, that's a bit difficult.
So there will be some days of postponement there, of course, which is also pretty obvious, but as I said, we are almost there. On the external borders, the state of preparation is much more advanced since the last report in November. A majority of the member states have reached adequate capacity for the border procedure and also have already the facilities and the staffing which is necessary. Then on some other points, there are a few member states which of course need to address practical challenges, such as finalizing infrastructure, necessary IT systems, or also measures to prevent absconding, just to give three examples there. The workshops organized jointly with member states which are most concerned by the border procedure have actually proved extremely valuable.
I think that was really a step forward there as well. And several member states have put forward and put in place interim measures. And one key lesson learned is the importance of involving actually the judicial authorities and ensuring also the preparedness across the entire process from screening to border procedures. A third point on the reception and asylum systems. The member states continue actually their efforts to expand the capacity on the one hand, to also improve the quality standards, and also to reduce procedural backlogs.
But of course, further work has to be done there as well to reduce backlogs and also maybe to prevent also bottlenecks. And also to strengthen the administrative and judicial capacities. On the last part, the responsibility and solidarity part, the member states have strengthened their operational capacity to manage the transfers on the one hand and also to implement solidarity contributions in a very effective way. On the responsibility transfers, that's what we used to call Dublin transfers, the Commission will assess the implementation of the new rules by July the 12th and October the 15th to actually determine if the existing problems have been addressed.
On Eurodac, we have been always very clear towards the member states that the new system will enter into operation on the 12th of June as planned. Many member states, most member states are actually progressing quite well, I would say, but of course some work in some member states, some work has to be done, especially on technical things, on technical adaptations, also procurement, tests, also that is important for the days to come. We as a Commission, but also eu-LISA of course, provides support to the member states, they are very happy of course to support further. And in parallel, the member states are working to close their loopholes also. They are also working very hard to ensure return decisions are issued with a negative asylum decisions as it is actually required in the pact also.
And negotiations also continue on the Commission proposals, as you mentioned, Nicola, on a return regulation, we will have another trilogue later today. Maybe a few words, I'm almost there, but on preparedness, this is important, just one sentence. Of course, situations like the situation in the Middle East has actually shown us and again brought forward the importance of preparedness and also contingency planning there. Maybe a few last points on the solidarity pool, this is also important, if you give me another one minute, Chair, thank you. Solidarity pool of course is important.
We had a very constructive exchange with all member states earlier this month, that was, no, that was last month actually, 21st of May already. We are on a very good path there. I hope we will be able to come to a fair and also balanced distribution for when the pact will start applying. Member states have been very constructive and also flexible in this exercise and I really want to thank them there as well. And also our EU agencies were very much involved, EUAA, Frontex, eu-LISA, they are fully mobilized of course and operational in support of all these national efforts.
So 12th of June is tomorrow, almost, we are almost there. Of course, as I said in the beginning, not everything will work 100% perfectly well on the very first day, but we are almost there and I have the feeling that the member states are really, really willing to do their best to have it implemented. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Commissioner. Yes, 12th of June will mark a very important achievement for the European Union as a whole, but also a very important achievement for the Cyprus presidency. A lot of work has had to be displayed. There are still negotiations undergoing in order to complete the legal framework of this new legal situation. And then we move further after Mr. Ioannides and Mr. Brunes' presentation, we move to the round of political groups, starting with EPP, Mr. Tchakowski.
Tomáš Zdechovský
Thank you, Mr. Chair, thank you, Mr. Commissioner, and thank you, Mr. Ioannides for your presentation.
I am very happy that we can discuss it today because I think that immigration pact has to bring us the trust. This is most important between the country and citizens aspect, better control of migration, stronger identity checks, and less irregular movements across the European Union. But trust depend on the member states playing by the same rules. Today we see serious problem in different part of the European Union. In Malta, there are claims about the fake residence permits and identity documents.
Another has decided to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants who previously has not legal status. This is the situation in Spain. And my question is simple. How can the pact achieve its goals if the same member states appear to moving the opposite direction? And does the Commission believe that action are in line with the objectives of pact?
And what concrete measures will taken if national police undermine trust in our common European migration systems? Thank you very much for your response.
Magnus Brunner
I thought I would leave the first step to Nicholas, but I'm very happy to answer that from my side, of course. Well, in general, the pact, that's a very important symbol of unity, I would say, between the member states. Difficult agreement after, as we said before, ten years of negotiations. And to succeed, I think we of course all agree that we have to work together. And we're seeing the results already, also important decrease of illegal arrivals, asylum applications, increase in returns, although we're not there yet with the return regulation.
And what concretely to your question. I expect, of course, all national initiatives to contribute, and that's why I mentioned it, to contribute to this unity. And even though it is the competence of a member states, some of the things you mentioned, in an area where we don't have any, hopefully, internal borders, member states' decision may also have a consequence for other member states. So we really have to think very carefully as a member state what we're doing in our competence because that has an impact, of course, and influence and consequence on other member states and then as a for the Union, of course, as a whole. So things like you mentioned can't be a blank check, of course, for anyone.
And member states, I think, and that's my belief and I think that's pretty obvious also, member states, whatever they do, must act in a spirit of sincere cooperation within the European Union for this to happen swiftly. Thank you.
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Just a quick comment.
I would agree with you that we must regain the trust of our citizens and show that we're in control of migration. And to a great extent, the pact actually enables us to do so. But on the other hand, we've been stressing that from the beginning, that the pact is not a panacea, it's not a solution to everything. So it's the first time that we've got such a comprehensive and cohesive framework. So that's a welcome development.
We need to work together in order to tie up some loose ends. And of course, I think that through this process and through the years, we'll be able to improve procedures and the approach of member states. And as you know, some aspects of migration, of course, fall within national sovereignty and it's up to each member state. But and every each member state will maintain, will have its own peculiar characteristics and would like to pursue some policies. But the important thing is that we've got the yardstick now.
We've got a point of reference and that is the pact and we should all work together in order to make it functional because that's the best for everyone.
Murielle Laurent
Merci, Monsieur le Président. Merci, Monsieur le Commissaire et merci, Monsieur le Vice-Ministre. Le pacte a donc été adopté en 2024, vous l'avez dit, et avec une mise en application qui sera effective d'ici une dizaine de jours. Je suis surprise par votre satisfecit à tous les deux puisque beaucoup d'États membres, et vous l'avez un peu dit en fond, et peut-être même la majorité des États membres, ne sont pas prêts pour son application. En tout cas, c'est le cas de la France.
Les États membres avaient deux ans pour effectuer les adaptations nécessaires, deux ans pour organiser un débat transparent et associer leur parlement, et pour certains, ça n'a pas été le cas. Certains juristes parlent même de procrastination. Donc c'est quand même un petit peu une difficulté. Et Monsieur le Commissaire, vous parliez des États membres qui le mettront en œuvre par décret, mais à mon sens, ce n'est pas la meilleure façon d'appliquer une réglementation, surtout avec les enjeux que l'on sait autour du pacte. Ces enjeux auraient mérité mieux qu'une mise en application par décret.
Et je crains, et vous l'avez évoqué aussi tous les deux, vous avez évoqué les discussions qui sont en cours pour le règlement retour, que nous arrivions à la même situation. Et je pense que ce n'est pas la meilleure des solutions quand il s'agit de textes de cette importance et avec des enjeux aussi importants.
Javier Zarzalejos
I'm going to give the floor to both of our speakers. Now, would you start, Mr. Ioannidis?
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Well, of course, implementing an array of regulations and a new framework was quite challenging from the beginning and we knew that. And that is why we've been working hard with the support of the Commission and EU agencies in order to be ready on time.
And I'd say that according to the Commission's progress report as well, I think there's there's been some important progress towards implementation of the pact. And I'd like to to see things from the you know from an optimistic point of view. We've been trying hard and I think that what we should keep is that Member States are almost there. And we have to help each other in order to implement this pact properly because it is for the benefit of everyone to have a fully functioning pact. In terms of the means of the of the legislative acts each Member State uses to implement the pact, I think that's up to each Member State.
What matters is to enact functional legislation in order to implement the pact on a timely and effective manner. Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you, Commissioner.
Well, not a lot to to add to that. I just would just like to mention as well that a lot has been achieved already by the Member States. I think we we really must acknowledge that to the Member States. This is, and to put it in perspective again, this is the largest ever reform, so it's not not such an easy an easy task. The key pillars are in place now already, I mentioned that in the beginning, and we see that that the Member States are actually completing the remaining building blocks also when it comes to the legislation which you which you mentioned.
I can also add what what Nicolas said, it's not for us to decide how to implement it. The French decided to use this possibility with a with a decree, that's a national a national choice of France.
Marieke Ehlers
Dank u wel, voorzitter, commissaris Brunner, minister Ioannidis. Dank u wel, ik constateer dat u allebei vrij positief bent over dit pact, maar alvast een disclaimer dat ik uw positiviteit niet deel. Want terwijl Europa bezwijkt onder de massale instroom van illegale migranten, schreeuwt de kiezer om een keihard migratiebeleid. En dat is de elite natuurlijk een doorn in het oog. Burgers moeten belasting betalen en verder hun mond houden.
En om de burger zoet te houden, hebben ze daarom een fopspeen bedacht: het migratiepact. Meer dan tien jaar is er over onderhandeld en over een paar weken treedt het in werking. Maar wat blijkt, de implementatie is, zoals door ons al voorspeld, één grote bende. Ik noem u de feiten. Eén: aankomstlanden hebben de locaties voor grensprocedures helemaal niet op orde.
Twee: het ICT-systeem, cruciaal voor de screening van illegalen, is een totale chaos. En drie: er is simpelweg niet genoeg personeel om die beloofde flitsprocedures ook maar enigszins uit te voeren. Voorzitter, dit verzin ik niet zelf, het staat zwart op wit in het implementatierapport van de Europese Commissie zelf. Ik voorspel u hier en nu: dit pact gaat falen. En een kind kon het zien aankomen.
Want wie denkt dat ze in Griekenland van iemand zonder papieren binnen twaalf weken vast kunnen stellen of hij A: meerderjarig is, B: waar hij vandaan komt, C: wat zijn seksuele geaardheid is en D: dit alles door de rechter laten toetsen, is gewoon heel erg naïef. Want in Nederland duurt een dergelijke procedure zonder beroep maar liefst vijfenzeventig weken. Maar de Brusselse bureaucraten denken dat het na twaalf juni opeens binnen twaalf weken kan.
De werkelijkheid zal zich wel naar hun briljante plannen voegen, zo redeneren zij. De realiteit is echter heel simpel. Perfecte implementatie of niet, dit pact is gedoemd te mislukken. Daarom is mijn vraag: op welke harde, meetbare resultaten kunnen we dit pact straks afrekenen? En als de doelen niet gehaald worden, stopt u dan met pappen en nathouden en stapt u dan over op de enige echte oplossing, namelijk de grenzen sluiten?
Dank u wel.
Magnus Brunner
Well, it's a, I would say, an interesting interpretation of our report because it's actually not like you said. It's much more positive. So I do not agree, unfortunately do not agree with your interpretation. The facts are that the pact is the basis of the reforms and we need, we need results and we need a basis and we need the legal basis for getting control back. And so I don't quite understand why anyone can be against the pact.
Of course, it's not perfect. No, it's not perfect. Of course not. Nothing is perfect in that respect, but I always say it's better to have 80% than 0%. So that's why I don't understand the approach saying, oh, this is all bad and no, it's not perfect, of course not, but the pact is something the member states agreed on and which is the basis now.
And there were some missing pieces like the return regulation, like the safe third country concept, like the safe country of origin and others. What we are doing to help the member states to get it done is, and first of all, the key pillars are in place already. So that's my interpretation of our reports. But what we do further to support the member states is we have funds also there to support the implementation there. And then how do we measure?
That was one part of your question as well. We measure it getting the illegal arrivals down. That's where we were quite successful so far already. We had a decrease of 55% of illegal arrivals in the last two years on some routes like the Western Balkan route, that was a minus of 90% in the last three years. So we are getting there.
So arrivals down and asylum applications down. That's the way we can measure it.
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Thank you. Minister Ioannidis.
So I pretty much share the views expressed by Magnus and I'd like to put it this way. Well, after 2015, European citizens asked Europe to do something in order not to be caught unprepared in the event of a migratory refugee crisis. And I think we've delivered on that. That was the first goal, to do something to establish a comprehensive, cohesive framework which envisages stricter border controls, faster procedures, measurable targets. I think definitely that the situation is better than 2015.
2015. Of course, we need to put the pact to the test, but we're being optimistic that we'll be ready to address any future crisis better than in 2015. We've come a long way and we should build on what we've achieved and following the the enactment of the return regulation, which is a missing piece as we mentioned, the rate, the numbers, absolute numbers of returns will increase, so the situation as I mentioned will become even better. So even though it's not a solution to everything, as I've repeatedly stated, I think we have to build on what we've achieved so far.
Charlie Weimers
Thank you, Chair. I will speak in Swedish. Tack, herr ordförande. Migrationspakten börjar gälla om mindre än två veckor. Det nya screeningsystemet inom pakten ska snabbt kontrollera personer som kommer till unionens yttre gränser, hänvisa dem rätt, antingen till en asylprövning eller omedelbart återvändande för de som saknar asylskäl.
Problemet är ju, och det nämnde ni, kommissionären, det finns stora strukturella problem. Det saknas tillräcklig kapacitet vid EU:s yttre gräns och pilottester har visat att man har betydande svårigheter för att hindra att personer avviker, det vill säga går under jorden. Varje år anländer tiotusentals migranter till EU:s yttre gränser. Om ett stort antal av de här försvinner under eller efter screeningen så har vi väldigt stora problem. De kan då resa vidare inom Schengen och hamna i länder som Sverige, vilket ökar trycket på vårt mottagningssystem, våra kommuner, vår trygghet.
Eftersom pakten ändå träder i kraft inom mindre än två veckor, hur kommer kommissionen och rådet att säkerställa att starka och fungerande åtgärder mot avvikelser verkligen finns på plats innan systemet börjar gälla? Vilket konkret stöd, vilken finansiering, vilka kontroller kommer att ges, finnas inom ramen för det nyinförda systemet så att gränsländerna kan hantera det stora antalet ankomster utan att personer avviker? Och hur ska Sverige och andra länder skyddas från konsekvenserna om systemet ändå inte fungerar och avvikelserna blir omfattande? Tack.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you, Mr. Weimers. Commissioner.
Yeah, thank you, thank you very much. First of all, the Member States have notified 330 places where procedures take place. So they've notified it and we of course expect that that it works if they notify to us. We have also had pilots, like in Italy for instance, to pilots which serve to identify the problems and the challenges that they are being addressed of course. And on the absconding part, yes, we have stricter rules now, that's part of the of the pact, that's part of the legislation.
We have centers at the borders, that also helps your question. And then then the return regulation also comes into place because in the with the return regulation, if we find a solution tonight, there are new rules for for especially fighting this absconding actually. So there are a lot of measures fighting absconding, having the border the the procedures, the asylum procedures at the at the borders with stricter rules against absconding and centers there. And as I said in the beginning, we have 330 concrete places which the Member States already notified.
Fabienne Keller
Oui, merci Monsieur le Président Zarzalejos, merci d'avoir inscrit ce point à l'ordre du jour d'une commission LIBE en amont de la fameuse date du 12 juin. Merci à Monsieur le Commissaire Brunner, merci à Monsieur Ioannidis, ministre président en exercice de l'Union, de venir à ce moment qui n'est pas simple, un moment où les États membres font des efforts, mais ils sont bien loin du compte, comme le montre votre rapport. À Madame Helers, qui espère que le pacte va échouer, je voudrais lui répondre que contrairement à la pente que prend le texte retour, le pacte est un ensemble de mesures équilibrées qui assure une bonne administration de la migration et en particulier le contrôle, l'enregistrement à l'entrée. Vous ne pouvez rien faire si vous n'enregistrez pas, c'est le screening, si vous n'analysez pas, si vous ne retenez pas dans les zones de non-entrée que nous avons définies dans le pacte les personnes qui ont très peu de chances d'avoir l'asile. Et c'est sur ces points-là que je voudrais vous interroger, messieurs, puisque c'est leur mise en œuvre qui est compliquée, nous le savions, parce que cela nécessite beaucoup d'efforts de la part des États membres, des moyens et une prise en compte de ces nouvelles règles, et puis aussi cette confiance mutuelle que vous avez évoquée tous les deux pour ce qui que ce qui est fait dans un État membre soit repris sans doute avec dans une confiance par un autre État membre.
Donc on voit qu'on est pas mal en retard sur le screening, sur la mise en place des procédures accélérées à la frontière, importantes pour gérer le grand nombre, et puis Eurodac. Est-ce que vous pouvez nous garantir une forme de crédibilité ou un échéancier à venir pour une meilleure effectivité de la mise en œuvre de ces textes qui ne seront pas opérationnels au 12 juin ? J'ai vu notamment dans la conclusion que vous traciez des perspectives à une échéance assez raisonnable pour que les systèmes entrent effectivement en application dans la plupart des États membres. Ma deuxième question sera sur le cas particulier de l'Italie, pays au centre du débat politique européen sur la migration. Pourtant, votre évaluation, qu'on peut lire paragraphe après paragraphe, est qu'il y a des lacunes importantes sur le screening, la question du contrôle aux frontières, de la maîtrise des personnes, et la préparation opérationnelle aussi.
Quelles garanties, quel suivi la Commission nous assure-t-elle pour que les retards d'un grand État membre d'entrée comme l'Italie ne fragilisent pas l'ensemble du dispositif européen ? Je vous remercie.
Magnus Brunner
Merci, Madame Keller. Commissioner.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Madame Keller. Starting with with Eurodac, well, first of all, we are of course supporting the member states also if they have if there are any issues, we support them with eu-LISA. We support them a lot because the aim is of course to ensure the successful entry into operation.
So we do everything to to support the member states there. Since February actually the testing we had a testing campaign also started with I would say precise milestones that are very closely monitored also. But yes you are right not every member state has actually managed to meet all milestones. Most of them but not all milestones at the agreed date. And delays have of course also effects on the agency then afterwards of the agency resources also.
So what we are doing for that is we are indicating to member states a way forward in view of prioritizing the the available resources. This is what we do in the eu-LISA also to to support to support there. Are there member states in risk of not being ready? Well as I said as I said before not all member states are well met the real milestones. But no I'm it's not that but it is funny sometimes but not not always.
No it's not funny because they are almost there. But of course not all milestones have been have been met. The member states can actually choose to implement Eurodac either and that's why I was mentioning eu-LISA before either by adapting their national systems to interact with eu-LISA in an in an automated way or the second option is by using a solution developed by eu-LISA. So this is always the fallback option we have for those for those member states. But to give you to give you concrete numbers on Eurodac as I said challenges remain of course but 11 member states have already notified to the Commission that they have put all the technical arrangements in place.
16 reported that they still face challenge but expect to be able to solve these issues on time until the 12th of June. So this is the state of state of play. On Italy was the second question was on I think on Italy. On the yeah okay okay yeah yeah Italy. First of all also in with Italy an immense and important progress I think has been has been made when it comes to whatever reinforce their inter inter-institutional coordination when it comes to adjusting the national law including also emergency legislation measures to well staff recruitment and and all that.
So a lot of improvement there. Also some pilot as I mentioned before the pilot the screening in in different areas with the support also of our asylum agency and Frontex also concerning screening. Screening with the screening part the Italian authorities actually indicate to us that they are ready based on their well experience there's actually a decades decades-long experience they have with the management of hotspots also. On the border procedure part we also there we received from Italy the notification for the locations designated. I was mentioning the 330 altogether.
We received that notification for the location designated by the authorities for the implementation of the pact border procedure and for reaching Italy's adequate capacity also. So Italy is also putting in place the national the national rules in line also with the reception conditions directive also to prevent absconding there.
Javier Zarzalejos
So they are they're on a on their path, yeah.
Thank thank you, Commissioner. Now for the group of the Greens, Mrs. Mrs. Strolenberg, Mrs. Strolenberg, you have the floor.
Anna Strolenberg
Yes, indeed. Thank you. First of all, thanks for being here. It's indeed an important moment because right now migration policies seem to be defined in heated political debates, but it is in fact in the way we implement the pact because the devil is in the detail and there are many devilish details here, I would say, that I worry about. And one thing particularly struck me is that the Commissioner, you just said, you can count on us whether the pact is a success or not if the arrivals go down.
Well, I hope very much that it's not just about arrivals going down, but it's about solidarity mechanism, monitoring fundamental rights, quality of facilities, etc. Because if not, then we're going to go into a funnel which is not the right way to go. I have one big question and that is that we just heard that after two years countries are on their way, they're doing a good job, but we also heard examples of countries that are not finished yet, don't have anything in place yet. So I just wonder what is it, who defines what is the core that is in place? And what do we do with the countries that do not have anything in place yet?
Because if one country doesn't have doesn't have their screening regulation fixed and the Commission will give flexibility, another country might do the same. So I do fear that there will be this race to the bottom. So I want to ask the Commission, will you enforce the pact, the law, to make sure that everything will be implemented well and will you actually serve as guardian of the treaties right now? Then I have two more questions. One is about the screening regulation and the independent monitoring system that countries should have in place.
I wonder how you how you will verify their independence because right now we heard that in Greece the monitoring will be done by the transparency authority, but they do not fulfill the criteria of independence. So how to make sure that they are truly independent and they have access to facilities, information, and also the ability to trigger investigations? And the last question is very short about children in detention because a lot of organizations warn that there's this risk of children ending up in detention, not unaccompanied minors, but families with children. It is a last resort, but still it is legal. So can you guarantee that children will not just be deprived of their liberty for migration-related reasons?
And we also heard that many member states already struggle to provide adequate child protection standards. So yeah, if member states cannot guarantee this specialized staff and facilities, should they even be subjected to border procedures and detention, yes or no? Thank you.
Magnus Brunner
Thank you very much. First of all, yes, you're right, the devil is always in the detail, of course, that's true, totally agree with that. About the figures I mentioned. The less people arriving illegally, the better manageable is is are the other questions or the other topics you raised. Of course, it's not just the figures, but but once they they get down, the illegal arrivals, then of course we have more space also for for the things you mentioned.
Fundamental rights, for instance. We have a new fundamental rights monitoring mechanism that's part of the pact also. So you're of course totally aware of that. And member states are of course setting that up.
That's part of the pact implementation altogether. And also our the Fundamental Rights Agency FRA is doing a lot of work there, a lot of training there, awareness raising workshops for instance. So there's a lot going on there as well. What we're doing to well it's mostly and that's a maybe bit of a misunderstanding, mostly it's of course then the implementation is is a member state's competence. And what we're doing is funding them, helping them, doing whatever we can to support them.
And when it comes to the children, there are clear rules, I would say. The there are children in border procedures or detention, clear rules there. And of course that's only possible according in a in a according accordance to the agreed rules. And of course there is a monitoring mechanism also there. So of course we do everything to and and I mean you know what what the rules are.
So sticking to the rules is of course is of course key.
Minister Ionidis.
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Yes, um well again Magnus has referred to the technical details and the preparation and also replying to Ms. Keller's question and observations and Ms. Strolenberg's as well. From a political perspective and from member states' perspective, I'd like to stress that Magnus mentioned that earlier, the pact is a very ambitious target. So that entails challenges, multiple challenges in terms of legislation, of infrastructure, of IT systems. So it's not that simple. And member states have been working hard in order to to get there.
With respect to Eurodac, of course that the system will go live on the 12th of June. So many member states are finalizing their preparations, even though there's some difficulties. We've been trying to to assist member states that face challenges. We've put this matter on the agenda of the Council on Thursday. We'll have a discussion with eu-LISA.
So we've been trying to to facilitate the process. And of course when it comes to human rights monitoring, that's a very sensitive issue. We quite agree with you and we truly believe that it's at the core of of the pact. And it's being it's been a red line for many member states that of course we will adopt stricter measures always in line in EU and international law. And human rights should not be violated at any rate, especially of children.
So I believe that this it is a fair balance between strict measures and human rights, EU and international law. But again the pact will be put to the test every day.
Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Minister Ioannidis. Now for the group of the Left, Mr. Arvanitis.
Konstantinos Arvanitis
Σας ευχαριστώ. I will speak Greek. Χαρακτηρίζετε το σύμφωνο ενότητας, νομίζω ότι δεν είναι σύμφωνο ενότητας, είναι ένα κρίσιμο σημείο αφού υπάρχει η εθελοντική μετεγκατάσταση. Ξέρετε, υπάρχει ένας κίνδυνος σε εμάς που είμαστε κράτη υποδοχής, Ελλάδα, Κύπρος, Ιταλία, Ισπανία, να μετατραπούν οι χώρες μας ουσιαστικά ως μια μεγάλη φυλακή όλων αυτών που δεν θέλουν οι βόρειοι. Και εδώ θέλω να είμαι πολύ συγκεκριμένος διότι μιλάτε με μια πολιτική ομάδα, τουλάχιστον ένα χώρο, το δικό μας, και ήμουν εισηγητής σε πολλά πολλά θέματα, εμείς δεν είμαστε open borders.
Έχουμε πει αυτό ανοιχτά, σύνορα. Εμείς έχουμε πει κανόνες και δικαιώματα για να είμαστε ξεκάθαροι γιατί γίνεται και μια σπέκουλα, γίνεται και ένα περίεργο παιχνίδι με αυτή την ιστορία. Εδώ λοιπόν θέλω να ρωτήσω πολύ συγκεκριμένα πράγματα. Καταρχήν έχουμε εισροές. Και σήμερα στην Κρήτη 600 ήρθανε.
Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι εγκλωβίζονται. Εγκλωβίζονται στην Ελλάδα. Όταν δεν έχω λοιπόν συστήματα ένταξης, όπως καταλαβαίνετε, με όποια ιδεολογία να το δείτε, αν δεν έχω προγράμματα ένταξης, έχω ενίσχυση της αυριανής παραβατικότητας. Δεύτερο κομμάτι, επειδή το είπατε, είπε ο υπουργός να προλαμβάνουν, ένα σύμφωνο που προλαμβάνει. Τι εννοείτε αποτροπή;
Δηλαδή Πύλος, Χίος, αποτροπή; Διότι πώς ακριβώς θα προλαμβάνουμε; Πώς θα γίνει αυτή η αποτροπή; Και θα ήθελα να καταλάβω πώς ορίζεται ο νόμιμος πρόσφυγας. Πώς ορίζεται αυτό όταν κάποιος φεύγει από μια εμπόλεμη ζώνη;
Είμαστε από δύο κράτη, ο συνάδελφος από την Κύπρο και εγώ, που έχουμε πρόσφυγες, εμείς από τη Σμύρνη, από την Κύπρο, πρόσφυγας, πόλεμος. Και εδώ θέλω να σας πω και ένα τελευταίο. Όταν λέτε επιστροφές, κύριε επίτροπε, επειδή γίνεται ένα παιχνίδι με τα νούμερα, μετράτε και τις επιστροφές στην Αλβανία από την Ελλάδα που είναι εργάτες που δεν έχουν πιστοποιητικά και τους γράφουν πίσω; Πού ακριβώς τους επιστρέφουμε; Τους επιστρέφουμε στους Ταλιμπάν, τους Αφγανούς;
Θα επιστρέψουμε τους ακτιβιστές του Ιράν πίσω στο καθεστώς; Και νομίζω ότι εδώ πρέπει να είμαστε πολύ ξεκάθαροι. Αυτά είναι τα δικά μας ερωτήματα και βεβαίως μια ερώτηση προς τον επίτροπο με όλη τη διάθεση. Εμείς το καταψηφίσαμε αυτό το σύμφωνο, είναι κακό σύμφωνο, αλλά πώς θα πιέσουμε τα κράτη μέλη όταν δεν δέχονται το ποσοστό στο relocation που τους αναλογεί; Θα δίνουν ένα ποσό στα κράτη υποδοχής;
Πώς θα γίνει αυτό; Τι αλληλεγγύη είναι αυτή; Δεν την καταλαβαίνω.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Arvanitis. Commissioner Brunner and then Minister Ioannidis.
Magnus Brunner
Yeah, I mean there were a lot of different areas you were mentioning, but just trying to answer all these questions. First of all, yes, it's the balance between the whole pact is about the balance between solidarity towards those member states who are on the front line, like Greece and others, of course, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, but also of course their responsibility to do their job. And there is solidarity there and the responsibility has to be there, otherwise the pact doesn't work. So that's in general, but you of course are aware of that. And you always mentioned you also mentioned the why are they called illegal or irregular.
Because the way that the act itself is illegal, not the person, of course not, oh my god. It's the act itself. And we always have to differentiate, and that is important, I think that's especially for me important and that's difficult to explain in public, differentiating between illegal migration, you can call it irregular migration, where we have to do everything to fight against it because it's the business of the human traffickers and the smugglers and of course life is in danger.
So, that's why we have to do everything to stop it before they actually go on this very dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic Sea to to come into to come to the European Union, come to Europe. So, that's why we are focusing also on migration diplomacy. So start early, much earlier, and the whole of route approach we're talking about we were talking about in in this room already is also part of the whole the whole new migration management and the migration reform we are facing. It's not just the the pact, it's not just the the rules we are and and the European house we we bring in order. It's more, much more than that.
It's about safe third country concept, it's about safe country of origin, it's about migration diplomacy, using our leverage also we have as a European Union and supporting and and cooperating with with third with third countries as well. So, and that's the illegal part. Legal migration, completely different, that's also part of the pact, where we where we support legal migration, which we of course need for our labour markets in the in the years to come. And the third part, and that was that's what you were mentioning also, is also as important as the other two parts, that's an asylum system, supporting people, we have a responsibility I think, to support people whose life is in danger, who is who is threatened in in his or her home country. Yes, of course, there we have an obligation I think as a European Union to protect.
So, differentiating those three points I think in my view is is incredibly important and unfortunately in the public discussion it's not always that easy to do. So, we are very much committed also in the pact to protect those in need, but also of course to fight abuses. So, abuses for what people abusing the system, the asylum systems, so that we make sure that that's not a way to get into Europe. On a legal basis yes, if they need protection yes, of course, but not on an illegal basis where the the business of the human traffickers and smugglers is supported.
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Thank you Commissioner. Minister Ioannides.
Thank you Chair, I'll also speak in Greek given that the the question was posed in Greek. Ευχαριστώ κύριε Αρβανίτη. Ναι, αντιλαμβάνομαι τις ανησυχίες και όντως είναι πολλά ζητήματα τα οποία πρέπει να να εξετάσουμε. Σίγουρα σκοπός μας δεν είναι να πνίγονται άνθρωποι και να χάνονται ζωές. Αυτό πρέπει να είναι ξεκάθαρο.
Και γι' αυτό η προσπάθεια παράλληλα είναι να χτυπηθούν και τα κυκλώματα διακινητών. Υπάρχει και το Global Alliance, η πρωτοβουλία την οποία στηρίζουμε για να αντιμετωπιστεί αυτό το το σοβαρό από ποινικής άποψης ζήτημα. Οι διαδικασίες που εισάγονται με το Σύμφωνο στα σύνορα ακριβώς είναι για να γίνει η σωστή αξιολόγηση η οποία δεν γινόταν προηγουμένως. Όπως ξέρετε, υπήρχε σοβαρή κατάχρηση των συστημάτων ασύλου σε πολλές χώρες, ειδικά σε χώρες πρώτης γραμμής. Και είχαμε και δευτερογενείς μετακινήσεις, είχαμε διάφορα προβλήματα.
Τώρα θα μπορούμε, θέλουμε να μπορούμε να εντοπίζουμε αυτούς οι οποίοι προσπαθούν να καταχραστούν. Βεβαίως όλων οι αιτήσεις ασύλου θα εξετάζονται σε εξατομικευμένη βάση. Δεν θα αδικείται κόσμος. Εκ προοιμίου δεν απορρίπτουμε κανέναν. Απλώς θέλουμε να αποφύγουμε τις καταχρήσεις γιατί με αυτόν τον τρόπο επιβαρύνονται τα συστήματα ασύλου και δεν μπορούμε να παράσχουμε την προστασία στους ανθρώπους που την αξίζουν.
Συμφωνώ για την ένταξη, είναι πολύ σημαντική και πρέπει να σας πω ότι στην Κύπρο έχουμε περάσει μια στρατηγική τον Φεβρουάριο την οποία θα αρχίσουμε να εφαρμόζουμε.
Αλλά όλα αυτά πρέπει να κινούνται παράλληλα. Δηλαδή καλύτεροι έλεγχοι στα σύνορα, ορθότερη αξιολόγηση, ένταξη, παροχή διεθνούς προστασίας σε αυτούς που την αξίζουν και ένταξη, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή αυτοί που προσπαθούν να καταχραστούν τα συστήματα, επιστροφή στις πατρίδες τους πάντα όμως έχοντας αυτές τις ασφαλιστικές κλείδες για τα ανθρώπινα τους δικαιώματα. Είναι μια συνεχής άσκηση εξισορρόπησης. Δεν μπορεί κανείς να έχει εκ των προτέρων τις σωστές απαντήσεις. Θα πρέπει όλοι να κριθούμε επί του εδάφους.
Ευχαριστώ.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you Mr. Ioannides. I have four speakers left on my list. I will give you one minute to each of you and group your questions together so they can be answered by speakers in a final, in a final remarks. Madame Sorel, one minute. Yeah.
Malika Sorel
Monsieur le Ministre, Monsieur le Commissaire, nous avons un impératif de réussite. Je vais formuler des observations et une proposition. Dans de nombreux États membres, une part croissante de nos concitoyens exprime à juste titre de vives inquiétudes face à l'immigration de masse. Le débat migratoire est devenu le symbole d'une question plus profonde : les pouvoirs publics sont-ils encore capables de maîtriser des phénomènes qui transforment en profondeur nos sociétés ? C'est ce sujet qui est le carburant de mouvements extrémistes en Europe, partout en Europe, et on ne peut combattre par le déni.
Aussi, je salue Monsieur le Commissaire et Monsieur le Ministre la prise de conscience actuelle. J'ai une proposition pour anticiper la suite. Au fil des décennies, les critères d'asile se sont considérablement élargis. Nos concitoyens ne le comprennent pas et ils comprennent encore moins le concept de solidarité ou de ventilation des migrants quand ils voient chaque jour que leur société ne dispose plus guère de capacité d'accueil ni d'intégration économique ou culturelle. Ne pensez-vous pas qu'il est grand temps d'ouvrir le débat sur un rescentrage du droit d'asile autour de véritables persécutions politiques, accueil de dissidents politiques ?
C'est ce qui a longtemps existé par le passé. L'Europe continuerait ainsi à défendre la liberté, la démocratie, les droits fondamentaux, tout en redonnant de la lisibilité à un système d'accueil dont la crédibilité est vivement contestée. Je vous remercie.
Cecilia Strada
Muchas gracias presidente. Sì, io volevo fare delle domande tecniche ma le hanno già fatte i miei colleghi. Io vi sento molto parlare di protezione dei diritti fondamentali e francamente vorrei capire come, come, perché dappertutto c'è scritto che la Commissione è custode dei trattati, che i diritti umani saranno ovviamente rispettati nell'implementazione del patto. Problema: quando io e le colleghe giriamo già oggi per centri di rimpatrio, da Calais all'Italia alla Grecia, vediamo già le violazioni dei diritti fondamentali e non vediamo risposte da parte della Commissione. Diceva Einstein che non si può fare sempre la stessa cosa aspettandosi risultati diversi perché questo è stupido.
Quindi la mia domanda è: che cosa volete fare di diverso per garantire il rispetto dei diritti fondamentali nell'ambito dell'applicazione del patto ? E poi Commissario Brunner, lei parlava poco fa dell'obbligo di protezione, che naturalmente l'Europa ha un obbligo di protezione per chi scappa da atrocità per esempio nel proprio paese. Ma questo obbligo di protezione noi lo stiamo svendendo. Questo obbligo di protezione con il dossier paesi terzi sicuri noi non sarà più nelle nostre mani l'obbligo di protezione. Noi pagheremo altri paesi per prendersi i richiedenti asilo.
La mia domanda è: che cosa intendete fare di diverso da quello che state facendo adesso per garantire il rispetto dei diritti fondamentali perché oggi non sono rispettati ? Molte grazie.
François-Xavier Bellamy
Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président, pour ce débat aujourd'hui. Merci à notre commissaire Magnus Brunner et merci monsieur le ministre Ioannidis d'être parmi nous aujourd'hui sur ce sujet fondamental. Je partage évidemment, nous partageons le sentiment que vous avez tous deux évoqué que le règlement retour sera en effet la pièce manquante pour mettre en œuvre une politique cohérente en matière migratoire en Europe et à cet égard nous nous réjouissons bien sûr de l'avancée de nos discussions sur ce sujet. Peut-être une question toute simple sur le pacte asile et immigration : est-il déjà prévu à ce stade qu'une évaluation de la mise en œuvre de ce pacte ait lieu dans les mois ou les années qui viendront pour pouvoir identifier quelles sont les éventuelles lacunes restantes et comment améliorer les dispositions de ce pacte qui évidemment, dans le moment où elles entreront en vigueur, ne manqueront pas de faire ressortir des potentiels difficultés que la théorie ne peut pas suffire à résumer ? Est-ce qu'il y a déjà un agenda d'évaluation de la mise en œuvre du pacte à ce stade ?
Gracias señora Strada. Monsieur Bellamy.
Merci beaucoup.
Fabrice Leggeri
Merci monsieur le président, merci monsieur le commissaire, merci monsieur le ministre. On le voit, la plupart des États membres ne sont pas prêts pour des raisons pratiques. On voit qu'Eurodac n'est pas prêt partout. On voit que la France d'Emmanuel Macron a éludé un débat au Parlement parce qu'elle sait très bien qu'il n'y aurait pas de majorité pour voter le pacte asile migration. Alors ma question est très simple : est-ce qu'effectivement il y aura rapidement une évaluation de la mise en œuvre du pacte ?
Et si le pacte ne peut pas être mis en œuvre parce qu'en réalité le pacte asile migration est refusé largement par les électeurs aujourd'hui dans nos pays européens, alors est-ce qu'on pourra faire aussi un omnibus sur le pacte asile migration parce que finalement il ne faut pas oublier que le pacte asile migration légalise ce qui commence souvent par du trafic d'êtres humains à l'autre bout du monde ? Merci beaucoup.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Gracias, presidente, he llegado un poquito tarde al catch-the-eye. Gracias. Thank you so much. Commissioner, thank you so much for your explanation. Thank you also to Mr Ioannidis.
I think it's really important that we keep insisting in legal pathways for migration, so I was very happy to hear you put the emphasis on that. My question, however, has to do with something that a colleague from the left has already mentioned, and that is the invitation extended to the Taliban to come to Brussels on short notice to discuss returns. You will be aware of the fact that the European Parliament has in a majority rejected this meeting, condemned this meeting, and asked for no further legitimation. It's impossible to apply a European asylum pact when we are returning people to countries where they are not safe and where the regime is abusing a significant part of the population, particularly women and girls. So my question is very simple: are you going to listen to the wish of this European Parliament not to engage with the Taliban on the issue of returns?
Thank you.
Ana Catarina Mendes
Muito obrigada, senhor presidente. Senhor presidente, muito obrigada por este debate aos senhores comissários e ao senhor ministro adjunto. O senhor comissário acabou de dizer que a escolha da implementação é uma escolha nacional. O senhor comissário acabou por dizer que a escolha da implementação do pacto das migrações é uma escolha nacional.
Mas eu queria lembrar o senhor comissário, eu estou à vontade porque enquanto membro do governo, ministra responsável, negociei este pacto das migrações que considero equilibrado em muitas coisas, mas que está desajustado na sua implementação. E por isso mesmo a Comissão como guardiã dos tratados deve zelar pelos direitos fundamentais e é isso que nós lhe pedimos nestas audições e por isso tenho três perguntas muito concretas. Em primeiro lugar, está hoje a decorrer uma greve dos funcionários da Agência de Integração e Migrações em Portugal. As filas nos aeroportos sucedem-se todos os dias numa desorganização imensa e eu pergunto se a Comissão considera que Portugal dispõe dos recursos humanos, tecnológicos necessários para a aplicação dos novos procedimentos de triagem, registo e acompanhamento dos migrantes. Em segundo lugar, o Banco de Portugal deu a semana passada os números exatos dos últimos dez anos da imigração e do seu impacto no mercado de trabalho.
Dezasseis mil milhões para a segurança social é quanto os estrangeiros contribuíram para a sustentabilidade da proteção social no meu país. Neste momento há muitos imigrantes a saírem porque a implementação do pacto das migrações está a ser feito não de forma equilibrada, mas de uma forma mais restritiva. E por isso isso leva-me à terceira questão, senhor comissário, qual é o critério que nós consideramos para o sucesso do impacto do pacto? Ele será medido pela redução da imigração irregular, pelo aumento dos retornos ou pela melhoria das condições de integração? E por fim, porque é dia internacional das crianças, talvez fosse bom que hoje nós pensássemos que o regulamento do retorno penaliza os menores que ficam desacompanhados sem os seus pais em decisões de retorno inadmissíveis na Europa.
Muito obrigada.
Ana Miguel Pedro
Thank you, dear chair. Senhor comissário, faltam apenas duas semanas para a entrada em vigor do pacto europeu sobre migração e asilo e há uma preocupação crescente quanto ao cumprimento por parte de alguns estados-membros, nomeadamente Espanha. O governo espanhol continua a adiar a aprovação da nova lei de asilo e de reforma da lei de estrangeiros, compromissos assumidos perante Bruxelas e essenciais à aplicação do novo quadro europeu. Mas quando se tratou de avançar com regularização em massa de centenas de milhares de imigrantes ilegais, sem garantias e sem o devido escrutínio parlamentar, criando como sabe um perigoso precedente para a União Europeia, o governo agiu rapidamente por decreto e com caráter de urgência. Esta duplicidade é politicamente grave e juridicamente preocupante.
O pacto europeu sobre imigração e asilo não pode ser tratado como uma recomendação facultativa nem a sua aplicação pode depender da conveniência política de cada governo nacional. Por isso, senhor comissário, pergunto-lhe: vai a Comissão Europeia continuar a tolerar esta duplicidade? Vai Bruxelas aceitar que um estado-membro ignore as suas obrigações europeias quando premeia a imigração ilegal com efeito em todo o espaço Schengen? E que medidas concretas está a Comissão Europeia preparada para adotar se Espanha não cumprir as suas obrigações antes do dia doze de junho, tal como qualquer outro estado-membro?
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mrs. Pedro. Mr. Tynkkynen, and then after your intervention I will give the floor back to our speakers for their answers and the final remarks. Floor is yours, one minute.
Sebastian Tynkkynen
I'll be speaking in Finnish. Kiitos puheenjohtaja. Meillä on maahanmuuttokriisi Euroopassa vieläkin päällä ja mä tuun vihaiseksi, kun mä kuulen arvoisa komissaari, että sanot tällaista kuin että finally a European house is in order. Ei tarvitse mennä kuin pari päivää taaksepäin katsoa Pariisia, mitä tapahtui, kun PSG voitti, ei siellä ollut Pariisi järjestyksessä vaan tulessa. Jos katsoo omaa kotimaatani, raiskausepäilyistä viisikymmentä prosenttia kohdistuu ulkomaalaisiin, vaikka heitä on populaationa ainoastaan kaksitoista prosenttia.
Tai Belgiassa neljäkymmentä prosenttia on ulkomaalaisia tota vankiloissa.
Tää on ihan järkyttävä tilanne, missä me ollaan. Ja nyt tää solidaarisuusmekanismi tarkoittaa sitä, että joko otat vastaan siirtolaisia tai maksat. Eli joko tuhoat taloutesi tai turvallisuutesi. Olisiko nyt oikea aika myöntää, että ainoa keino palauttaa se järjestys eurooppalaiseen taloon on estää laittomien pääsy Eurooppaan, ei heidän uudelleenjakamisensa Euroopan sisällä? Kiitos.
Javier Zarzalejos
Okay. Then I'll give the floor back to Commissioner Brunner for answering the questions and your final remarks. Commissioner.
Magnus Brunner
Yeah, thank you, thank you very much, Chair, and thanks to everyone, to all the questions. I will try hard to answer as good as I can. First of all, Ms. Estrada, it's the national judges who actually deal with it. That's the first sort of line we are having. And the safe third countries, I think that is quite important because it's not an externalization as you mentioned.
It's actually rather, I would say, a global responsibility also of other safe countries also around the world to deal with it. It's not, we're always talking about Europe, but there are other safe countries as well. And is a country safe or not, that is also where something where we also with in the safe country of origin list, that's where we include, of course, UNHCR, IOM. It's not us to decide. There are experts who are in the field also who actually help us to define which country is safe and which is not.
And yeah, but I mean, what else can we do instead except including, of course, the experts? And if we don't trust UNHCR and IOM anymore, boo, it's a bit difficult then. But okay. Monsieur Bellamy, evaluation. Yes, there is an evaluation.
Actually, there's an ongoing evaluation. And one of the points where we have ongoing evaluation is safe third country concept, safe country of origin, return regulation. These were the missing pieces. And that's also a sort of evaluation where we saw the pact is a good basis, but it was not enough. There were some missing pieces.
That's why we are doing more. And these three possibilities are just examples, these three examples. But there is also going to be an evaluation in 27, 28 on the pact all together. And that also answers the question of Monsieur Leggeri. I would put it the other way around because you said most member states are not ready.
No, that's not true. Most member states are ready. I would definitely turn it around. Most member states are ready. There are some challenges, yes, but I would turn it the other way round.
And evaluation, yes, is foreseen. Whether we have an omnibus, I think it's an interesting idea, but yeah, we'll see. But it's a continuous, it's a continuous work, I would say. Well, yeah, the rest was rather statements. Working on fundamental rights, of course, is key.
I mean, this is what every, this is the basis in the pact as well, I would say. And we also have in the Council of Europe, we have a ministerial declaration there of all the member states in the Council of Europe. And of course, we need to continue this discussion. Yes, of course we do. But I think, and I'm sure that the proper screening, the sticking to the fundamental rights, that's basis, I would say.
And that's non-negotiable. That's what I always say. I know you don't you don't trust me in that, but that's all I can say. We we are doing everything to to stick to fundamental rights and human rights. Of course we do.
You don't probably believe me, but but I can't say more than than we're doing our best to to do that. On Spain, on on the question on Spain, as I said, a lot has been has been achieved already. And I think we really must acknowledge that to the member states that a lot has been has been done. We have come a really long way and I said before a couple of times, we are on a very good on a very good path. The key pillars are also in place, also in Spain.
And coming directly to Spain and concretely to Spain, there is still work ongoing on the adoption of the national national legislation. Like in other member states, like in Italy and France, we heard we heard that they also want to go the Spanish also want to go the way of a decree. That's the same with Italy and and France, sorry. So apparently, but that's what we heard, but I'm not sure whether Spain is doing that, but apparently they want to go the same way as as Italy and France. Screening and border procedure also strengthen international coordination among central and local entities.
That is also something where Spain has some challenges, I would say. So work is ongoing there. So they're not there yet. Good work has been done on Eurodac. That's very positive with Spain.
Also the the consistent implementation of Dublin, the Dublin rules over the last years. So so we have some challenges, that's what I started with, with the national legislation, that's still open, screening border procedure, but good work on Eurodac and and Dublin implementation.
Sebastian Tynkkynen
Which one? But you don't you didn't have a question, you had a comment.
Javier Zarzalejos
No, no, no, please, Commissioner, that's it. No, no, that's it. I'm addressing your question, Mr. Time for Mr. Ioannidis and then we conclude this point on our agenda.
Nicholas A. Ioannides
Yes, thank you everyone for your remarks and questions. With respect to Ms. Sorrell's question and the remark on on putting asylum at the at the epicenter, I quite agree with you and I think the pact actually has mechanisms and procedures that aim to safeguard the rights of asylum seekers and holders of beneficiaries of international protection. For instance, a novelty is the provision of legal counseling to to asylum seekers or the establishment of a of a monitoring mechanism for human rights was mentioned earlier. So I think that we have not made any reductions in terms of human rights protection within within our member states. To the contrary, I think it is a common position, it's a common understanding that we would like to enhance the protection of human rights and that's what the Commissioner mentioned when it comes to returns.
It was the it's the position of the majority of member states that we need to involve UNHCR and IOM in returns so that we ensure that no human rights would be violated. When it comes to the evaluation of of the pact, of course you are all very well aware of the fact that each regulation has its own monitoring evaluation mechanism, so that's how we're going to work.
Of course the Commission has its own procedures and we will all work together in order to make sure that the implementation of the pact will be evaluated in order to improve procedures, tie up loose ends and improve the overall application of the pact. Ms. Mendez referred to my statement on the manner of application of the pact. Just to clarify, what I mentioned was not that it's up to each member state how it will implement the pact. What I said is it's up to each member state how they will transpose the pact into their domestic legal order. So with respect to returns, of course it's a sensitive issue.
It's not our position, it's not the member states' position that women and children should be returned to unsafe countries where they will face, of course, violation of their fundamental human rights or they'll face risk of life. But what the majority of member states want is to facilitate the return of individuals who pose security threats. So that's a red line for many member states and that's why there've been discussions with several countries on the return of their nationals when they pose security risks. By way of conclusion, Chair, I think that the pact offers more streamlined procedures, more coherent and comprehensive framework and I think we should place emphasis on its implementation in order to improve the situation on the ground. Again, remember how things were in 2015.
Things are getting better and it's up to us to improve the situation even more. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Minister Ioannidis. Now the Commission, I would like to add some brief remarks.
Magnus Brunner
Brief remarks and I'd put it together with my concluding remarks if I may, but I forgot to answer that question. Sorry about that and I'll start with that. Portugal. First of all, the positive thing because I just had a meeting with the minister a week ago where we spoke about different things, entry-exit system, maybe some improvement possibilities there for Portugal. But what Portugal did on the positive note is that they really, I think, improved the situation altogether, improved supports also to applicants throughout the whole asylum process actually, by also enhancing legal counseling for instance, interpretation services.
So these are the positive things. Second positive thing, also they really worked to ensure adequate reception conditions, I would say, yes, that's what we definitely hear, especially for vulnerable groups. There was a lot of improvement there. The challenges you were mentioning as well, yes, there are some needs to do in the next days to come. First of all, that's to perform the remaining business tests with the central solution also for the reformed Eurodac system.
That's one point which is still a challenge. And then of course also the point you mentioned, finalizing the institutional reform which created the Agency of Integration, Migration and Asylum, AIMA, I think is it, AIMA, AIMA.
Okay. And also to ensure adequate resourcing. So these are the challenges. And then I'll finish. Thanks very much again.
I think it was, I mean, it is, it will be, I'm looking very much forward to the discussion we will have in Cyprus on the implementation of the pact with the ministers. I think we are almost there. We have, of course, we have to test it on the ground. Of course, the implementation is the 12th. This is the starting point.
Then we have to test it on the ground and to see what works and what doesn't work. And then maybe, of course, have some adjustments there as well and support the member states in doing an even better job at the end. So thanks very much for this discussion and, of course, also for the future discussions on this topic which won't be finished by today. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you very much to our speakers, Commissioner Brunner, Minister Ioannidis. Some of us, we continue this discussion on the returns regulation later this evening. And then we look forward to the 12th of June to check and to verify that the pact has been properly entered into application. We conclude this point and we move to the next one.
So please, those who want to take part on that remain in the room. Thank you.
So now we start item number six on our agenda and it's another exchange of views. In this case an exchange of views on a strengthening EU civil protection and European critical infrastructure resilience. For this exchange of views we've also invited members of the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety as the subject is of relevance for the respective area of work. So the growing number of attacks on critical infrastructure in recent years has demonstrated that European Union must further strengthen its preparedness, readiness and response capacities. Disruptions affecting different areas has been exposed, have exposed important vulnerabilities and show us the significant cross-border impact such incidents can have on the Union's security and functioning.
Today's exchange of views provides an opportunity to assess the current state of preparedness and reflect on possible improvements in the areas of civil protection and internal security. In this context stronger coordination, faster information sharing and enhanced resilience of critical infrastructures remain key priorities. I am pleased to welcome our guest speakers who will share with us their views and possible lessons learned on this important topic. We will first hear from the representatives of the European Commission, Mr. Martin Schäfer, Head of the Unit for Counter-Terrorism, Anti-Radicalisation and Critical Infrastructure at DG HOME, and Mr. Hans-Ulrich Gessel, Head of Unit for Civil Protection Policy at DG ECHO. We will then hear from Mr. Alexi Aho, analyst of at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats who and then from Mr. Manuel Atug from AG KRITIS who are joining us remotely.
So we will start by the presentation of our guest speakers. I will give them a maximum of four minutes each and then we will start the Q&A session with representatives of each political groups. I the there will be no second round in this case and we will also willing to take the questions on the MB MEPs invited to this exchange if they are present and express their wish to take the floor. So Mr. Schäfer, the floor is yours for up to four minutes.
Martin Schieffer
Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon, honorable members, dear colleagues. From our perspective I would like to start with referring to the simple fact that we're currently facing serious security landscape, highly influenced by geopolitical developments, external conflicts, notably the war of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has led to an increase in hybrid campaigns against the EU and its member states. The volume of attempts of this kind and the acts of sabotage of critical infrastructure has increased significantly since 2022 since the launch of this war.
Nothing of this is new. We are now in the fifth year of the war, but in the current geopolitical context, our priorities as set out in the Protect EU, in the new EU Internal Security Strategy adopted in April last year, we put a very strong focus on the urgent transposition by all member states and the timely implementation once they have legally transposed the text of the Critical Entities Resilience Directive, the so-called CER Directive. This directive covers the physical resilience and it comes under the remit of my Directorate-General, DG HOME, my unit in particular, and there is also a sister instrument, the Directive on high level of cybersecurity across the Union, the NIS2 Directive, covering cyber resilience, which is under the remit of colleagues in DG CONNECT. As said, in HOME we are responsible for the CER Directive and we are currently in a critical window of the implementation process. The directive entered into force in January 23, the transposition period was in October 24, it was shorter than the usual two years, and there are several milestones to go through over the next two and a half years with certain important things that need to be delivered as part of the implementation process.
Member states were notably due to adopt a national strategy and to carry out risk assessments by January this year. And by July this year, the member states must identify the critical entities that are at the heart of the crucial legislation and at the frontline of a stronger collective resilience. The Commission supports the member states in this endeavor through the Critical Entities Resilience Group, an expert group established under the CER Directive, with implementing legislation, advice and guidelines and support for the exchange of information and best practices. In particular, the Commission adopted in September 2025 non-binding guidelines to support member states in the identification of critical entities. Once identified, the deadline as I said is July this year, these critical entities will have to step up its resilience according to the standards of the CER Directive, notably enhancing physical protection, ensuring business continuity, develop recovery plans and alternative supply chains, and also improve and increase the security management of employees, notably through background checks, and when it comes to the physical protection, there are concrete requirements with regard to the premises, fences, barriers, monitoring perimeters, having access controls, deploying up-to-standard detection equipment.
The Commission is furthermore also working towards supporting the identified entities to adopt resilience-enhancing measures, and in the coming weeks we will therefore also present guidelines to further specify what exactly we understand by technical security and organizational measures that are at the heart of the obligations for identified critical entities in accordance with Article 13 of the CER Directive.
I finish by saying that we are also supporting the Member States financially. In autumn 2023, we launched a 15 million call for proposals to support the resilience-enhancing measures of critical entities. There are two objectives: to support both the implementation of the Directive on the resilience of critical entities in line with the strategic priorities set out in the Directive and in the Protect EU Security Strategy, and also to draw and develop best practices and draw the lessons from what has been already experienced in the first years of the entry into force. I would leave it to this by way of introduction. Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Seifert, and now I give the floor to Mr. Gossel, again for five minutes.
Hans Ulrich Goessl
Thank you very much and a very good afternoon, honorable members. I'll try to give a very brief update on the work we are doing in the area of EU civil protection and within the broader EU preparedness agenda in order to strengthen civil protection and as a consequence also critical infrastructure. Let me start maybe with a snapshot on the operational perspective as we see it from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, which as you might know is an instrument that has been existing for around 25 years and has been activated, needs to be activated upon request from an affected country, including Member States, which has happened around 800 times over the last 25 years. About half of these activations took place in the last four, five years, which is an indication that the number of activations, which used to be around 20, 30 per year, has increased by three, four, some in some of the recent years, five times. So there's a sharp quantitative increase in where Member States indicated they need support in emergency and crisis management.
Not only that on the quantitative side, but also there's a shift in the qualitative needs that involve disaster and crisis management. We see an increasing complexity of crisis management and we see the need to get cross-sectoral, more and more sectors involved in civil protection operations. I'll explain in a moment what that means a bit more concretely. But secondly, let me maybe step back and zoom out also to continue a bit on what we see as the description of the European risk and threat landscape. There are a number of big forces shaping this landscape.
First of all, the geopolitical instability increasing and with that new security threats. I don't need to go into that, I suppose everyone is very familiar with that. Secondly, what we identify, technological change, which on the one hand is an opportunity but brings a number of challenges, also in terms of supply chain dependencies, technological sovereignty, etc. Thirdly, and that might not be evident at first sight in the context of this policy area, extreme weather events are sharply increasing. We see an economic impact on average per year over the last decade of around 16 billion euros in the EU.
That has increased by three times to 45 billion euros now from 2020 to 2024. So a sharp increase there also. The what we can take away from these sort of main drivers or megatrends for the European risk landscape is that the risk landscape is worsening pretty much across all categories.
Thirdly, the most consequential risks are compound events. So while individual risks are serious, the most worrying threat comes from compound events, combining different risks and becoming systemically dangerous when they coincide and interact with each other. So sometimes it's the cascading effects that are more important in terms of impact than the source of a crisis or disaster. Third main feature that we see is acceleration across most of the risk categories, that the risks are accelerating and increasing sharply. And fourth and last element are tipping points.
I think they are very well established and known in the area of climate change, but they can also be seen and identified in, for example, technological risks if we think about space infrastructure and space debris or in the area of artificial intelligence. Now that leads me, and I'll conclude with that for the purpose of the introduction, what do we propose to do about this evolving European risk landscape? First point is strengthening civil protection, both at European level and at national level. Today's crises are getting more frequent and complex, they escalate faster than anticipated and national systems are expected to increasingly need assistance beyond conventional civil protection support. Secondly, we need to address the qualitative shift of more cross-sectorial needs in crisis management and emergency management.
That's part of our legal proposal on the EU Civil Protection Mechanism that we put forward last year and that is currently negotiated, including a rather steep increase of the budget necessary to address this evolving risk landscape from a consequence management perspective and from a civil protection perspective. Secondly, and that's my final point, we need to strengthen civil protection beyond civil protection. And that's part of the EU preparedness agenda. We need to think crisis management in a broader perspective, including all relevant policy areas. And this can be agriculture policy, educational policy, industrial policy, under the principle and key action we put forward under the name preparedness by design, which is very much hand in hand and aligned with the security by design principle.
So to mainstream preparedness considerations across all relevant policy areas. Last point related to that, not only whole of government, but also whole of society, including all relevant actors, including private sector and population. I'll leave it there and I look very much forward to the exchanges. Thank you very much.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Gessel. And now we will give the floor to Mr. Aleksi Aho, who will be intervening remotely. Mr. Aho, the floor is yours for four minutes.
Aleksi Aho
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, as was mentioned by the two previous speakers, European critical infrastructure is increasingly under pressure. That's a fact. And on the one hand, we have state actors with state-level funding and capabilities, and then on the other hand, we have these proxy actors, proxy individuals who work on behalf of the foreign state. And looking at these two aspects, they pose of course different risks.
The so-called disposable agents, they function as a force multiplier for Russia, who basically drain law enforcement resources, they expose vulnerabilities, they test our reaction time and aim for demonstrable effect. And while these basically low-level sabotage actions, they often have limited impact, but the cumulative effect is greater than the individual impact of each action suggests.
And then the state-level sabotage what we have seen in the Baltic Sea, for instance, this should be regarded as tests. And the question, of course, is that what has been tested? I think there are three things. The first thing is that the sabotage method itself has been tested. The second thing is that our response on operational and political level has been tested, but also the redundancy of our critical infrastructure.
And personally, I think that the aim so far has not been to devastate, but rather to probe and test. However, there might be, and I think personally there will be a time when we see a truly coordinated, high-impact hybrid operation with cross-border effects, with the aim of actually paralyzing entire states and the decision-making at the EU level during maybe a pre-planned escalation and geopolitical development. And this leads us to the role of Union Civil Protection and especially its rescEU component. And I think thus far there has been a tendency to treat the Union Civil Protection Mechanism as a sort of a neutral tool and perhaps neglect its role in the context of hybrid threats, although it doesn't really matter if it is a man-made or natural disaster because the effects can be the same and also the authorities, the first responders are the same in any case. And I have actually tried to emphasize the role of Union Civil Protection Mechanism and also its rescEU component for quite many years already in the hybrid threat environment because in my view, the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, it has a lot of hybrid relevance, so to say.
And we should continuously look and examine, maybe also extend the thematic scope of rescEU reserve because during a sort of a high-impact hybrid operations which leads to a disaster, citizens will expect a community-level response in these kind of situations where national resources are no longer sufficient and failing that, I think there will be also political consequences that are detrimental to the unity of EU. And finally, I also want to thank EU for great developments lately in the field of critical infrastructure resilience, such as the CER and NIS2 directives, although some member states are lagging behind with its implementation. In my opinion again, it does not necessarily mean that they are less prepared because the very idea of CER directive and NIS2 has been to harmonize the legislation on EU level to ensure that also the less prepared countries are increasing their level of preparedness. So looking at the group of countries, many of them already have had a strong national preparedness legislation in place. So the resilience can of course be enhanced through legislation, but legislation alone is not sufficient and more developments is also needed.
Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Aho. And now, finally, I will give the floor to our last speaker, Mr. Manuel Atug. The floor is yours for five minutes. Mr. Atug also will intervene remotely.
Manuel Atug
Dankeschön. Ja, vielen Dank, liebe Zuhörende. Die AG KRITIS ist ein unabhängiger Zusammenschluss von Expertinnen aus dem KRITIS-Umfeld. Wir erhalten keine Gelder von der Wirtschaft oder vom Staat, machen das alles im Ehrenamt und aus Überzeugung, denn mit Wissen kommt Verantwortung. Und unser eigennütziges Ziel ist die Erhöhung der Versorgungssicherheit der Bevölkerung.
Und die EU hat sich vor vielen Jahren schon durch die EU NIS1 und die EU NIS2 Richtlinie, aber auch mit der EU CER Richtlinie sinnvolle Gedanken gemacht, wie wir kritische Infrastrukturen schützen wollen vor Unfällen, vor Naturereignissen, vor gesundheitlichen Notlagen wie Pandemien, vor hybriden Bedrohungen und anderen feindlichen Bedrohungen, auch terroristische Straftaten, vor krimineller Unterwanderung und vor Sabotage. Berücksichtigt werden sollen auch sektorübergreifende und grenzüberschreitende Risiken. Es geht also im Wesentlichen um Naturereignisse, um Unfälle, um Vorsatzhandlungen, egal ob es cyber-physische Auswirkungen hat oder direkt im physischen Raum. Die Versorgung der Bevölkerung soll gewährleistet werden. Was wir als AG KRITIS genau darum fordern, ist defensive Resilienz in kritischen Infrastrukturen zu gewährleisten.
Stattdessen erhalten wir immer mehr offensive Befugniserweiterung für Geheimdienste und Strafverfolgungsbehörden und die Erklärung, dass Cybersicherheit und physische Absicherung gegen Naturereignisse doch so kompliziert sei. Was ist diese defensive Resilienz? KRITIS-Betreiber müssen dazu verpflichtet werden, echte Basissicherheitsmaßnahmen permanent umzusetzen, was bereits durch EU CER und EU NIS2 regulatorisch abgebildet wurde. Darüber hinaus muss aber durch Rechtsdurchsetzung auch sichergestellt werden, dass diese Maßnahmen ergriffen werden. Und das steht in ganz Europa massiv aus.
Die Checks and Balances sind nicht gegeben. Aufsichtsbehörden sanktionieren kaum bis gar nicht. Teilweise wurden die beiden Richtlinien in EU-Mitgliedsstaaten nicht mal verabschiedet. Lange vor dem Angriffskrieg von Putin wurden in der Ukraine Menschen ausgebildet, schnell zu entstören, und Materiallager wurden angelegt. Ausfälle werden dadurch selbst in Kriegsgebieten zeitnah behoben.
Auswirkungen von KRITIS-Beeinträchtigungen werden dadurch seit Jahren erfolgreich minimal gehalten. Das ist defensive Resilienz. KRITIS-Betreiber in der EU nutzen im Jahr 2026 allerdings immer noch nicht überall zwei-Faktor-gesicherte Fernwartung, siehe Viasat wegen dem KA-SAT-Angriff der Russen. Sie betreiben dafür aber oft archäologisch wertvolle Systeme direkt am Internet, statt Sicherheitsupdates strukturiert und kontinuierlich einzuspielen. Sie haben auch oft kein funktionales Business Continuity Management, um in einer Krise die kritische Versorgungsleistung...
Sorry, Mr. Atug, would you please speak a bit more slowly, please?
Okay. Sie haben auch oft kein funktionales Business Continuity Management, um in einer Krise die kritische Versorgungsleistung schnellstmöglich wiederherzustellen. Bei einer Sturzflut im Ahrtal in Deutschland 2021 sterben über 180 Menschen unnötig, denn wirksame Maßnahmen gab es und diese hätten ergriffen werden können, wurden sie aber nicht. Diese ganzen ausbleibenden Handlungen sind grob fahrlässig und nicht gesetzeskonform. Aufsichtsbehörden schauen dabei oftmals nur tatenlos zu, statt Rechtsdurchsetzung auszuüben und die Behebung dieser Fahrlässigkeit einzufordern.
Die verantwortlichen Ministerien und Regierungen geben den Aufsichtsbehörden weder genug Stellen für die Rechtsdurchsetzung, noch ist der politische Wille da, diese wirksam einzufordern. Dieses erhebliche Defizit hat sogar die EU-Kommission bereits 2020 im Vorschlag für die EU NIS2 Richtlinie festgestellt.
Da steht: Die Aufsichts- und Durchsetzungsregeln der NIS-Richtlinie sind nicht wirksam. Die Mitgliedstaaten zögern beispielsweise sehr, Sanktionen gegen Einrichtungen zu verhängen, die keine Sicherheitsanforderungen festlegen oder Sicherheitsvorfälle nicht melden. Dies kann nachteilige Auswirkungen auf die Cyberresilienz einzelner Einrichtungen haben. Bei EU-CER sieht es vergleichbar aus. Wir betonen daher ausdrücklich, dass durch eine solche Vorgehensweise durchaus auch vorsätzlich Menschenleben riskiert werden, wenn keine Anpassung zur Behebung dieser erheblichen Mängel vorgenommen werden.
Was wir stattdessen erhalten, sind Massenüberwachung, offensive Maßnahmen wie Hackback und Staatstrojaner. Um diese nutzen zu können, müssen Strafverfolgungsbehörden und Geheimdienste Schwachstellen finden und zurückhalten oder als Abodienst, meist aus Israel, einkaufen, sodass diese Lücken in Software wie Windows, iPhone, Android und so weiter offen gehalten und ausgenutzt werden sollen. Diese Lücken sind dann auch in europäischer Kritis-Infrastruktur enthalten und schwächen die Resilienz, statt sie zu erhöhen. Lücken, die in Software und Betrieb von Kritis geschlossen werden, können nicht von organisierter Kriminalität, Geheimdiensten und anderen staatlichen Akteuren ausgenutzt werden. Angriffe und ihre Auswirkungen verpuffen damit wirkungslos.
Das ist defensive Resilienz. Danke sehr.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Latur. And now we start the Q&A session. As we have four speakers, we're running rather behind schedule. I would request from you to specify as clearly as possible to whom of our speakers your question is addressed.
We will start by S&D, we will start by EPP, Mr. Pascal Arimont, member of the ENVI Committee. The floor is yours.
Pascal Arimont
Ja, vielen Dank, Herr Vorsitzender. Ich, die Kollegin hat mir erlaubt, zuerst zu sprechen, weil ich im ENVI jetzt in fünf Minuten auch sprechen muss, auch zu der Strategie zu Feuerschäden. Deswegen wollte ich es kurz halten. Also ich mache im ENVI oder ich bearbeite im ENVI den Vorschlag zum Civil Protection Mechanism. Federführend dafür sind die Kollegin Pagín und Verheyen.
Und ich wollte die Analyse, die heute hier gemacht worden ist von den Experten, einbetten in das, was wir im Civil Protection Mechanism im Moment schreiben. Deswegen ist der Moment opportun. Und ich muss sagen, dass das Thema kritische Infrastruktur und Maßnahmen, um Katastrophen besser zu managen, die handgemacht oder menschengemacht oder von der Natur verursacht worden sind, nicht wirklich einen Fokus im Text wiederfindet. Ich kann das an drei Beispielen festmachen. Zum einen sagt der Vorschlag der Kommission, dass wir Bewertungen lediglich abstimmen müssen mit den Berichten, die die Mitgliedstaaten eigentlich im CER oder im NIS-2-Verfahren eigentlich schon schreiben müssen.
Man könnte das darauf aufbauen, sodass man nicht zwei Berichte schreiben muss, die letztlich nicht wirklich dann Beachtung finden. Es wäre besser, wir würden das schon auf den bestehenden Texten aufbauen. Zweitens, wenn es um hybride Bedrohungen geht und kritische Infrastruktur ist dann betroffen, sieht der Text nicht wirklich konkret vor, was zu tun ist. Wir haben das in dem Sinne gelöst, dass wir vorschlagen, und das wird zu diskutieren sein, dass es diesen zentralen Hub, den die Kommission auch vorschlägt, dass wir den beim ERCC andocken und dann in diesem, diesem Hopp oder Hub würden alle Informationen zusammenfließen, damit es ein Zentrum gibt, wo alles hinfließt und wo man dann bei Bedarf und wenn kritische Infrastruktur bedroht oder zerstört worden ist, dementsprechend den Mitgliedstaaten helfen kann, sehr schnell helfen kann, diese Schäden zu beheben.
Es wird keine neue Stelle sein. Es wird auch so sein, dass dieser Hub keine Kompetenzen von den Mitgliedstaaten wegnimmt. Das alles ist so geframed oder designt, dass wir nichts Paralleles schaffen, sondern etwas, was direkt funktioniert und wo sämtliche Informationen zusammenfließen. Das ist für den LIBE-Ausschuss wichtig, denn die Informationen, die von Europol, Frontex und dem Lagezentrum INTCEN kommen, würden da auch einfließen. Dementsprechend wäre das der Vorschlag.
Darüber müssen wir aber jetzt verhandeln. Und ein dritter Punkt ist, dass wir in dem Text nicht wirklich vorgesehen haben, dass wir schnell beheben müssen. Und das, glaube ich, wäre etwas, was wir in den Text tatsächlich reinschreiben müssten, dass wir Expertenteams bilden, um die kritische Infrastruktur im Falle eines einer Naturkatastrophe oder eines Anschlags, dass wir dann spezifisch Leute haben, die sich auf die kritische kritische Infrastruktur auch konzentrieren können, um das wiederherzustellen. Das steht im Text nicht drin. Ich hielte es für klug, wenn wir das da reinschreiben.
Ich glaube, dass wir dann auch dafür Mehrheiten finden würden. So viel zu den Schnittstellen und Sie sehen, es liegt viel Arbeit vor uns.
Hans Ulrich Goessl
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the question, which allows me hopefully to clarify a bit the scope and the intention behind the proposal on the strengthening of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. If I understood the first point correctly, that concerns the risk assessments and the more coordinated or better coordinated approach between the risk assessments under the CER Directive and the Union Civil Protection Mechanism. It's not the same exercise and it's not the same scope, but they certainly need to be feeding one into the other. And that's why we proposed a timeline for, without going too much into the technicalities of it, under the proposed Article 15 for Member States to report by 2028, by the end of 2028, so that we can compile a report in the course of 2029, and that can feed then into the risk reporting of Member States under the CER Directive, which I'm not wrong, which for the next cycle is envisaged for 2030.
So there's an idea that one builds on the other. It's not the same exercise and it will be difficult to merge them, but there's an idea to allow a transmission of information and analysis from one reporting into the other. For the second point, I think we fully agree with you as regards the role of the EU Crisis Hub, which is not supposed to duplicate, but both in a preparedness mode, in an early warning function, and in a response, it's supposed to bring different elements together under the approach to connect the dots, as with what I said before. What we see more and more is these cross-sectoral complex crises that require analysis and response coordination across different sectors, and that's exactly the raison d'être for the EU Crisis Hub as we proposed it. Third element, if I got that one also correctly, for experts on critical infrastructure and consequence management for critical infrastructure failure, I would argue that's certainly needed, partly already in place under the framework, but it's probably rather a matter to define that under the relevant implementing act, where we define the capacities under the European Civil Protection Pool, for example, and different expert categories and different types of response capacities that should be made available or held available by the member and participating states.
That would be an exercise that follows the conclusion of the negotiations on the main act, on the basic act. We'll need to open again the implementing decision. It's a bit technical, and there then we can go into the specificities on what type of response capacities should be made available.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gochel.
Very briefly, please. Yeah, try to be as brief as possible, Johannes.
Martin Schieffer
Just one aspect, I think only one aspect in this context. When we are speaking about a central hub at EU level for the collection, analysis, and coordination of activities with regard to incidents relating to critical infrastructures in the member states, you have to bear in mind that not all member states are willing to share this information. This is a key issue for them. Critical infrastructures belong to national security, and they don't want, they're not even obliged under the CER directive, for instance, to give us the names and the particulars of the critical infrastructures that they have been identified by July. We know the deadline, but we don't know the result of this process.
And secondly, any incident that may then happen in the future is not automatically coordinated and supported through such a central hub at EU level. Just pointing to these reservations, which are strong and not just in one member state. Thank you.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much, and I may have two questions. First of all, maybe to Commission, talking about all the different actors, the different kind of challenges, we talked about physical barriers, we talked about attacks to digital systems, we talked about natural disasters. So everything might happen in all of our member states, even though the challenges, the level of challenges, and the possibility to react might be different. Do you have an overview, or are you on your way to collect information, which of these challenges are of most importance in the different member states, and if member states already working on risk assessments and on finding an answer, and do you also have already an idea to what extent member states need support with ideas, technical support, money, things like that? I also have a question to our last speaker, because being prepared, of course, first of all, is a task for our authorities, for governments, but it's also a task maybe for every single citizen.
So we, what we do need is information, what can we individual do to be prepared, and information needs to be done in a way so that we are strengthened, not to create fear. That would be not helpful. So what can we do to improve preparedness, prevention, both for authorities but also for individual citizens? And not every individual citizen will be in the position to protect themselves. So what kind of public support do we need in case there is a flood, people need to leave their homes, they need food or things like that?
And do you have an overview to what extent this already is in the thinking and planning of authorities, and are there some positive examples from some of our member states already? Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mrs. Sippel. Which of you, representative of the Commission, you will take the floor? Mr. Gosal, be as precise as possible in your answer.
Hans Ulrich Goessl
I'll try to be short. Yes, we do have an overview as regards to the extent that member states report that to us. There's a reporting obligation under the Union Civil Protection Framework. We issued a report on the, with an overview of the reports we have received from all member states and how they categorize and prioritize risks last September, which we can also circulate if there's an interest to do so under Article 6 of the UCPM decision.
Secondly, I would be relatively cautious if I understood the question or the point correctly to get a sense of prioritization between different risks critical infrastructure which we generally are facing. As I said, we see an increase across all categories to different degrees and with different paces of the acceleration, but the main point, the main worrying element is that we see an increase of interaction between different risks. So a natural disaster that triggers into a technological disaster that gets exploited by potentially by hostile actors and becomes a security risk, etc. So if there's one single element we can highlight from the analysis we have available, it's this increasing complexity, compound risks. That's probably the single most dangerous element and that's why we advocate for a cross-sectoral approach to look at the comprehensive cross-sectoral picture and not prioritize one risk category over the other.
And I'll leave it here for the moment.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. And now Mr. Adook to answer Mrs. Sippel's question. Mr. Adook, can you hear us? Floor is yours.
Manuel Atug
Ja, danke sehr. Ja, es gibt mehrere Dinge, die man da tun kann. Das eine ist natürlich eine unaufgeregte Aufklärung, das passiert tatsächlich nicht in allen EU-Ländern und die sozialen Medien, die im Wesentlichen von US-Tech-Konzernen gesteuert und geführt werden, führen natürlich auch eher einer aufgeregten Prepper-Diskussion, Blackout-Diskussion, dass Regierungen unfähig seien und die Rechtsextremen da wirklich das Ganze überhand übergreife. Es würde also zur unaufgeregten Aufklärung nicht nur helfen, dass man die Bevölkerung aufklärt, dass sie eben entsprechende Vorsorgemaßnahmen trifft, sondern dass man eben auch an der Stelle Rechtsdurchsetzung ausübt und diese Medien, die faktisch soziale Medien und Plattformen ja sind, auch wie Medien reguliert, sodass sie eben nicht mit so einer Hetze, mit so einer falschen Aufklärung dann auch Meinungsmache und Meinungsstimmung etablieren können. Und ein zweiter Schritt wäre eine Stärkung von ehrenamtlichen Rettungsdiensten und Helfern.
Wir haben in Deutschland ein sehr starkes Technisches Hilfswerk, das THW, das in Krisen und Katastrophen sehr, sehr gut helfen kann. Im schlimmsten Fall kommt ja dann die Bundeswehr, das Militär zum Zuge. Eigentlich sollte man diese mals Notnagel in der letzten Kette halten und nicht ziehen müssen. Immer dann, wenn man die Bundeswehr ziehen muss, wie in diesem Ahrtal-Szenario, wo über 180 Menschen gestorben sind, zeigt es eigentlich, dass diese Ehrenamt-Bevölkerungs- und Katastrophenschutz-Installationen und Einrichtungen unzureichend sind. Und darüber hinaus kann man das natürlich auch auf den Cyberraum erweitern.
Wir haben als AG KRITIS ein Konzept Cyberhilfswerk entwickelt, in mehreren Iterationen überarbeitet. Das wird gerade im Technischen Hilfswerk verprobt, ob man ein Technisches Hilfswerk kombiniert mit einer Untergruppe Cyberhilfswerk, was eben auch im digitalen Problemlagen ehrenamtlich helfen kann. Auch diese Möglichkeiten sind da, die kann man umsetzen nach meinem Kenntnisstand ist das in sehr wenigen EU-Staaten der Fall.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Adook. Now for the group of PfE, who's taking the floor? Yes, Madame Brassac-Klein, the floor is yours.
Marie-Luce Brasier-Clain
Merci Monsieur le Président, merci aux intervenants pour la qualité de vos interventions. J'aimerais avoir votre avis sur l'articulation entre le civil et le militaire et notamment le partage d'informations sensibles avec des États tiers. Tout le monde soutient la nécessité de renforcer la résilience des infrastructures critiques à l'échelle européenne. Mais ce faisant, on donne à une autorité qui n'est plus nationale, en l'occurrence la Commission, un regard sur des actifs stratégiques nationaux : réseaux électriques, eau, hôpitaux et les capacités de réaction militaire. Et ces informations peuvent être ensuite diffusées à d'autres acteurs à travers des modalités de coopération avec des pays tiers qui sont encore floues.
En effet, le règlement prévoit de transformer l'ERCC en outil de traitement d'informations classifiées et cela ouvre de nouveaux canaux de transmission sur les capacités militaires et multiplie les destinataires potentiels de ces informations sans qu'on soit certain si ces informations sont destinées à des personnels identifiés et habilités. Ma question s'adresse notamment à Monsieur Gössel. Est-ce que cette évolution ne risque pas d'accroître la vulnérabilité des États membres et de l'UE aux risques de cyberattaques et d'ingérences étrangères ? À l'échelle européenne, est-ce qu'il ne faudrait pas faire du seul CIAE le canal exclusif de transmission des informations des services de renseignement ? Je vous remercie.
Hans Ulrich Goessl
Thank you very much for the question and in very brief, what we see in terms of scenario evolving in European civil protection so far, the civ-mil coordination has always been part of our mandate and of our operational business, but rather on the side the military supporting civil protection operations in the case of natural disasters etc. What we see as a relatively as an emerging scenario, not entirely new, but an emerging scenario is what role does civil and civil protection actors have in supporting potential military reactions. And there is the scope to build up capacity, understanding, above all planning for such a potential scenario, which is why we proposed it as part of the legislative proposal that is currently under negotiation. This comes along potentially, as you mentioned, with a need for classified information exchange. In principle, the current infrastructure, the Emergency Response Coordination Centre of the European Commission, is equipped with exactly the same capabilities to treat classified information as as other Commission services.
There's certainly a need to further upscale this capacity, this is also envisaged and and that's why we propose the EU Crisis Hub, which would strengthen the capabilities also in in the need for exchange classified information. A second, and that's my last point, element linked to that, to the EU Crisis Hub, is the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, as you will know, is EU Member States plus ten participating states, so in principle third countries that are part of the information exchange under the civil protection mandate. With the EU Crisis Hub, we also propose the option to limit this information exchange to Member States only. So that would avoid that information that is classified, that is considered for Member States only, can circulate only within the Member States in certain security scenarios, sensitive scenarios where we do not necessarily want to involve third countries.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. I do not have any ECR speaker on my list, so we move on to Renew Group, Señora García del Blanco.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Thank you Chair, thank you to the speakers for the very good presentations.
I have a, well, a comment and a question. My comment is we have read in recent years in SOCTA analysis of Europol, also in the terrorist threat assessment, more recently in an, the impact assessment of the new proposal for, against trafficking in illegal firearms, that the issue of pyrotechnics and heavy pyrotechnics in the European Union is more and more a growing threat. I am very happy that the Commissioner has announced the revision of the Pyrotechnics Directive. So my message to DG HOME is to do this as soon as possible in 2027, so that we can avoid use by criminal groups, including hybrid threats. That's my comment.
And my question is, is as follows. Hybrid threats has been identified by Member States as something that they are not particularly happy to see included in a revision of the mandate of Europol, is my understanding. And I was wondering if DG HOME could reflect a little bit on this and if you see any room for maneuver there. Thank you.
Martin Schieffer
Thank you, Ms. García Armida Vanderballe. Mr. Seifer.
Thank you also for this question. On pyrotechnics, it is true, we identified this as a growing threat, also the TESAT and the SOCTA does it. It's a growing use. There is now a willingness. This took, formulated from our perspective, nine months to convince the relevant Commission colleagues in DG GROW and the responsible political leaders to take this forward, but it's now decided, it will come.
But the mills of legislative lawmaking take their time. So this is nothing for tomorrow. But it'll, it'll come and in the meantime, there are also already practical and operational measures that are under preparation and I think we are jointly on a good track in that regard. Then otherwise, the other question is, was relating to the...
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Sure. The mandate, the expansion of the mandate to Europol potentially to hybrid threats and the position of Member States.
Martin Schieffer
Hybrid threats as such will not be addressed because of the ambiguous scope. But of course we will formulate and strengthen generally Europol to a quantum leap, a really substantially in a sense, at least the Commission proposal which is due in June this month, later this month, in order to enable then the agency together with the Member States to take much more forceful steps against the different criminal acts in legal terms that constitute hybrid threats, for instance acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure, transport infrastructure, for instance in the context of the supply of Ukraine, for instance seen often in Poland repeatedly in various forms, etc. And this will be, this will be strengthened in every respect, operationally, technically and legally. Thank you.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. We have no speaker from the group of the Greens or the Left. We still have just a couple of minutes if anyone would like to take the floor in second, Ana Mirel.
Ana Miguel Pedro
Thank you, dear Chair. My first question goes to DG ECHO. A proteção civil europeia será testada mais uma vez pela época de incêndios que se aproxima. Países como Portugal conhecem bem esta ameaça. Por todos os anos, comunidades inteiras vivem sob o risco de incêndios florestais cada vez mais intensos, mais rápidos e mais difíceis de controlar.
Portugal tem feito aqui um esforço significativo, mas nenhum Estado-Membro consegue enfrentar sozinho incêndios extremos, simultâneos e prolongados. A questão central é saber se a resposta europeia está realmente à altura da ameaça, não apenas no momento da emergência, mas também na prevenção, no pré-posicionamento de meios, na coordenação transfronteiriça e no reforço da capacidade aérea e operacional. Por isso pergunto-lhe que garantias pode dar aos cidadãos portugueses de que a União Europeia está melhor preparada para apoiar Portugal durante a próxima época de incêndios e que medidas concretas estão a ser tomadas para assegurar mais meios, resposta mais rápida e uma verdadeira estratégia europeia de proteção civil perante incêndios florestais cada vez mais extremos. Tenho ainda uma pergunta para a DG HOME, não sei se terei tempo. Nós sabemos que sabotagem, ciberataques, radicalização online e ameaças híbridas estão a convergir contra as nossas infraestruturas críticas.
Redes elétricas, sistemas de águas, hospitais, transportes, comunicações e infraestruturas energéticas são hoje alvos evidentes. A inteligência artificial, sabemos, agrava drasticamente este risco. O que antes exigia meios sofisticados pode em breve estar ao alcance de pequenos grupos extremistas, redes terroristas ou atores hostis que queiram paralisar serviços essenciais. Basta encontrar a vulnerabilidade certa no sistema certo. Está a Comissão preparada para esta inversão de poder, em que atores cada vez menores podem causar danos cada vez maiores, ou continuaremos a esperar por um ataque de grande escala para reconhecer que a proteção das infraestruturas críticas passou a ser uma questão essencial?
Obrigado.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Ana Miguel. Monsieur Leggeri, I will group both questions and then give the floor back to our speakers for their final remarks and reply into the questions of the members. Monsieur Leggeri.
Fabrice Leggeri
Merci Monsieur le Président et merci à nos invités. Ma question s'adresse aux deux représentants de la Commission européenne. Vous l'avez dit vous-mêmes, certains États membres ou certaines autorités dans les États membres sont réticents à partager des informations sensibles compte tenu du risque de dissémination et compte tenu du fait aussi que ça relève de la sécurité nationale. Alors ma question est la suivante. Est-ce que notamment en matière, je dirais, de risque contre, enfin de risque de menace hybride ou en matière de risque terroriste, est-ce que la solution n'est pas plutôt de s'assurer que les États membres, les autorités nationales compétentes ont les moyens de communiquer en temps réel des informations sensibles entre eux lorsque des mesures urgentes doivent être mises en œuvre et parfois des mesures en quelques minutes parce que sinon il y a un risque imminent pour la vie humaine dans un ou plusieurs, enfin en tout cas dans au moins deux ou plus d'États membres de l'Union européenne ou bien qu'il y a un risque imminent d'un dommage économique considérable, je pense notamment dans le domaine des transports.
Donc plutôt donner les moyens aux États de communiquer entre eux de manière rapide en temps réel des informations sensibles plutôt que de vouloir faire un grand hub complètement centralisé au niveau de la Commission. Merci beaucoup.
Javier Zarzalejos
Merci Monsieur Leggeri. Now back the floor to starting with Mr. Seifer for your concluding remarks and answer if you wish. You have two minutes.
Martin Schieffer
Thank you. Just on the last question, clarifying, there are already channels for the secure transmission of classified information and they will be further expanded in order to have more authorities and more, let's say, institutions at the EU level and at the national level be able to benefit from it.
Secondly, we will propose in September this year a proposal for a regulation for a legal framework for a critical communication framework, a legislative proposal which precisely aims at creating an interoperable pan-European communication possibility between all first responders, so be it on the law enforcement side, be it blue light services, medical services, or firefighters, in order to overcome some of the obstacles that simply result from the fact that it is not possible to communicate in real time without technical obstacles or having five different mobile phones in your pockets to use the different services on their national frequencies. In order to overcome these obstacles, it's mature enough by now, it will be up to standard, the impact assessment is done, so we are currently in the process of finalizing the legislative proposal and this will be a milestone. Thank you.
Hans Ulrich Goessl
Very brief in response to the question or the comment from the member from Portugal. We come out from last year's wildfire season, which has been an absolute record season with the highest number ever of activations of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism for wildfires. In total, an area that is bigger than the surface of Cyprus burned in the EU last year. What we propose, and that's the answer I can give to this question, knowing that Portugal is a frontrunner in wildfire management and has done a lot of reforms already following the devastating fires in 2017, what we propose with the communication that was adopted in March this year is an integrated wildfire approach with specific support measures also from the EU level. We have put on the table not only now in the area of civil protection, where we also propose specific enhancement of support for member states, including Portugal, in the area of early warning, in the area of response capabilities, response capacities, etc., but above all to think it broader in this integrated approach in terms of land management, in terms of early warning systems, in terms of population preparedness and awareness, risk awareness, so that not only we treat wildfires from the perspective when it's burning already, but also from the perspective how they can first of all be better prevented.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Gossel. And now, Mr. Rath, two minutes for your final, your concluding remarks, if you wish so.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, then Mr. Rath, again, two minutes for your concluding remarks.
Manuel Atug
Dankeschön, vielleicht noch mal auf die Anmerkung, was man was man da tun kann, um das Ganze besser zu strukturieren oder zentral dezentral, tatsächlich ist ein Mix aus beidem sehr hilfreich. Beim Technischen Hilfswerk in Deutschland beispielsweise ist es so, man denkt zentral und koordiniert auch alles zentral, aber es gibt lokale Ortsverbände, in Deutschland fast 700 Stück, die machen die lokale Handlung, die regionale Umsetzung, denn die kennen die lokalen Gegebenheiten. Und so kann man das auch ganz gut runterbrechen, EU auf die jeweiligen Mitgliedstaaten, auf die jeweiligen Spezialitäten der jeweiligen Bereiche, das ist sehr effektiv. Und vielleicht noch ein Hinweis zu KI, KI ist jetzt schon nutzbar als Software für jeden und jede auf beiden Seiten, sowohl bei den angreifenden als auch bei den verteidigenden Menschen.
Es ist halt Software und die ist da und die muss man nicht besorgen oder so, sondern die kann schon eingesetzt werden. Und das tun eben auch Geheimdienste, aber auch organisierte Kriminelle. Und insofern sollten wir vielleicht auch an der Stelle einfach nur bewusst wahrnehmen: KI ist eine weitere Softwareart, Dinge zu automatisieren, zu skalieren. Und diese Automatisierung und Skalierung führt zu schnelleren Effekten. Und da sollten wir dann eben durch dieses Zentrale und Lokale entsprechend schnell gegenwirken.
Danke.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, Mr. Atuk. Then we conclude here this item on our agenda. We do thank our speakers for the information they've provided, for the input they have provided to the committee on this crucial topic of our resilience in terms of protection of critical infrastructures. Thank you. Thank you very much.
And now we will proceed to our last point. Dear colleagues, the next item on our agenda is the presentation of the Europol annual report on the threats posed by internet organized crime. In the 2024 edition of this report entitled "The Evolving Threat Landscape: How Encryption, Proxies and AI are Expanding Cybercrime", Europol addresses different criminal trends in online fraud schemes, cyberattacks and child sexual exploitation. To present the findings of this internet organized crime threat assessment, today we welcome Mr. Edvardas Šileris, head of the European Cybercrime Centre at Europol. Mr. Šileris, you have a maximum of eight minutes for your presentation and the floor is now yours.
Welcome.
Edvardas Šileris
Thank you, Chair. It's a real pleasure to be here and I will try to do my best to present in this eight or seven and a half minutes. So let's dive directly to...
There will be a Q&A session, so you will have plenty of opportunity to develop your presentation.
Of course. So main key themes of 2024 which we assessed from Europol's perspective, from law enforcement perspective, it's that obfuscation methods became much more sophisticated.
So encryption started to be abused much more widely. So in the past we had dedicated encrypted services produced by criminals only for criminals. Right now it's more and more legit platforms and services being abused. So it means that actually they use well-known messenger apps, well-known social platforms, etc. to use to commit crimes or to communicate and to hide against law enforcement because in this case we cannot target platform per se because it's legitimate platform and actually it's used in 99.9% for legitimate purpose. Also hidden services are much wider being used and they are disseminated in different jurisdictions.
That's why for law enforcement it's also much harder to tackle. And it's not limited to EU, it's limited to global one and there are some safe havens, some bulletproof hosting services which are used by criminals to hide their traces. Also ransomware landscape is evolving and in the past we had few general brands which were well-known for everyone. Right now it's same ransomware but is disseminated to different brands and adjusted to custom needs. Also in the past it was almost 100% sure that criminals will encrypt data.
Right now it's more or less about stealing data and try to victimize victim many, many times as long as possible. So it means extortion based on information obtained from criminals and not very well-known what they will do in the future with these data. In the past we had almost insurance that they will delete if company pays. Right now it's not a case anymore. Industrialization of online fraud, it became as pandemic, especially with AI capabilities because it reached scale and it's extremely simple and easy to launch scam platforms, to organize fraud at highest level and as very, very fast speed.
Monetization of child sexual abuse material as well with AI, with possibility to launch different platforms and to automate everything. So in this way it's extremely cheap and fast for criminals to gain money, to earn money and to commit crimes in this matter. AI empowers cybercrime, so it's cross-dimensional, so it means that it's not only in one particular area, but it became game changer. So far we don't see pure criminal AI or LLM, but we see pre-trained models or upgraded models based on open source or cracked models which are very well-known. So it means that actually all the time there is this mouse and cat game where criminals try to find new ways how to abuse legitimate tools because for them it's much easier and much faster how instead of develop everything from scratch by themselves.
And of course it's extremely expensive if you want to train your own LLM or your own model. Second thing is bit dedicated findings regarding AI and cybercrime. So you see it's increased efficiency and reach. So it's not about victim to criminal or criminal to victim, it's about one criminal to mass amount of victims at one time. So it means that actually traditional means of law enforcement how to approach and investigate it's bit outdated because right now it's not about how to investigate one case, it's about how to investigate phenomena as whole.
Increase automation, so when new vulnerability appears it's takes few minutes, we counted that's up to 16 minutes to exploit this vulnerability at scale. So it means that actually when in the past we had weeks, sometimes months, right now actually it's we should react in extremely fast manner.
And misuse of legitimate AI tools. So it means that actually all these models, LLMs, they are extremely powerful, they increase their efficiency on daily basis, and one mistake can lead to victimize millions of inhabitants or citizens. So in this way actually we should be extremely cautious and try to mitigate these risks as much as possible. Next I would like to mention few operations supported by Europol. So it's just only few with some illustrations about landscape of cybercrime.
Operation Olympia, it was illegal crypto exchange and mixer hosted in Switzerland and dismantled by law enforcement. And what we saw there, that criminals and state actors used these services how to launder money, how to wash money, and how to be untraceable by law enforcement, from law enforcement. Sorry, Operation Endgame, it means it's umbrella operation supported by Europol, but we try to target systematically malware droppers, so and target initial access brokers and how did they enter towards victims' operating systems. So it means if you want to deploy ransomware, in many cases, in 100% of cases, you should have ability to enter system. So it means with this they had access to millions of users globally, and with that actually it's based on needs they can organize their criminal activity.
SIM Cartel actually it's was operation final stages conducted in Latvia, where we saw hundreds of thousand different SIM cards, prepaid SIM cards, which were used for different purposes to organize online fraud, to organize some hybrid threat, to influence operations, to influence social media etc. So it means it's also it's facilitator of different crime means. Operation Eastwood is a well-known operation when law enforcement joint actions to target Russian groups which organized DDoS attacks about against different governmental agencies. And we dismantled it and we seized a lot of interesting evidences to be assessed later on and present in front of court. And last operation which is also interesting to mention and a bit tell about it, it's operation targeted child sexual abuse AI generated one.
So it means that it was purely synthetic one where big amount of criminals try to reach these services and for small amount of money use this content. Looking ahead fighting cybercrime, it means we have five areas to focus systematically. So DNS abuse, it's still challenge for law enforcement that actually it's quite liberal way how you can register DNS and then abuse it. Fraud prevention, it's also joint efforts are needed because you cannot tackle this phenomena from one jurisdiction only. Recently Europol launched European fight against scams platform and we combine efforts between Cybercrime Center and Financial Economical Center.
SIM registration is also needed because we see that all prepaid cards are traveling freely between different member states from country where is not obligation to register. So they buy these in thousands and then register and use for criminal activities. Digital finance is big enabler of cybercrime and that's why cryptocurrencies is used 99.9% of all cybercrime areas. And AI technologies, it's crucially needed for law enforcement to be empowered by this because it's our own thoughts that we can fight AI with AI only. So it's not up to human to deal with such amount of data only in bit outdated way.
Thank you very much. I hope that I managed within timeframe.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you, we will continue to develop that. Well, I, in my case I would like to start with a question from my own. The, it's about the level of cooperation of platforms with law enforcement. I've been told quite often that unless police gets hold of the device and decrypt it, the level of cooperation and information that is offered by companies, even obviously under judicial warrant, is very, very limited. So I would like your reaction on that.
Edvardas Šileris
Thank you very actual question for law enforcement especially. It's about lawful access to data. And you absolutely right, it's extremely limited. If it's end-to-end encrypted, we as law enforcement we get nothing from platforms except some metadata and IP addresses. And in these cases, for example, if we need to present as an evidence in front of court no matter of judicial warrant, we don't have ability to do it.
So some platforms which don't use end-to-end encryption, it's more content is available for law enforcement, but for majority or main ones, it's huge challenge. And there is for time being there is no systematic way how law enforcement can address it at scale. Because in some cases you can do it, but it's very limited to exact situation, exact device, etc. So for example you see for in an area of fraud or child sexual abuse or even ransomware as well, in organized crime traditional one, so it's hundreds of thousand different cases and we are not capable to address and to investigate efficiently this.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Now we continue our Q&A session. Ms. Sippel or Mr. Ruotolo? Mr. Ruotolo.
Sandro Ruotolo
Grazie presidente. Grazie direttore, certo, intelligenza artificiale contro intelligenza artificiale. Ma legislatore e investigatori poi dovranno comunque mettere a punto le strategie di contrasto al crimine organizzato che è soprattutto online. E io colgo questo elemento dei minori, perché secondo me è una novità che si sta affacciando. Siamo stati di recente all'Aia all'Europol e la Task Force Grimm ha già portato quasi 300 arresti e oltre 14.000 account utilizzati per il reclutamento online dei minori.
Il report parla di reti criminali composte da ragazzini tra gli 8 e i 17 anni, addirittura si consumano omicidi, si consumano estorsioni a distanza, si pagano. E questo secondo me è un elemento di novità che ci deve, come dire, sempre di più coinvolgere.
Anche le estorsioni finanziarie mi sembra che siano aumentate del 70% fino a quasi 24.000 casi. Allora per chiudere rapidamente, allora torno al legislatore a voi, che cosa dobbiamo fare? Perché io ho l'impressione, ma è la storia, che loro stanno sempre più avanti di noi. E quant'era, 16 minuti per reagire? E quindi come ci attrezziamo?
Su cosa dobbiamo investire, su quale strategia? Grazie.
Edvardas Šileris
Thank you very much, very actual question and all our thoughts is how to address it efficiently. You are absolutely right that so far we are extremely reactive but we should be proactive. So here complex measures are needed, so flexibility for law enforcement, everything concept how we act as law enforcement because if we compare traditional physical world is one rules applies, in digital one different ones. And here I want to point especially in this physical one we have public spaces. And here law enforcement has a lot of powers, we can have make arrest, we can surveil, we can collect information.
If it's everything goes within platform, inside platform, so in fact we don't have so many powers except what platform is allow for us to do. So here it's for us is bit black box. So for that reason either we need to rethink how law enforcement should operate or more obligation should be put toward platforms because it's their area. So we cannot do a lot except we need to hack if I can name in this way but it's impossible, simply impossible. So for that reason second thing regarding artificial intelligence, so main threat from criminals is scale.
Is not one case, one fraud case, one one terrible case but still one, but thousands or hundred of thousands or million of cases. That's why artificial intelligence is needed for law enforcement for time being based on regulation. Everything is used by law enforcement is by default considered as high risk. For high risk it takes time to assess all these risk and then actually technology involves and then we are too late. So for this reason somehow we need to rethink concept and to find efficient ways.
I have no doubt that all the time will be behind criminals but I want to be at least one step behind but not miles behind. So if I can answer in this way.
Raquel García Hermida-Van Der Walle
Thank you, señora García Hermida, Ms García Hermida Van Der Wal.
Thank you, thank you chair and thank you to the speaker for for the presentation. I just literally just got a message that the website motherless.com is again active and the illegal child abuse material which was the reason why the website was taken offline just a few weeks ago from the Netherlands is still to be found in the website. And the special agency in the Netherlands which has to deal with this, which is the Autoriteit Online Terroristisch en Kinderpornografisch Materiaal, they say that it would have been good to have the care obligation in the Digital Services Act to be able to oblige internet companies to act faster against this sort of material, but that didn't come in the DSA.
And my question to you is from the perspective of Europol, do you think that that is something that we should solve in any revision of the DSA, which we might be moving towards in the next couple of years, that we do have an obligation for companies to act against this material, to prevent that this material comes online so that we don't have to be reactive the whole time? Thank you.
Edvardas Šileris
Thank you very much. Cannot comment probably article by article of Digital Service Act, but general message is clear. If we have more fast response possible, it's better. Where legally put all these obligations or requirements towards companies, probably answer from lawyers should come. But in general, yes.
And one of the findings which you saw in IOCTA was the DNS abuse. So that's why actually it's still extremely liberal. You can register new names and that's why it's really challenging for one country to fight illegal websites because they are popping up in extremely fast manner. And especially right now with AI, you can register everything actually in automatic way. So you don't need even human in the loop.
You just need to create AI agent and it will replicate as much as possible all these websites. And that's why probably similar concept should be applied from law enforcement or from government. It depends on responsibility of each country. Thank you.
Malika Sorel
Je vous remercie pour votre intervention. Ce sujet me fait penser au dopage dans le sport. C'est-à-dire qu'on est toujours en train de courir et les personnes qui développent des produits pour le dopage sont toujours en avant. Vous avez beaucoup insisté sur le chiffrement de bout en bout comme si c'était une panacée. Actuellement, vous recevez beaucoup plus, les services de police reçoivent beaucoup plus d'informations des plateformes que nous ne pouvons traiter.
Et donc est-ce que la question c'est pas une question aussi d'exemplarité des sanctions ? C'est-à-dire que les criminels peuvent proférer un certain nombre de faire un certain nombre d'actions qui sont assez perturbantes pour y compris pour les États, mais il n'y a pas de sanctions suffisamment dissuasives. Et le dernier point, vous avez dit les cybercriminels exploitent les technologies de pointe. Ils sont aidés par cela, c'est-à-dire est-ce qu'ils ont ils financent des entreprises dans la tech ? Comment ça se passe exactement ?
Je vous remercie.
Edvardas Šileris
Merci, Madame Sorel.
Thank you. No, so far at least we don't have any evidence that tech companies helps them, at least big tech. But of course they explore and you see that availability of technologies is very low. So it means that actually with simple 20 euro subscription you have LLMs, actually the latest encyclopedia of the world in your pocket and you can ask whatever question you want. Second thing that actually criminals in many cases they operate from different jurisdictions, in many cases outside European Union.
That's why if you want to arrest them or deter them, you need to approach this country. And we know that not all countries are cooperative there. Also there are some legal barriers. So if you need to approach with mutual legal assistant, it takes at least one month. And then actually it depends on this host country what they will and how they will react.
So in this case I completely agree that we should way how to prevent it instead of investigate everything.
But in this case, whole concept of internet, there is no borders at all and each digital service is freely available except illegal one. But illegal one is more or less declaration, so we don't have hard ways how to mitigate all these. So as I said, it's digital world, it's a bit different. We still try to apply rules of physical one, but it doesn't work in this way. And as I said, barrier is low, extremely low.
So it means that me, I am not technician, but if I need to code right now, I can use LLMs, I can code, I can create nice websites, I can create nice apps, I can create databases, which was impossible three years ago. So for time being, we need to rethink how to address this.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much and thank you for the presentation. And I do have some concrete questions. I would like to know what precisely are you talking about when you talk about lawful access to data? In the old world with paper prints still in place, there were some rules. So you needed to have some level of evidence, some level of serious crime, and then maybe you were allowed to look into it, to do house searches, something like that.
So now in the digital environment, what precisely does it mean to have lawful access to data? I also would like again to ask the question on encrypted data. Because whether we talk about backdoor, front door, a window, or whatever, whenever you can look into encrypted data, everybody will have a chance to look into it. So do we really think that having access to encrypted data is a solution? And if so, under which conditions?
Or are we having instruments to look into cases before things are encrypted? And what precisely would be the most effective thing? Then I also have a third question: importance of collaboration with the private sector. In principle, I agree. On the other hand, looking into the big platforms, many of them coming from the US, to some extent, I'm sorry to say, I'm not happy to state this, they are complicit with crimes.
We have several experience where we told them that something is wrong on their side. We gave them the page, the person who is doing something totally wrong, illegal on the page, but they do not react. So to what extent can cooperation help? Maybe there is something else we should do, like for example take their service down for a while, because obviously they are not always willing to cooperate. They are not willing to react even if we prove them that something illegal is taking place.
So are we really willing, that's my question, to cooperate, ask them nicely, please do something, or are we willing to take a stronger stance in case we find out these things? Thank you.
Edvardas Šileris
Thank you very much. It's very hard to answer within few minutes, but actually it's extremely relevant questions. Let's start from lawful access to data, how do I understand it? Actually it's similar way, imagine two, I don't know, criminals, pedophiles, whoever, actually communicate. And law enforcement in traditional way, we obtain order from judge, actually to intercept.
It's how it works with traditional phone.
So we don't need anything else, we just need same technical capability to intercept same communication but transferred through different channel. How it could be done actually, front doors, back doors, windows and actually it's nice acronyms but in my view it should be done in transparent, auditable way. So law enforcement doesn't want to have master key to access all encrypted data, so it should be targeted action, justified action and auditable action. We also even internally we discussed that actually we can use blockchain in order not to to to to keep all the records where law enforcement had access in the past and then actually it could be checked, double checked, triple checked. It shouldn't be ability to concentrated in one entity.
So it should be two, three, four entities actually and all of if all of them they verify that it's legitimate interest it should be provided. How it should be done is on device, on transit etc. I wouldn't name right now because here probably is less important question, the main thing is strategic. Do we agree for this or not? If we don't agree, so there is no ways why to why to spend time to design technological solutions.
But in fact actually is fundamental question. Do law enforcement have this ability or have right to ask this? It's not about massive scanning, it's about targeted targeted access to data. If we don't have, then actually it's nothing to be done here. Second question is directly linked to first one, so it's cooperation with private partners.
And I completely agree that just ask nicely it's not the best way forward. So it means that actually they hold big amount of our private life in their platforms. So in my case actually I believe that it should be obligations towards them. Because also is bit argument sometimes provided by them, I would like to cooperate, I would like to share but my terms of references doesn't allow or for example content has personal data and that's why I cannot share because there is no legal basis to share it with you. So I think that it should be clear clear borders probably by by by countries described to which and what's to which stage it could be cooperated and what could be shared by them, what can collect can be collected and in which way.
But for time being actually it's very liberal and it's in many cases is only based on terms of references by platform itself. So they create their own technology in many cases without any standardization and that's why law enforcement is reactive in many cases. So I hope I answered.
Evin Incir
Thank you very much chair. I want to ask a question also in my capacity as rapporteur for the proposed directive on illicit trafficking of firearms and other firearms related offenses. In IOCTA 2026 highlights the growing use of encrypted platforms and dark darknet forums by criminals. So my question is does Europol see the dissemination of blueprints for 3D printed firearms as a growing threat in this environment? And do law enforcement authorities currently have the tools needed to detect and investigate such activity effectively since it is quite new kind of phenomena and as I understood also almost none of our member state except Netherlands have any kind of legislations to even start to address this.
Thank you.
Edvardas Šileris
Since I cannot answer about 3D printing in general, it's new technology and it's possible to print more or less everything. It's as I said encryption is cross-dimensional, so it's not only cybercrime. Maybe we were the first area which faced this from the early beginning, but actually it's within all within all different domains. And in many cases law enforcement is a bit blind because if it's encrypted we don't we don't see. So what we can confirm that in some forums, in some collected evidences where we saw what is behind, we can confirm some cases, but only some.
So no one has full visibility what is in reality. So we can assess from end result, so if something happened, if some someone is arrested with 3D 3D printed gun. But what is inside, how do they exchange information, what kind of data do they share, it's extremely complicated. And in many cases it's only qualified guess if I can say, because it's encrypted, encrypted systematically.
Javier Zarzalejos
Just one last question if you allow me, because the the report is about internet organized crime and we are now in the process of a new definition of criminal organization. How would you think this concept of criminal organization should evolve in order to include the this digital organized crime? What are the, you know, the specific characteristics of criminal organizations operating in the digital space?
Edvardas Šileris
I think that actually we should put analogy to criminality and I think that it's few years ago digital overcome physical one. So it should be one and it should be addressed as phenomenon no matter in which space it's operates. So but the main thing that probably we should create a bit different ways how to address from legal point of view digital. Because if we have Schengen within countries, so we have some compensation mechanisms how to address Schengen. So we have more border patrols and actually we can prioritize what to check and how to check.
So same in digital, but in digital we strictly stop all the activities on the border of digital border if I can name in this way. And if we need to obtain information is extremely slow compared to way of criminals how they can do it. So I believe that new concept is needed.
Birgit Sippel
Thank you very much for giving me another chance. I'm not sure if I understood this correctly. When talking about the big platforms, you said they refer to their terms of reference and they cannot deliver the information, the data, because there is no law and according to their terms of reference they are not allowed. I personally believe they are not willing to deliver the data because if something is illegal and that illegal content is on their page, it should be a normal reaction if I tell them there is illegal content on your page that they have to delete it, whether there is a law saying you have to delete, yes or no. So I have the impression they are playing on time because many people are looking at those criminal content, we heard it today in different ways, and they make profit out of it.
So is it really that we play their game waiting for a new legislation instead of saying you have to follow our rules, you have to respect our legislation and if you don't do it, please get away.
It's just a simple question maybe.
Edvardas Šileris
Probably simple answer. I agree in general. I agree actually they should follow, but it's different interpretation and quite big legal departments, probably they interpret it a bit differently. And that's why if you don't have power to enforce it, it's as simple as that, it remains as it is. So unfortunately.
Javier Zarzalejos
Thank you. Thank you. Well, now we conclude this point. I wonder if you want to make some concluding remarks after your presentation. Then we really thank you for this extremely interesting debate on on your report and look forward to further discussions on this on this matter.
But I think it's been extremely useful for us working on different on different files. Thank you very much. Well, there is I don't see any other business in sight in the committee. So we conclude here the session and the next meeting will take place on the 8th of June. So but please remember that tomorrow we'll have a joint vote along with IMCO committee at 12:45.
So we'll see you tomorrow at the vote.
Speaker 57
The first item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. Are there any comments or objections to the agenda? I see none, so the agenda is adopted. The second item is the Chair's announcements. I would like to inform you that the meeting is being webstreamed.
Interpretation is available in several languages, as usual. I would also like to remind you that the deadline for amendments for the report on the European Union Agency for Asylum is today at 12:00. The third item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes of the meetings of 10th and 11th of January. Are there any comments or objections to the minutes? I see none, so the minutes are approved.
The fourth item is the presentation of the priorities of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the area of Justice and Home Affairs. I am very pleased to welcome Mr. Paul Van Tigchelt, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice and the North Sea, and Mr. Annelies Verlinden, Minister of the Interior, Institutional Reform and Democratic Renewal. Thank you very much for being with us today.
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