Special committee on the European Democracy Shield Ordinary meeting
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EUDS European Parliament
Ihren Sitzungen folgenVěra Jourová
Our project is funded from private sources. There is no order from the Commission, neither from the Commission nor from any other political body. There is no official mandate. We have very strong feeling that we have mandates from just the public. And we want to come with the project which will be complementary to what's happening at the political level.
And one of them, one of the strategies which we want to complement and enrich its possible results is the Democracy Shield.
And I know that this is the main topic of this committee. So maybe I might say a few words about the Democracy Shield. When I saw it coming, I was very much satisfied because it was a continuation of what I did here, which was called the European Democracy Action Plan. There were new ways of protection of media space, fight against disinformation, and protection of elections. And the Democracy Shield is the continuation of it.
When I was leaving the Commission, I tried to convince many influential people that there cannot be just that, that there is much broader need to act.
And I had a seven points plan which I gave to Ursula von der Leyen and my colleagues. And I think that together we can go after all of these seven seven points. My first point was communication, better communication from the side of the governments, be it at European, national and local level. On communication and pre-bunking of disinformation and better use of digital tools, we want to focus in on in our Democracy 27 project. Because this is essential, we will speak to many levels politicians, but also to the citizens.
And the question to the citizens will be: do you think you are well informed about what's happening in politics? Do you understand what the politicians are telling you? Do you have a feeling that if you hear something wrong, you have a place where you can shout to? And these kind of things. So communication.
Media, here we are very much close to the Democracy Shield, where rightly so there is a call on proper enforcement of the European Media Freedom Act.
Education is my third point from the list which I gave to my followers. Here again, we want to pay attention to education and to find new ways how to explain the new generation especially why democracy is needed, because for them this is totally theoretical concept, something they are used to, something that the young people are not aware they could lose. So education. Civil society engagement, again, in our project we will want to focus on that and here again, this is where we are connected or where we want to go in similar way as the Democracy Shield.
FIMI, not so much for us, but FIMI is a very strong topic in the democracy shield. And then the digital world, digital platforms, AI. I would really like to have a very strong chapter in our project, in the final report. And I will come to it in a minute because I think that the democracy did not find still the way how to adapt to the digital revolution and to technological changes. And we have to change it.
And that's why we will have in our team fresh, young brains to tell us how democracy and democratic systems should adapt to the new digital possibilities. Because so far we have a tendency to say that digital revolution and AI is demolishing democracy.
This is defeatism. I think that we have to find the way how to do the opposite. On my plan, seven points plus plan was also the law enforcement action. Some hate speech and some very heavy pieces of disinformation can have a criminal offense parameters.
So I don't want to confuse you. This was what I wanted the Commission to do. And there is a very big part of it in the Democracy Shield. There are other activities which the Commission is starting. And our project will seek to complement and maybe to make stronger, a stronger case in in some of the topics.
We have a strong evidence to to think that democracy is in in crisis and the trust is eroding.
You see the figures. In general, the majority of people, all the major political parties, for instance, say democracy must survive, is good system. We add that yes, democracy is not replaceable, but it must be repairable. That's the message which we have in our project, that we need to look into how to improve the system. So the paradox: high understanding we need to support democracy and quite low percentage of people who are truly satisfied with how democracy works.
Because they want the democrats to deliver and to come with solutions on housing, on security, on economic problems. And the people being dissatisfied, they say it's the fault of democracy. 43% of dissatisfied young people. This is alarming and that's why in our project we really want to speak as much as possible in the member states with the young generation.
This this is the team. That's the task force where I have very distinguished colleagues. You can you can see you might know some of the people. And and we are a mixture of of former politicians, people from academic sphere. We have Ivan Krastev there.
We have Emily O'Reilly. We have the the owner of media, Thomas Leysen. We have there a young German mayor, Luca Pivoda. He's coming with fantastic ideas how to make the political communication fit for for the new requests of of the society.
On the left side, there is a number of partners and founding organizations and institutions. At this moment, we have 20 of NGOs and we will grow because there are many more who want to join our project. This network gives us a very good chance to have pan-European coverage for our actions, for our focus groups, for our discussions with people, for our addressing the politicians if they will want to speak to us.
So these are our grassroots organizations who will be absolutely key. Key principles. No ideology. I am really true believer that democracy is a suitable and the best system for whatever ideology you want to promote and you believe in, in the sense of conservative, liberal, left, right, whatever you can imagine. Evidence-based, experts on board.
We are not defending the status quo because I think that it's obvious that we need to upgrade the system, strengthen it, maybe to drop some of the things, but I cannot predict what will be in the recommendations. New solutions, new ideas. We want evolution, we don't want revolution. We want innovation, we want reconstruction, not deconstruction. I think that we will really try to do our work around the main principle that democracy deserves to be supported but also needs to be repaired.
EU-wide.
We don't just want to develop a report. We have ambition to have many side effects over our journey, especially my dream is to initiate the interest of many young people and change their plans and maybe to motivate them or inspire them to enter politics, because we need young people in the public sphere. High-profile diverse task force.
I don't like so much this high-profile. I am the chair of the task force, but I am now a normal basic citizen who has, yeah, high-profile experience. It's true, but take it with some reserve. Multi-level actionable recommendations. Our recommendations might go to the tables of the politicians on different levels, but also to academia, to the organizers of education, to the technologists, because without them, without responsible development of technologies, we cannot do much.
And who else? Well, we would really like to come with the recommendations which will not be just general set of things, but they will have addressees and we will be as concrete as possible. People's mandate, citizens' consultation, it's a core activity with the help of country partners. Consultations done in 24 languages. In case we cover the whole Europe, there must be no language elitism, or how to say it.
And I think that it's one of the problems of Brussels, that Brussels does not speak the language of the people. And I could continue, but I will stop here, country deep dives. Timeline, now it's the time to listen. We, as I said, we want to go to the countries and with local partners to collect as many as possible reflections on the current situation and some proposals how to improve the system. June to December, this will be mainly happening in the member states.
Late 27, we will, we will probably in December develop the first set of recommendations, which again will be consulted. And then in the first quarter of 27, we will make public our findings. And we will do our best to convince those who can change things on the ground to do that. Maybe two comments on digital, on our digital existence.
We will discuss further which social media to use. Now I will share my personal view. We should not promote this project with the help of technologies and systems which are hostile to EU. So I would like us to find the European social networks and really be careful about which tools we use. And the last comment on AI.
We are very careful and we will be very careful to be transparent about how we, how our teams are using AI because we want this to be trusted project as the production of real people, that it is not AI which is drafting the recommendations.
And so we are mindful of the of the pitfalls and of the of the risks stemming from the from the digital era and we want to avoid avoid them. For us to do this project as a credible piece of work is absolutely key. So thank you, I think it was more than 10 minutes, but what can you expect from me? I still have bad habits from my political career. Thank you very much for your your listening to me.
Redner 1
Thank you very much Věra for this very dense presentation. Now I open the floor to the questions of my colleagues, starting with EPP and Tomasz Frankowski is not here. So now S&D Juan Fernando López Aguilar, sorry.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
Well, first of all, good to see you, Věra Jourová, and welcome back to the European Parliament. We used to engage quite often in all kinds of talks, and so it's a real pleasure to have you on the podium in good shape. So you know that we've been working for more than one year in this Democracy Shield special committee with the clear understanding that all democracy and democratic institutions are in trouble, not only from within, but also from outside when it comes to hybrid threats, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks. Of course, you've got the whole picture in mind.
Actually you dealt with it in your responsibilities as vice president of the former European Commission.
So in that regard, I would like you to address specifically a couple of points which are of our interest, considering that we have actually carried out more than one year of work and we have put in writing a number of conclusions so far. First, sure you know that we have proposed, we have come out with the idea of a European Centre for Democratic Resilience. What do we mean by that? Kind of a stakeholder platform to facilitate dialogue and cooperation with actors which are reliable when it comes to protecting democratic society, civil society, researchers, academics, fact-checkers, media providers.
What would you think about that added value? Because of course we have seen the objection that it would only add up to the labyrinth of institutions, centers, units with acronyms and overlapping competences in a in an overloaded landscape so far. So what would you think would be the best expected added value from this Democratic Resilience Center? And the second goes just to naturally the Digital Services Act, because that is legislation that we have put in place.
Of course we have done our best to make it enforceable and to count on the European Commission to enforce the Digital Services Act when it comes to addressing online platforms amplifying harmful narratives and disinformation in order to make sure that there is accountability and transparency in the digital sphere. You know that we have been in trouble in order to enforce this Digital Services Act when it comes to the big digital tools.
And it's increasingly the message, including by heads of government, that we are seeing a situation which is beyond reason, in which big platforms are actually defying democratic institutions and national governments. I would like you to ponder on the matter. Thank you.
Csaba Dömötör
Thank you, Chair. Dear Commissioner, I would like to touch upon an issue related to free speech on online platforms. This is related to your current and previous position as well. The US House Judiciary Committee published a quite alarming report some months ago. This report stated that the Commission had a great number of meetings with the big online platforms with the intention to flag certain online media content or even decrease their reach.
The cover story, like always, was the fight against hate speech and disinformation. The Commission sponsored certain NGOs and fact-checkers, and these organizations formed groups to flag media content and decide which content are reliable and which are not. This procedure triggered a political scandal in the US because online platforms were even pushed to decrease the reach of Donald Trump, who was not a president but a possible candidate that time.
As a consequence, the network of fact-checkers was dismantled in the US. On the contrary, in Europe, in the European Union, this network is enlarging. The Commission sponsors a wide range of fact-checkers who take part in the so-called rapid response system. On many occasions, the Commission announced the launch of this rapid response system just before national elections. The problem is that we do not know how these fact-checkers work, we do not know the consequence of their activity, and we do not know the exact social media content that were flagged.
Consequently, there is an even greater suspicion that these fact-checkers deal with content that do not fit into the narrative of the left-wing or liberal mainstream here. According to public data, as a former commissioner, you had at least 17 meetings with representatives of Meta, so Facebook.
A great number of meetings were held with other big platforms and organizations that took a lion's share in the fact-checkers' activity. Based on all of this, my question is simple. As a former commissioner, now leader of a strictly independent NGO, do you support that all relevant information should be published regarding the fact-checkers' activity? Do you support that a list should be published that contains all the social media content that were flagged or even deleted?
We do hope that the principle of transparency would apply to these issues as well. Thank you very much.
Petar Volgin
Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, if we are to answer the question of how democracy in Europe can be strengthened, we must first have the courage to identify those who are threatening it. Let us not waste our time searching for these threats thousands of kilometers away.
The people who are dismantling our democracy are not in Moscow, nor they are in Beijing. They are here in Brussels. European democracy is being weakened from within. It is coming under sustained attack from the European Commission, from the leaders of several European states and from the countless NGOs that claim to speak on behalf of civil society. For years all these actors have worked to erode pluralism and restrict freedom of expression.
The European Union bans media outlets whose views it finds inconvenient. Voices of opposition are increasingly excluded from the public debate. The goal is clear: to impose a single politically correct way of speaking, thinking and debating. Once media freedom is undermined, political freedom inevitably becomes the next target. Candidates who challenge the status quo are marginalized, persecuted and removed from the democratic process.
The Romanian politician Călin Georgescu is just the most striking example.
And a few days ago, we learned that the so-called Authority for European Political Parties and Foundations plans to ban the Europe of Sovereign Nations party. The justification offered was an alleged failure to uphold European values.
Yet under such a vague standard, any party, any movement, any candidate deemed inconvenient by those in power could become the next target. That's why I say that the greatest threat to European democracy lies not beyond Europe's borders, but at its very heart. The forces that seek to silence opposition media and suppress opposition parties are operating from within our own institutions. If they succeed, we will witness the final demise of democracy in Europe, a demise brought about by Europe's own authorities. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you. Now I suggest we go directly to the catch-the-eye, so it's one minute. Please try to be a little bit shorter. And we have Michał Wawrykiewicz for EPP.
Michał Wawrykiewicz
Thank you, Chair. I will share my gratitude for you that you are here with us, Věra Jourová. And my personal remark is that that's how progressive participation in a public life can be, that first time when we met back in 2017 here in Brussels, you were the representative of the institution, I was the representative of the NGO, and now reversed, you are the representative of the NGO. I am very glad for that.
My question is about the cycle for the rule of law. I don't know if you have heard about the initiative that we presented here in the Parliament a couple of months ago with Sophie Wilmès and Alessandro Zan. This is the initiative, the idea to coordinate all of the toolbox that is in the hand of the European institutions to prevent the violations of the rule of law. I would like to know what is your assessment about this idea, having in mind that we are and your new initiative is going to face new threats like the digital threats, disinformation, manipulation, AI threats and all of these threats and that might be as a consequence the violation of the rule of law as well. Thank you.
Sandro Ruotolo
Grazie Presidente. Signora Jourová, abbiamo ascoltato con attenzione il suo progetto di Democracy 27 e intanto le auguriamo buon lavoro. Serve sempre l'apporto di tutti per la nostra democrazia europea.
Lei ha appena annunciato una serie di visite negli Stati membri. Vorrei chiederle se nel corso delle visite intendete approfondire anche il tema degli abusi di spyware, perché, come ricorderà, durante il suo mandato la commissione PEGA del Parlamento europeo ha raccomandato formalmente alla Commissione di adottare un atto legislativo in merito, ma finora nulla è stato fatto, nonostante nel frattempo sia scoppiato un altro scandalo, quello di Paragon. Intendete fare pressione anche alla Commissione affinché rispetti le raccomandazioni di questo Parlamento?
Infine, alla luce del crescente ruolo delle piattaforme digitali nel dibattito pubblico, come valuta l'impatto degli algoritmi dei social network sulla polarizzazione, sulla diffusione dell'odio online e sulla visibilità delle diverse posizioni politiche? Ritiene che l'Europa debba fare di più per garantire una reale par condicio anche nello spazio digitale? Grazie.
Cristian Terheş
Thank you.
I'm going to speak in Spanish. Moderador, muchísimas gracias. Mire, estuve el jueves pasado asistí a una sesión del Senado mexicano en el cual se estaba pasando una ley, una ley por la soberanía se llamaba, por la soberanía mexicana en la cual se dispone que puede ser anulada cualquier elección de cualquier cargo si hay unas indicios o pruebas de una conexión extranjera. Esto en el caso del gobierno de Morena y de Sheinbaum y la oposición lo tiene muy claro a que cualquier tipo de pretexto de conexión de conexión con cualquier país, cualquier relación del tipo que sea va a ser utilizado como pretexto para anular elecciones que no le convengan a la señora Sheinbaum y a todo el narcorégimen que gobierna. Yo como inmediatamente por supuesto cogimos relación, vimos la relación directa que hay con el caso de Rumanía, quería preguntarle.
¿Qué necesidad tenemos ahora mismo de un grupo añadido como el suyo eh en unos en estos momentos para estas elecciones del año 27?
del año 2027 requieren que ustedes hagan grupos añadidos a los a los digamos a los instrumentos administrativos que está creando la propia la propia Unión Europea y a las cuales se ha referido mi compañero Demeder. qué necesidad tenemos de tener ese ese instrumento digamos para presionar o ejercer una cualquier tipo de influencia sobre unas elecciones nacionales en los diversos países donde se van a producir y donde probablemente y ustedes probablemente teman hay grandes posibilidades de que sus posiciones estén en una estén en una situación de gran precariedad.
Fabrice Leggeri
Merci Madame la Présidente. Merci Madame Jourová, ancienne commissaire européenne. Vous avez expliqué votre vision de votre action, démocratie 27. Alors ma première question tourne autour de votre mandat. Vous dites que vous avez le mandat du peuple, mais je m'interroge parce que vous n'êtes pas élue.
Vous dites qu'il faut réparer la démocratie, mais immédiatement je me demande de quoi faut-il réparer la démocratie ? Qu'est-ce qui a abîmé la démocratie selon vous ?
Et vous parlez également de désinformation, mais vous ne dites pas exactement ce qu'est l'information juste selon vous. Et enfin vous parlez aussi beaucoup de l'éducation, mais vous ne dites pas non plus quelles sont pour vous les bonnes références de l'éducation. Alors mes mes questions sont sont très simples. Tout d'abord, est-ce que vous pourriez nous dire quelle est votre légitimité, la légitimité de votre action ? C'est ma première question.
Deuxième question, est-ce que vous pourriez nous parler davantage de votre indépendance ?
Et enfin, est-ce que vous pourriez nous assurer que votre indépendance est tout à fait garantie et que, en particulier, il n'y a pas une dépendance liée à des financements ou à des affiliations politiques ou idéologiques ? Je crois que c'est très important pour redonner la confiance dans la démocratie aux citoyens qui peuvent avoir l'impression que les institutions et la galaxie des ONG sont le véritable danger. Merci beaucoup.
Christine Anderson
Thank you. Ms. Jourová, in 2020, when you were part of the EU Commission, the Commission informed the Parliament with respect to the origin of COVID that, quote, "the zoonotic origin remains the most plausible and probable scenario."
In 2025, the Commission said, quote, current evidence does not support one theory over another and that a laboratory origin, quote, cannot be ruled out. According to the FBI, CIA and recent US congressional investigation, a laboratory origin is credible, plausible and even the most likely scenario. However, scientists, journalists and citizens who questioned the official narrative of a zoonotic origin were immediately dismissed as conspiracy theorists and the debate about it was shut down as disinformation.
Now presenting a scientifically unresolved question as a settled fact would be spreading disinformation, wouldn't it? And given the fact that the EU Commission and your precious fact checkers were doing just that, and that just being one example of many, why should the people consider you of all people to be an authority on what is disinformation and what isn't? Thank you.
Věra Jourová
Thank you very much. When I said at the beginning that I forgot how it tastes, now I remember well. And I am really happy to answer as and to be as concrete as I can. When it started, who asked first? Who was the one, Mr. Lopez Aguilar?
Mr. Lopez Aguilar, yes, because I don't have the names here.
Yes, whether the idea of establishing of the European Center on Resilience is the right or bad. Well, as we know from history, some institutes and some institutions proved to be useful and deserve existence. Some proved to be just the result of no better idea. So we don't know yet. I cannot now add my very much expert or evidence-based opinion because I don't know exactly what the center should do.
In my view, we should have better data analysis. In France, we have VIGINUM agency. In Sweden, there is a Psychological Defence Agency. I think that we have to be able to better analyze data and the campaigns and information flows which are coming from outside into European Union. And once we have very good collection of data, very good data analysis, then it might make sense that this multi-stakeholder institution will start functioning to interpret the data for national and European policies.
So I would take it very practically and to fill in the institutional space what's missing. I think this is missing, the proper data analysis and proper and smart interpretation of the data. DSA has to be enforced. I have no doubt. DSA was initiated or came as a hard legislation after many years of discussions and Mr. López Aguilar, you remember very well, very, very vivid discussion in the Parliament where I will simplify now and I have to apologize for that.
From the left side I heard we have to increase the number of people who will be checking internet. I even heard something like let's establish a digital police. From the right side I heard hands off internet, don't touch it, it is a holy space for absolute freedom of speech. And so the DSA is somewhere in the middle after very, very broad and deep discussion. It was not easy but now we have it and we have it to address child pornography, child abuse in, you know, we all know that the protection of children is still not addressed, so but this is not the topic of our discussion.
Hate speech, terrorism, extremism and disinformation with big carefulness not to damage the freedom of speech. And DSA needs to be enforced. DSA needs to show to those who are coming to Europe to make big business that these are European rules which we want really to be taken seriously.
As for the freedom of speech, this is of course a big, big issue of how not to demolish this basic and fundamental right. First thing, I reject to live in the world where we protect the freedom of speech of bots. AI must not be given the protection of the free speech. Freedom of speech has been developed for, by human beings, for human beings. The same with copyright, the same with several other things.
We are now at the crossroads to teach AI to help people or to deprive people of the fundamental rights.
And I mean it that AI should be really managed in the way that it does not deprive the people of of their fundamental rights. So freedom of speech has to be protected with all possible tools when it comes to the freedom of speech of real people, their visions, their ideas, their sentiments. And I think that this should also be reflected in the following legislation. DSA gives the chance to everybody whose content was removed to complain and to ask for remedy.
And if you show me now that it does not work, it has to be improved because I also hear from time to time in my country the complaints that some content was removed and there is no communication. This is the obligation of the digital companies to react on that and to come with the remedy if necessary. So DSA also tries to bring solutions for the situations when the elections might be in danger. And here comes the question of Mr. Domotor, yes, sorry.
Well, NGOs, it is necessary to repeat how we meant the role of fact-checkers. The fact-checkers have to be the individuals or representatives of institutions which understand the difference between facts and opinions.
Opinions must be untouched. Facts should be corrected in case they are distributed in a manipulative way. And we know that sometimes it's a difficult thing to recognize the difference between facts and and and opinion. Fact-checking must not be activist. Should be ideology-free.
So I myself and as you rightly said, I had many meetings with the digital companies. I heard their complaints that they asked for cooperation the fact-checkers who proved to be activists. And I said to them, you must make your own decision who you cooperate with because there is a very holy principle: no correction of opinions, just correction of facts.
So I wanted to see mainly the academics and the people who understand the topic, the experts who might do the fact-checking in line with the current state of knowledge. Here comes also the COVID issue. So what I heard from Facebook, that 90% of requests to remove content was coming from political sphere, especially from national governments.
My answer was: this is political, this is maybe the tool, this might be the tool to beat the political opponents. This is not your role. In fact-checking saga, it means that you give space to evidence-based truth. And you know I'm careful in working with the word truth because this is of course very, very sensitive term. What, so no cover story, you said, I, I, you know, honestly, I lived half of my life in fully censored society.
This was never my plan to help this happen again. So that's why this strict rule: facts to be repaired or corrected in case they are proven to be false, opinions must remain untouched. That's why we worked with the definition: disinformation is a piece of information produced in a coordinated manner with the intention to do harm to society. There is a very strict definition we used already in the code of conduct against disinformation.
When I spoke to the boss of YouTube, Mr. Neal Mohan, he told me, "I'm sorry, Madame Jourová, after years of discussions, I'm sorry, I cannot still convince many people that the Earth is not flat." What? This is what I want from you, Mr. Mohan? Absolutely not. This is what I want from you is to do the fact-checking, to offer the people the facts, but to try to convince everybody, this is absolutely impossible.
Now let's be aware of the limitation of this of this system. Indeed transparency is key as you said, and whether there should be a list of of fact checkers, honestly I cannot tell you now. Because every time you start developing lists, it can increase transparency but it can also lead to somewhere where we don't want this to to get, yeah, some public lynch or some desonestation. I don't know. Whatever can happen.
And there might be a very, very dangerous ends of listing of people. But I would have to think over. I cannot tell you now. So, people trying to destroy democracy, as it was Mr. from Romania, probably. Mr. Valgin, okay, thank you very much for your question.
Romanian elections. I think we should know what happened.
We still did not see the results of the investigation because it wasn't, how I see that, it wasn't about removing a promising candidate from the competition, but it was a reaction on the massive manipulative technique being used in the campaign. And this is what the Romanian institutions announced, this is what the Romanian court reacted on, and I am myself missing some kind of solid analysis of what happened, how big the manipulation was, what technique was used. So I would like to know more about, but you have the right to ask of course at first as the first ones.
And for the elections, well, we have to be careful because the people are telling us in many different surveys that they, that the source of their erosion of trust in democracy is that they believe that the elections are manipulated. That there are no free and fair elections anymore. This is one of the big sources of distrust and this is, by the way, also one of the most frequent disinformation campaigns we have in Europe.
So I think that we need to do much more to convince the voters that their votes are guaranteed as authentic, as protected against manipulation. And sorry, what happened in Romania suggested that there was a really massive manipulation, waking up of I don't know how many, 2,500 sleeping accounts, many other things which I could not imagine before.
So, more transparency and more knowledge, more information about what's happening in the black box before the elections is necessary also to renew the trust of people in elections. Michal Wawrykiewicz, yes, things are happening, so we changed roles. Cycle of the rule of law. How much time do I have still? Okay.
Yeah, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. I will be shorter. But these previous, these works, these things which we discussed now were very important for me to explain. In the previous Parliament, there was a strong push on the Commission to create an annual report on democracy, rule of law, and fundamental rights.
I didn't want this. I wanted a specialized, more targeted work in several different instruments or tools. The proposal to coordinate all the tools on rule of law, I cannot again, I don't want to say now that it's impossible or it's unwise or not necessary. But count with me the rule of law instruments. Infringements in case of single breach, Article 7 in case of systematic breach, rule of law report, annual assessment, annual description, which should have a preventive character, European Semester, which is about economy, also there is a text about the impact of functioning judiciary and conditionality.
In none of those instruments, neither the Parliament or Commission has the final word. And I was really happy to have such system. Because for conditionality, for freezing the money, the Commission proposes, but it's the Council of Ministers to endorse the sanction.
On European Semester, it's preventive, descriptive thing, so it's in the hands of the Commission, which has to announce it. The same with Rule of Law report, preventive, descriptive thing, and fully in the hands of the Commission. Infringements, well, yes, Commission is putting the cases on the table of the judges in Luxembourg, but the final word is being said in Luxembourg. And Article 7, fully in the hands of the Member States, and must be unanimity when it comes to some possible sanction against the state.
So just what do you want to coordinate? I am maybe I have too technocratic approach to it. But I don't don't see the the possible final tangible result of such coordination. Because for good reason, because here in rule of law sphere we speak about sovereignty. It's a serious thing.
So for good reasons, this is not enhanced in only one institution. So maybe coordination in the sense of better informing about the state of affairs or about the functioning of the tools might might be useful. Country visits, spyware. Well, I don't think our team will have sufficient possible possibility to look into the data and to know the facts. But it might happen that we will hear this from especially from some countries, especially maybe from journalists, that the threat of using spyware against them is real and it's increasing.
And then of course we will have to consult it with the experts and cover it by our recommendations. But I cannot tell you now. Law on political agenda, Romanian elections, I think I already replied.
But there is a big misunderstanding. You asked me about the mandate I have. Well, we are citizens and we have mandated ourselves. I cannot help it. Now I am free to mandate myself to do whatever possible to protect the democratic system, which I believe is the best for the people.
So, we are, yes, we have private funding, but there is no political, neither ideological agenda. And so I think that this is a core thing and a basic thing on this project, that we will have to every moment, maybe every day, every week, do everything to make people informed about what we are doing and on the way to convince them that we are independent group of citizens.
Independent, but having the same interest. We want democracy to function, survive, to strengthen and to do the proper job in order to be prosperous and secure in Europe. That's so simple. So no mandate from any financier or some political power.
On COVID, madam, I am I am not a health expert. I just trust the information from the health authorities, from the ministries and from the World Health Organization. As a as a normal citizen who was scared as everyone by the totally new situation, the epidemic which just closed us in our households, we were hanging on the on the on the lips of the experts. And they informed the people according to the those days valid level of knowledge.
So I don't know what answer you expect from me. I am used to trust the expert authority. So when now the expert authority say we were mistaken, some things were different, well, it's good that they informed the public. I think it's fair play. So I exhausted the questions and myself.
Thank you very much.
Redner 1
Dear Věra, thank you very much for your passionate answers and your passionate defense of democracy. This Parliament should never forget that we owe you a lot, that the number of initiatives that we worked on and that we are proud of were born in your office. And please continue and thank you very much for being with us this morning. Thank you.
Dear colleagues. Je repasse au français, il faut que vous soyez assis avec des écouteurs. Le prochain point de notre séance traite des campagnes russes de désinformation hostile à l'Europe qui se déroulent en Afrique. Et pour ce point, j'ai le plaisir d'accueillir en ligne Monsieur Philip Obaji, journaliste d'investigation qui a été primé et il est correspondant pour The Daily Beast.
Il était précédemment journaliste pour Al Jazeera, The Guardian, USA Today. Son travail se concentre sur l'activité paramilitaire russe, les réseaux de désinformation et les violations des droits de l'homme en Afrique centrale et en Afrique de l'Ouest, ainsi que sur la violence djihadiste, la traite des êtres humains et les questions plus larges des droits de l'homme en Afrique subsaharienne. Les activités hybrides russes sur le continent africain vont au-delà de la désinformation. Elles englobent toute une variété d'actions malveillantes, manipulation de l'information bien sûr, ingérence politique, réseaux d'influence coercitive, exploitation de populations vulnérables dans la poursuite d'objectifs géopolitiques ou parfois tout simplement prédateurs.
Sur l'ensemble du continent africain, un nombre croissant de jeunes à la recherche d'opportunités d'éducation et de sécurité économique sont plutôt entraînés dans un système d'exploitation et de manipulation qui est lié à la guerre que mène la Russie contre l'Ukraine. Au cours de ces dernières années, des preuves ont émergé qui révèlent l'existence d'un réseau de recrutement qui cible des jeunes demandeurs d'emploi africains, des étudiants, des communautés vulnérables.
Cependant, la question ne se limite pas à cette exploitation militaire. Nous avons vu le Kremlin intensifier ses efforts pour étendre son influence politique et informationnelle en Afrique. Et il l'a fait contre les intérêts et les principes de l'Union européenne. Je ne voudrais pas aller trop loin dans le détail parce que je préférerais donner la parole au plus vite à Monsieur Abadji pour qu'il nous parle des résultats de ses enquêtes, notamment sur le rôle du groupe Wagner en Afrique et la façon dont la situation a changé avec l'agence de presse Initiative africaine.
Je voudrais qu'il puisse nous mettre à jour sur ces aspects importants, lui qui enquête depuis des années et a et qui fait face à des risques certains pour le courage qu'il démontre dans son envie de faire connaître au reste du monde la manière dont la Russie manipule une partie de l'Afrique. Philip Obaji, la parole est à vous pour dix minutes.
Philip Obaji
Madam Chair, honorable members of the European Parliament, distinguished guests.
Thank you for inviting me to address this committee on a matter that concerns not only Africa and Europe, but the future of democratic societies everywhere. My name is Philip Obaji. I am an investigative journalist from Nigeria. For years, I have reported on Russian activities across Africa, including allegations of abuses committed by Russian mercenaries and paramilitary structures operating on the continent. My reporting has taken me into conflict zones in the Central African Republic, Mali, and other countries where Russian influence has expanded rapidly.
Because of this work, I have faced intimidation, detention, and torture by forces linked to Russian-backed paramilitary actors. Yet, I continue reporting because the truth matters, and because disinformation flourishes where facts are silenced.
Today, I would like to explain how Russian disinformation operates in Africa, how Africa has increasingly become a strategic platform for influence operations targeting Europe, and why this development should concern every defender of democratic institutions. For many years, discussions about Russian disinformation focused primarily on operations originating from St. Petersburg and other centers inside Russia.
Today, however, the picture is far more complex. Russia has built influence ecosystems that extend well beyond its borders. Africa has become one of the most important theaters in this strategy. Russia's activities in Africa are not limited to military cooperation, resource extraction, or diplomatic engagement. They include sophisticated information operations designed to shape public opinion, attack Western institutions, promote pro-Kremlin narratives, and undermine confidence in democratic governance.
The model is effective because it combines local grievances with foreign strategic objectives.
Across several African countries, particularly in the Sahelian region, Russian actors have capitalized on frustrations related to colonial history, economic inequality, insecurity, and dissatisfaction with Western policies. These legitimate grievances are then amplified and manipulated through coordinated information campaigns.
Russian-linked media outlets, social media networks, influencers, Telegram channels, and online commentators present Moscow as a liberator while portraying Europe as an enemy of African sovereignty. These narratives are not always entirely fabricated. Often, they mix facts with distortions, half-truths, and emotionally charged messaging designed to provoke anger and distrust.
The objective is not merely persuasion. The objective is polarization. But there is another dimension that deserves greater attention in Europe. Russian influence operations in Africa increasingly contribute to political instability, the weakening of democratic institutions, and the erosion of security in countries that lie along key migration corridors to Europe. In parts of the Sahel and West Africa, Russian-backed information campaigns have helped legitimize military takeovers, undermine democratic governance, fuel anti-Western sentiment, and weaken cooperation between African states and their traditional security partners.
The resultant instability has severe human consequences.
As security deteriorates, economies weaken, and governance collapses, more people are displaced internally or seek opportunities elsewhere. This dynamic is particularly significant because West Africa has become one of the principal migration routes into Europe.
By contributing to conditions that deepen instability and insecurity, Russian influence operations indirectly create pressures that can drive increased migration flows towards European borders. At the same time, the Kremlin and its affiliated information networks frequently exploit migration itself as a divisive political issue within Europe, amplifying anti-immigration narratives and social tensions. In effect, the same ecosystem can contribute to instability that pushes people to move while simultaneously exploiting the political consequences of migration within European societies.
This creates a strategic feedback loop that serves broader Russian objectives: weakening European cohesion, deepening political polarization, and increasing pressures on democratic institutions. What makes this particularly relevant for Europe is that these networks increasingly do not stop at influencing African audiences.
The same infrastructures, the same operators, and in some cases, the same accounts are used to target European audiences as well. Investigations by European researchers, digital forensic specialists, election monitoring organizations, and myself have revealed the growing role of troll networks operating in parts of West Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana, in amplifying disinformation campaigns linked to Russian interest. These networks exploit the global nature of social media. A troll campaign operating in Lagos, Accra, or elsewhere can easily pretend to be a voter in Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, or Warsaw.
Social media platforms have struggled to identify such coordinated inauthentic behavior, particularly when operators use VPNs, artificial intelligence tools, and multiple identities. One of the most significant examples emerged during the 2023 parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. Researchers documented a network of more than 550 fake accounts on X that sought to influence Dutch political discourse.
Investigators, including myself, found that many of these accounts were operated from West African countries, particularly Ghana and Nigeria. The accounts posed as ordinary Dutch citizens. They participated in political debates, amplified divisive narratives, promoted polarizing content, and boosted messages favorable to pro-Russian political positions. Their purpose was not simply to support one political actor or another. Their broader objective was to deepen social divisions, erode trust in democratic institutions, and manipulate online visibility through coordinated amplification.
What makes this case especially important is that it demonstrated how influence operations linked to foreign interests can be outsourced across continents. The physical operators were not necessarily in Russia, yet the narratives, strategic objectives, and behavioral patterns closely resembled previous Kremlin-linked information operations. The Dutch case illustrates a new model of transnational disinformation: strategic direction from Russia, operational execution through international networks, and digital delivery directly into European democratic spaces.
Now, this is why Africa matters in the European conversation about democracy protection. Now, to wrap up, Africa is not merely a target of Russian disinformation. Increasingly, it is being used as an operational environment from which influence campaigns can be projected outwards. Now, Europe should recognize that defending democracy is not solely a domestic challenge, it's a transnational one.
The same networks spreading falsehoods in Africa today may be targeting European voters tomorrow. As someone who has witnessed Russian influence operations from the ground, I can say that disinformation is not simply about false information, it is about power. It is about shaping perceptions, weakening institutions, and creating conditions in which authoritarian influence can flourish. The defense of democracy, therefore, requires vigilance, transparency, accountability, and international cooperation. Africa and Europe share this challenge, and Africa and Europe must confront it together.
Redner 1
Thank you very much, Mr. Obaji. Now I will give the floor to people asking for it, starting with Juan Fernando. Do you want the floor, or... Yes.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
Juan Fernando López Aguilar from S&D. I follow the presentation, which is of course consistent with the concerns that many of us keep raising about the overall landscape regarding the points just made and the widespread disinformation and manipulation when it comes to the perception of migration as a fact all across Europe.
But I would like you to maybe maybe share with us a thought on the on the point that that you have made yourself, elaborate a bit on on the evidence that migration has turned out absolutely, the perception of migration has turned out to be absolutely decisive when it comes to elections.
And of course, it's the number one, the paramount issue in which fake disinformation, manipulation and outright lies are in the winning side. I mean, take whatever country, it's so easy, it's so easy to picture migrants as predators, as predators of social services, as enjoying benefits which are non-existent compared of course to the allocations and allowances and social services which are provided for the, for the citizens of the European Union, particularly for the nationals. And I would like you to elaborate, once we have described this issue, is there any chance, any chance that a change could be brought about by some specific measure that could be made as regarding the perception of how migrants are to be integrated and not excluded, not demonized, not stigmatized in the European landscape?
Cristian Terheş
Eh, sí. Eh, voy a hablar español. Eh, creo que no estamos hablando de los efectos de la inmigración en Europa, sino estamos hablando de la penetración de Rusia en África.
Y en ese sentido, sí hay una cosa en la que puede haber una relación. A mí me gustaría saber si esa, esa actividad rusa que se ha ido ampliando e intensificando paralela a la china en África tiene algo que ver con la masiva movilización de organizaciones de tráfico de ilegales hacia Europa. Que si realmente se retroalimenta la actividad de la propaganda rusa con los incentivos que algunos gobiernos desde Europa dan para que las fronteras de Europa sean violadas y tengamos a los mejores africanos jugándose la vida, jugándose la vida y quitándole, arrebatándole capital humano a África.
Helmut Brandstätter
Thank you very much. Dear Philip Obaji, first of all, thank you very much for your work.
It's really very important what we could read from you in the last years in the Daily Beast and other magazines, the films you produced, and it's very important all your information and thank you for being with us. I have a few questions. You talked about those governments who work together with Russia. How about Europe? Do you see European governments, well, which governments in Africa we would have a chance to talk to, to get influence there and to explain also the public here in Europe what's happening there?
Second, about you talked about the false accounts. How can we find them and how can we find out who they are supporting, from where this is going out and how they do work, because I think it's really important to explain it also to our public what's happening there.
Talking about migration, we heard an officer from Poland here in this committee who explained how they bring directly African refugees to the Belarus-Polish border to try to bring them over to Poland. Can you tell us more about these organizations who do that? And would you think that the EU, I mean we have ambassadors there, but does the EU need kind of a democracy shield center in Africa to not to do disinformation, but to explain to the African people what's happening there and that we are not their enemies and that it's not fair what's happening there and also to explain to them what the Russians do to them? Because they also take Africans, bring them to Russia, send them to the border to Ukraine to die. So I think it would be also our duty to explain to the African public what's really happening with this Russian influence.
Philip Obaji
Thank you so much for such, first for listening to me and for the questions that you have asked.
Now, I will take them one after the other. For the first question, I cannot speak directly about how migrants shape European politics and how they contribute to democracy, voting, or picking who represents districts or what have you. Now, but what I can say, and this is also my answer to the second question about the link between Russian activity to movements that traffic people to Europe.
Now, I have spent a long time since 2024 investigating migration flows from the Sahel across the Sahara Desert to Libya and then from Libya across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. So, what I have noticed is this. I have listened to pro-Russian commentators on local radio and TV channels in Niger encourage migrants in the country to travel to Europe. And I'm going to give you a little bit of context as to how it happens.
Now, for a long time, the central Nigerien town of Agadez has been the hub of people smuggling and human trafficking from West Africa to Europe. The vast majority of Africans who are seeking to reach Europe through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea usually converge in Agadez, where thousands of them are transported every Tuesday in convoys across the desert to Libya. Now, the EU decided to support the Nigerien government in stemming this migration flow. But ultimately, the Nigerien government was able to get the Nigerien parliament to enact a law that criminalized people smuggling. And this law was passed in 2015.
But what happened when the pro-Russian military junta took power by force a couple of years ago? The first action that they took was to abolish that law, which effectively decriminalized people smuggling. So what we're seeing now is that we're seeing thousands of migrants converge again in Agadez, hoping to get on vehicles that will transport them across the desert to Libya. And from Libya, they get across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece or Malta or Italy.
So, I have also seen Russian trucks, Wagner trucks, transport migrants from the capital, Niamey, to Agadez, hoping that they could find smugglers that would take them across the desert to Libya. I've also seen the same trucks take people from areas around Burkina Faso. So we're seeing that Russia is directly involved in terms of disinformation and also in terms of physically moving people to areas where they can get, you know, on trucks and get smuggled to Libya. And from there, there are also Russian paramilitaries from the Wagner Group who help these same people get on boats in Libya for them to be able to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
So that happens a lot. Now, which government in Africa can Europe work with? I know very well that it's apart from the military governments in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and maybe Guinea. African nations in West and Central Africa are governed by democratic elected presidents. And other than the Central African Republic where you have a government that is completely pro-Russian, I don't know of any other African nation besides these four countries I have mentioned who are not, you know, closely related to the West when it comes to having cooperations, whether it's economically, militarily, or what have you.
So many African nations are receptive towards working with the Europe to deal with issues around disinformation and Russian influence. Now, how can we find these troll accounts and how do we identify where they come from? Some journalists, including myself, are already working currently investigating these troll factories, and we have already established that a number of them come from the Russian state. Some of the people that we have identified have worked previously with Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Internet Research Agency that operates from Saint Petersburg. So we've seen a lot of Russian link, you know, in terms of how these troll factories are set up and how they operated.
Now, Helmut spoke about Russia bringing Africans to the Polish border through Belarus and he's asking who does this. Well, some of these networks in Europe that try to push people from Russia, from Belarus into the EU zone are the same networks that operate here in Africa. And what they do in Africa is get Africans to travel to Russia from where they are trained or where they are even pushed to the front lines in Ukraine.
So there's a link, we've found the link between the networks that are pushing migrants, you know, through Belarus across the Polish border to the same networks that are working to recruit Africans to fight in the war in Ukraine. Now, what can Europe do to explain to the African people that Europe is not their enemy? So Europe has to counter the Russian narrative. So Russia is using influencers, using journalists, using media outlets in Africa to promote its narratives, you know, to also paint Europe in a very bad light and to make Africans feel that their enemy is Europe and Africa has to look at Russia as its main friend.
So Europe can support programs and initiatives that are helping to counter disinformation, that are helping to fact-check what is out there, what pro-Russian trolls are putting out there trying to influence Africa. So there are ideas and initiatives that are currently on ground, hoping to reach out to media outlets, influencers, journalists and what have you, to convince them that what Russia is doing is a ploy to destabilize not just Africa, but the people or the countries that it talks about in bad ways. So I'm happy to share after now with the EU, the EU Parliament, as to ways at which it can work with Africa in combating Russian disinformation and promoting European ideas that are beneficial to Africa and to Africans.
Redner 1
Thank you very much for your participation and for your strong work.
I think this Parliament deserves to support people like you who are helping us to know the truth about what's happening in Africa and how not only Africans are targeted, but also the EU and its member states are distorted and targeted as well by Russian actors in Africa. I would now like to give the floor to Mrs. Silke Hampson, who is head of Sub-Saharan Africa Stratcom Task Force in the European External Action Service. You have the floor, Mrs. Hampson.
Thank you very much. Committee members, Madam Chair, I don't know whether Mr. Obadge has already left, but a very good morning from my side.
Silke Hampson
I'm the head of the Sub-Saharan Africa Stratcom Task Force. We were established in 2023 in response to the increasing disinformation attacks in Africa, and we have a mandate from member states to work on raising our situational awareness on FIMI, doing strategic communications, as well as building resilience on the continent.
I always appreciate the opportunity to share experiences with our colleagues on the ground and we see exactly those same problems that Mr. Obadji just mentioned and in particularly the increasingly sophisticated use of AI is a challenge because it provides a challenge in terms of the sheer volume of data that can be put out there but as well as in its sophistication and it's becoming really difficult to actually spot what is real and what is not and that makes it so effective.
We've also seen an expansion of the target audiences from a focus on Western Africa, French-speaking region, to expand into the English-speaking to English-speaking audiences on the continent. Now, what we do about this? First of all, we need to understand the the information environment. And this is really looking at who are these accounts, who are these bots, where do they come from? We quite often get inquiries from delegations who find a story in the press and ask us, is this what is behind this?
And we're not interested in in someone just simply expressing a disagreement with European values or actions.
That's not disinformation, but we're looking at is really the coordinated distribution of or dissemination of disinformation with malicious intent to either attack the European Union and its member states, but also to weaken the trust in in institutions, in local institutions and that's the danger of disinformation. So we must respond and we need to do better than just publishing photos of handshakes and and meetings. And I think we've we are on the right track.
Um, for example, on the recent Russian recruitment of Africans to fight in the Ukraine, what we did is we invited African journalists as well as EU officials in in two different seminars, a research seminar with two think tanks to really get the information not from the EU, but from independent think tanks. We then worked with our delegations so they have the narratives and the information to raise the topic not just in their tweets and social media channels, but to be able to bring it up in in their diplomatic engagements with their local partners.
And I believe this was very effective. I don't want to take credit for this topic becoming so big, but we hope that we have contributed because we have seen a number of African leaders confront Russia on this. And I think it's also Russia has definitely felt the pressure of this topic not disappearing from the media. But we also strengthen need to strengthen capacities locally, individuals like Mr. Obadji, but the media sector in general. We do this in coordination with the other European Commission services like FPI notably.
There's a number of projects across the Sahel, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, DRC, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, pretty much across the whole continent in strengthening media integrity, strengthening digital literacy in schools, in universities, and working with the media sector. Now, at our level, we also contribute to sanctions files. If we really see accounts, individuals, organizations that repeatedly contribute to these malicious attacks, then we can contribute to the recommendations that are being presented.
We also here work with the member states together to compare notes and find whether we see the same things. So these are the options that we do from our side. We need to use more innovation. We need to use technology ourselves. And our biggest strength in all this is a unified approach across the European Union and our member states to not just look at social media, not even just the traditional media channels, but really combine it with diplomatic engagement, with our cultural diplomacy also on the continent to counter this threat, to reduce the space for Russian disinformation and to make our narratives as the EU heard across the continent.
Thank you very much.
Redner 1
Thank you very much and on this we close this item of the agenda. And we go to the next item and sorry I switch again to my mother tongue. L'orateur suivant est Karl-Helfried, pardon, fondateur et PDG de l'initiative Capitale européenne de la démocratie. Il s'agit d'une initiative de la société civile qui désigne chaque année une ville européenne comme capitale symbolique de la démocratie.
Durant un an, la ville sélectionnée organise son propre programme avec un large éventail d'activités et d'événements en collaboration avec la société civile et les citoyens afin de renforcer l'engagement démocratique. Les visiteurs de toute l'Europe sont invités à observer et à participer à ces efforts. L'Union européenne attache une grande importance à la participation des citoyens au processus décisionnel.
Sur le plan institutionnel, le Parlement européen défend, bien sûr, nous le savons, le droit de pétition. Ça permet à tout citoyen de l'Union européenne ou résident dans un État membre, etc., etc., de remédier à une mauvaise application du droit de l'Union ou d'exiger du Parlement qu'il adopte une position sur une question spécifique. La Commission aussi associe largement les citoyens et les parties prenantes tout au long du cycle de vie des politiques. Que ce soit grâce aux consultations publiques, aux retours d'informations sur le public Have Your Say, etc., etc. Et pourtant, malgré toutes ces portes ouvertes et ces opportunités, une partie de la société, nous le savons, se sent éloignée des institutions politiques et a le sentiment que débattre sur les plateformes en ligne suffit à alimenter le processus démocratique où les écrans fonctionnent comme une protection pour les opinions extrémistes.
Beaucoup, beaucoup a déjà été dit sur ces questions. Ce qui est intéressant, c'est de savoir ce qui est fait et je voudrais donner la parole dès maintenant à Helfried Carl en le présentant. Il est cofondateur et partenaire de l'Institut pour l'innovation en politique de Vienne et fondateur et directeur général de l'initiative donc Capitale européenne de la démocratie.
Au cours de sa carrière diplomatique, il a été ambassadeur d'Autriche en Slovaquie, conseiller politique de la mission autrichienne auprès des Nations Unies à New York et chef de cabinet adjoint du haut représentant pour la Bosnie-Herzégovine. Voilà, Monsieur Karl, comment je voulais vous présenter. Je vous passe la parole pour dix minutes.
Helfried Carl
Merci Madame la Présidente. Thank you very much, honorable members of the European Parliament for this invitation which actually means a lot to me and also especially to my team who have been working for about 10 years now to strengthen Europe through civil society means. As you mentioned, I'm a career diplomat. My last posting was Austria's ambassador to Slovakia, but since 2019 I'm on leave from the Foreign Ministry, so I want to underline that I'm not speaking for the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs today.
I'm also honored to speak today after former Vice-President of the Commission Věra Jourová. I think it was a very inspiring talk and it was also very much in the same vein, her organization, her new organization, in the same vein to what we are trying to achieve.
Basically, I would like to go back 10 years ago when we started our Innovation in Politics Institute and later on the European Capital of Democracy, because our analysis, that of me and my partners, was basically that we believe that the democratic center is not inventive enough. We saw figures like Erdoğan, Orbán, Trump rising, and we saw them rising with new means of communication, but also with new means of electoral appeal. One of the most impressive examples for me at the time was President Erdoğan, who was, I think, the first ever candidate who had holographic appearances in electoral campaigns.
So this I found quite fascinating and at the same time quite worrying, because I believe that the democratic center needs to find new ways to appeal as well. And then, as you know, there is, as you know better than I do, there is a lot of self-criticism, there is a lot of analytics out there that democracy is in crisis.
And I myself have been participating in many conferences with this topic. And I think it's very important that we are critical of democracy because this is one of the main features that we can be self-critical of our system. That's the difference to other authoritarian systems. However, I think we also sometimes fall victim to this discourse that we are focusing only on the things that don't work so well and we don't focus on the things that work well, maybe somewhere where we don't even know that they work well. And this was the central idea of our basically the central method of what we are doing.
It's the idea to encourage best practice exchange, to look for best practice and to get it evaluated by the citizens of Europe.
Next slide, please. And we started with our flagship project in 2017, the Innovation in Politics Awards. The Innovation in Politics Awards scout, we scout around 250 to 300 projects every year. The distinct feature of the Politics Awards is that they are not an NGO award. We are looking for political project, meaning a project where rightfully at the end a politician can claim at a gala that his leadership led to the implementation of the project.
It's also not about ideas, it needs to be implemented and it covers a wide array of policy themes. This year we have climate protection, we have challenging authoritarianism, we have the category democracy, we have the category digital innovation and governance, education, public health and aging, local citizen engagement.
This one we are very proud to have a collaboration on local citizen engagement with the Council of Europe. And the newest category is one that is very dear to my heart because somehow it epitomizes what we are about. It's a category called Strengthening Europe. And I think what is also innovative about the Innovation in Politics Awards is that it's not us who judge these scouted projects, but it's a citizens' jury of more than 1,000 European citizens from all over the Council of Europe's territory and also Kosovo.
They are the ones who rank the the projects and decide who in the end will get one of our wonderful trophies. Unfortunately no money involved, but I think this is something which is very important because it is a positive currency for a politician to have been awarded this. In the meantime we also have now a treasure trove of hundreds of projects on our showroom which you can consult on our webpage. We around the Innovation in Politics Awards we organize two events.
One is about best practice exchange. We call this Politics Coffee and Cake, where the finalists, the ten finalists from each category, get the chance to present what they are doing, what they have been done. And this cross-pollination among European politicians from many different party families, but also from many different countries, is something which I always call it's somehow the politics without the toxic content, because it's very interesting that politicians in this context are very eager to learn from each other.
And then we organize a nice gala evening where the winners then receive the awards. And these events have been held under the patronage of the European Parliament last year, for which I would like to express my gratefulness. And we also hope to get this patronage this year. And just to give you some examples for winners over the years, we had a winner on the category of democracy technologies. That was the Counter Disinformation Network, a German project that builds cross-border collaboration among democracy defenders to expose, dismantle, and prevent influence operations that are targeting European elections.
Something you have been talking about before as well. In the category democracy, we had some surprise visitor, I would say, the Ankara Citizens Assembly. The city of Ankara is having a very, very strong local citizens assembly component in its governance, which I think many of our cities could learn from as well. And then, for example, in this, in the category education, we had a project called Youth Educational Path from the city of Kyiv, where we get a lot of, actually from Ukraine, we get a lot of interesting projects where they integrated artificial intelligence into every step of a learning journey.
So you see this is a wide array and things can be very, sometimes a little bit difficult to understand at first, but when you look at our webpage you will find out more about it. Next slide please. Now I come to another example of where we use the citizens' jury and also kind of a competitive selection process, the European Capital of Democracy. The European Capital of Democracy is a project where cities can apply from all over Europe, cities who have more than 100,000 inhabitants. And we ask them to present three citizen participation projects they have already implemented and three which they intend to implement if they receive the title.
We then ask an experts jury of six international experts to do a shortlist of three cities and then a citizens jury of more than 5,500 Europeans ranks the cities and in the end there is one winner. Obviously in both citizens juries you have this European Song Contest principle, so you cannot vote for a project or for a city that is in the country where you reside in, so that there is no manipulation possible in this way.
What is very dear to our heart is also that there is an important Olympic principle, Olympian principle also, that means that all the cities that apply become members of the European City Network. You see this on the slide here. We know Europe is bigger than the slide, but those are the cities that have applied in the past who are now in a very active best practice exchange on citizen participation, and we are very proud that this is a very active network.
The capitals of democracy in the past were Barcelona in 2024, Vienna in 25, Cascais in Portugal is the current capital of democracy and Brussels, the city of Brussels, will be has been chosen by the citizen jury for next year. And I would just briefly talk also what is happening during a democracy year in the capital of democracy. First of all, obviously the cities are asked to to implement what they committed to do if they receive a title.
And this is quite interesting because obviously all the cities that applied, they had to go through their city councils with the application. So the impact we have, we know is bigger than just in the capital of democracy because the citizen participation programs that were proposed for the application, they are being taken seriously everywhere. So we know that our initiative is having a larger impact than just in the capital of democracy.
In addition, we bring our own formats. Next slide, please. This is, one is the Act Now Mayors' Conference, a conference that brings together very important, in my view, democracy actors, city mayors, city administrators, and civil society every year on a different topic which is dear to the heart of the city in which the conference takes place. A couple of years ago, we even had an Act Now Mayors' Conference in Brussels on Ukrainian local democracy, so we are very experienced with this.
And next year, the Act Now Mayors conference will take place in Brussels, obviously. This year, it just took place in Cascais on the issue of AI and human rights on the local level, also something which is very important. We must not forget that this is not just a national issue, but also a local issue. Next slide, please. One format I think might be quite interesting to you as well, because you were approaching the subject of disinformation and misinformation.
We developed a, I think, a very new format called Truth, Lies and Democracy, which is a game jam where we ask around 15 teams from all over Europe to meet over a weekend. And during that time, organize a game jam, which is basically a hackathon to develop mock video games that deal with the issue of misinformation and disinformation.
And this is quite important also because the video gaming community in Europe is huge and at the same time it is somehow politically abandoned by the center forces.
There are also actors who are dealing a lot with misinformation and disinformation and with kind of bad stereotypes in this area and this is what we try to counter with this event every year. Next slide please. Obviously we invite also third partners to do their international events in the city and we want the whole democracy year to be a growing ecosystem.
Every year there should be more partners on board. And if you allow at the end of my intervention, I would like to invite this committee also to use the European Capital of Democracy as a stage for its discourse on the future of democracy in Europe. We would love to organize such opportunities for the European Parliament to present its work outside of Brussels, which I believe is quite important because, as I said before, we try to demonstrate that democracy delivers.
We want to show that there is a value in compromise and we want to show that strengthening Europe is in all our all our interest. And coming to the strengthening of Europe, as I told you, we have a new category called Strengthening Europe in the Innovation and Politics Awards, so we hope that we get good projects from all of you in the future. I think hope is a democratic resource and we need hope for democracy to survive and this is what we try to foster. Thank you very much and apologies for being too long.
Redner 1
Thank you very much for your presentation. Now I give the floor to colleagues who would like to make remarks or ask questions, starting with the Patriots, Marieke Ehlers.
Redner 32
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I can see the extremely important work of this committee is reflected by the full attendance by the political parties who so much supported the extension of the mandate here today. That being said, I will continue in Dutch. Dank u wel, meneer Hauffried, voor uw presentatie. Bij de Europese verkiezingen van 2024 won rechts en verloor links.
Dat is dubbele winst, zou je zeggen.
Maar ondanks deze duidelijke kiezersmandaat voor rechts-realisme worden wij hier in het Europees Parlement structureel uitgesloten. De patriotten mogen geen commissievoorzitters leveren en worden buiten het bureau van het parlement gehouden. De elite vindt democratie fantastisch zolang je maar op hun partij stemt. Anders is de volkswil ineens een lastig probleem. En toch kiest u ervoor om uitgerekend Brussel aan te wijzen als Europese hoofdstad van de democratie voor 2027.
U kiest voor Brussel terwijl hier tientallen miljoenen kiezers via een cordon sanitaire worden uitgesloten. Terwijl de Europese Commissie ongestraft miljarden pompt in NGO's om haar eigen wanbeleid te promoten.
Terwijl dit Parlement de instrumenten mist om de Commissie effectief te controleren. En terwijl Ursula von der Leyen als een soort dictator haar middelvinger naar ons opsteekt, onder andere door de Pfizer-sms'jes simpelweg geheim te houden. Mijn vraag aan u is dan ook heel simpel: is dit uw democratische ideaal? Dank u wel.
Redner 1
Mrs. Allers, before giving the floor to the next MEP, I would know, please, I have the floor and I'm chairing this committee. If you want to underline the absence of MEPs, better be present when there are important topics, such as the previous one, Filippo Baggi, who was describing in very interesting details how Russian interferences and Russian malevolent action are dragging African migrants towards Europe.
But maybe there was no one from the Patriots on such an important topic. No one. Maybe you don't want to hear about it. Maybe you don't want to know about it. Or maybe you were busy.
I have no conclusion to draw, but before blaming colleagues, please try to be as present as you can, and that will make you a little more relevant. The next speaker is Mr. Brandstätter.
Helmut Brandstätter
Yeah, thanks very much, Nathalie. I have to stop crying now, they are so poor then never allowed to speak, never heard, that's really, really very bad. It's a little bit strange for me to talk to Helfrid in English, but I do it. Hello, great to have you here. He does great work.
He was a well-known ambassador in Austria and I'm really happy to see you here. First of all, it's not the majority here, I have to tell you, that calls Ursula von der Leyen a dictator. That's probably part of our problem is the way how we use words. And if you call the elected President of the Commission, the elected President of the Commission... She's elected like Mr. like Mr. Magyar is elected, like Mr. Orbán was elected by the Parliament.
Okay, so she's the elected. There are many things I'm I don't like she's doing, but she has a majority in this Parliament.
That's a fact. And to call her a dictator and at the same time support a terrorist like Putin, that's that's that's an interesting story. But that's what I want to talk to with Helfrid. You know this is EUDS, this is Democracy Shield. And what we are talking here for one and a half years already is about this huge disinformation.
And I want to go away from any any party interest. That doesn't interest me at all. But what for me is so important is this disinformation works. We just heard about that it comes out partly of Africa. Of course it comes out partly from the troll fabrics in Saint Petersburg, but also from some groups here in in Europe, in the European Union.
But my question is what can your what can your initiatives do to explain how this disinformation works?
To explain that Putin is having an incredible war. He last night he killed again like 20, 30 people in Kyiv. And at the same time, there is a disinformation working here in Europe that he's just defending his country, etc., etc. So all these lies, and they are worked in a certain part of our, of our society. And what do you think we can do in different ways to show how Putin's interests and Russia's interests are against our interests, but at the same time brought by certain groups also in the European Union?
Because I think that's, that's really dangerous for us. And I think that's what I want you to talk to you. Thanks very much.
Redner 1
Thank you. If there are no other speakers, the floor gets back to you, Mr. Kalm.
Helfried Carl
Thank you. Well, first of all, let me clarify that I don't think I made myself in a position to be misunderstood, but I will underline again that obviously it was not the European institutions who are not a city that receive the title in 2027, but it's the city of Brussels that is going to be the title holder in 2027. And I have nothing to add on what has been said about calling an elected democratic official dictator.
I think I know the difference quite well, also from my diplomatic work. I would like to come to this issue of disinformation and what we can do about this. I think there are several areas. One obviously, I mean many, many things have been already touched upon by Madame Jourová before.
Education is important, but education I believe needs to go hand in hand with engagement. People who learn how to use democratic, their democratic voice are somehow vaccinated more against the threat of disinformation and disengagement also.
So this is what we are trying to do. We have this citizens' jury. We try to also motivate our citizens' jurors to participate in other democratic processes. And we also have the formats where we try to make people understand what is disinformation and misinformation. However, I also have to say that there is only so much we can do.
So we are very much welcome what the European Commission is trying to do with the several digital acts that have been also passed through the European Parliament because we cannot rely on the civil society only when it comes to this swamp of misinformation and disinformation.
And I would like to add something more on this. I think what is overwhelming our societies is not only misinformation and disinformation, but it's also the kind of value that is obviously given to bad news in the social media algorithms. And the algorithms are somehow bending the democratic infrastructure of our societies. And as long as we do not talk about the algorithms and also about the way social media somehow intoxicates our societies, I think we will not be on the winning side of this. What do I mean by this?
I mean that for example, it has become extremely difficult to talk also in the political sphere about positive visions for the future. They would not be interesting for any kind of clickbaiting mechanism. And I think but this that this is one of the most important features of parliamentary democracy and democracy as a whole, that people can vote among different visions for the future. If they don't do that, they rather vote for visions of the past and I don't think that these visions are, how should I say, realistic.
Very often the past is glorified in these visions. But we should come to we should foster a political discourse where we are talking about our competing visions for the future. And this is something which we should ask also from the social media operators, that this is possible, that this is something they enable as well.
And this is something we want to very much do with the European Capital of Democracy, which we see basically as a stage for these kind of discussions. We want to discuss what is there already in best practice that can be used in order to have a future for us and for our children that we want to have. And once again, I would like to encourage you to take advantage of this whenever you can and be part of this conversation. Thank you.
Redner 1
Well, thank you very much. And I'm certain... Mr. Brandstetter, you still want the floor? Okay, we still have a few minutes, so go ahead.
Helmut Brandstätter
Just a short follow-up question. He still hears us?
Do they understand that algorithm is not just normal media? I mean you buy a newspaper and you read what you want, but social media is completely different. You think people have understood what algorithms are?
Redner 1
Are there other additional questions? Not that I see, so the floor is back to you, Mr. Kahl.
Helfried Carl
I think it's as always, there's not the people. I think many people have understood it, but in general the fact that they are so successful still means that probably the majority is still, and even you know I have understood it, but I think I am also somehow under the influence so to speak.
Probably we are all under the influence. So understanding the fact that alcohol intoxicates you doesn't mean that you don't drink it and doesn't mean that you don't, you know, be in the end that you also have the negative consequences once you drink. So I think the problem is more the action, what do you do about it, than the understanding. So I'm rather, I have to say rather pessimistic that without strong legal action we will be able to strengthen our societies against this threat.
Redner 1
Thank you again and thank you for your presentation, thank you for your work. And we'll have the next item on the agenda at 11:30, so we'll stop for approximately 20 minutes. See you there.
Redner 34
Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you to this meeting of the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield. Today, we are gathered to discuss the critical challenges facing our democratic institutions in the digital age. As we have seen in recent years, the spread of disinformation and foreign interference poses a significant threat to the integrity of our elections and the trust of our citizens. Our goal today is to examine the current tools at our disposal and to identify where further action is needed at the European level.
We are joined by several experts who will provide their insights on the evolving landscape of hybrid threats. Before we begin with the presentations, I would like to remind all members to keep their interventions concise to allow for a broad exchange of views. The floor is now open for the first speaker. Thank you.
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