EU Parliamentary Democracy Forum 2026
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OTHER European Parliament
Timothy Snyder
It means making sure that we support domestic civil society organizations who are trying to enable democracy. It means taking seriously horizontal self-organization of people. But democracy also means, and now I'm going to pivot to the third word in the title, which is very important, it means taking individual freedom seriously. Now, by individual freedom, I don't mean what Americans usually mean, which is wrecking the government. What I mean by individual freedom is, on the one hand, creating the conditions in which people can grow up to be free.
So, a functional social welfare state, for example, an EU-wide economic zone, for example.
But at the same time, I also mean celebrating those things, not just as the triumph of stability or as the will of the majority or as common sense, but also as freedom. That the reason why we do things together is, in large part, so that we can flower as individuals. And that individuals are most free when we're capable of creating things together. We can only be free when we recognize other people as having the same needs and the same desires as we do. When we build things together and when we recognize one another ethically, then we can be free.
It's important, I think, particularly in Europe, to make those kinds of claims, because elsewhere in the world, especially in the United States, the word freedom has been weaponized to just mean powerful people are allowed to wreck everything for everyone else. That's terrible, but we can't do without the word freedom. We have to build it back up positively. Positively in the sense of creating institutions, but also positively in the sense that recognizing that freedom is the condition in which we can pursue all of the things which we regard as good. So then moving forward to today and moving forward towards defense.
All these things we've talked about: freedom, democracy, the future, these are all human concepts. If we want to preserve democracy or freedom or the future, we have to be functioning in a in a world which is oriented around humans, around the quirks, around the characteristics, around the failures, around the possibilities, around the wonder of humans, not of something else. The moment that we fall into the trap of thinking that the reason we're here is to make life better for the machines, the moment that we lose sight of the particular ends that human beings can have as individuals or as national communities or as European communities or as smaller communities, the moment we lose sight of that, the moment that we think that it's actually all about making things more efficient as opposed to making things more human, more lovable, more joyous, more hopeful, when we make that mistake, we will also lose democracy. And this is happening before our eyes. The the the reckless way in which especially Americans, but not only, are are rushing forth into the latest ways in which algorithms can run our lives and run our minds, those things are against freedom.
And they're also against the future, because the less thinking we're doing for ourselves, the less connecting we're doing for ourselves, the less capable we are of thinking about the future and of making a future. And this has a very, very specific policy recommendation attached to it, which is that if you are a European democracy, you would be very well served to keep American tech companies out of the minds of your people as much as you can. And that means restricting how they work. It means restricting how the algorithms work. It means trying to turn some of their profits towards supporting journalism and education.
They're against democracy.
It also means building up your own alternatives as best you can. This is not something you can just let go. It's not something history will take care of for you. These are big companies and, unfortunately, the most powerful of them are directly against European democracy, not just because they're against democracy as such, but because they're imagining a futureless future in which nothing, in which there will be nothing for humans. Among other things, there won't be freedom, there won't be democracy.
The most immediate everyday thing that democracies can do to ensure that there's a future of freedom is to support the Ukrainian armed forces. And that means directly supporting them, trying your best to give them what you need. They are fighting the fights that you don't have to fight.
They are creating a normality in which we can have conversations like this one, in which you can have a forum like the one that you are having. It also means real meaningful energy sanctions to Russia. Russia was able to attack Ukraine in the first place because European countries did energy business with Russia. And it's shameful the extent to which Europeans are still buying Russian hydrocarbons and thereby allowing this war to continue. Now I realize that American policy is far worse, but you could make the difference.
You could, you could bring this war to an end. But however you do it, the right way to think about it is that Ukraine is holding back the most major direct threat to European democracies. And the fall of Ukraine wouldn't just mean a strengthened Russia and more attacks down the line. It would also mean the defeat of the idea as such, the idea of a future, the idea of freedom. These are the ideas that are actually central to people who are taking risks.
If you let them down, if you let them lose, then there is much less hope for the future. So there's a lot that can be done here. I've mentioned sanctions, I've mentioned weapons. And there are European countries, and I'm looking at you, I realize not a member of the EU, but the Norwegians in particular could do much more than they're doing.
Connecting then to that, one can think positively about geopolitics. I've mentioned the Americans who have to be treated at least for the time being as a threat and as being completely useless when it comes to Ukraine. I've mentioned the Russians, one should name things by name, Russia is a totally mobilized fascist regime which has to be resisted. The Ukrainians are doing most of the work, but you can help make sure that they win. But moving away from Russia and the United States, there is also the larger question of what democracies do together as democracies, as states.
So given what I've said, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I think that if you're a European Union democracy, you should be thinking about enlargement. I've always thought that the EU either enlarges or dies. I think often from the EU perspective, it's the daily business which seems essential and the enlargement seems like kind of an exception.
But as I look back at the history of the European Union, what I see is something different, which is that it's actually the enlargement project which has given the European Union a future. So for democracies within the European Union, I think it's really plain as day that in order to survive and to create a future in which freedom and democracy are possible, there will have to be a very large enlargement. At the very least, in the near term, some kind of extensive agreement with major democratic powers who are essential to both resistance and construction, but for one reason or another are not inside the European Union. And I have in mind Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. Without going into the details of why these countries aren't members of the European Union, I will just note that were these countries part of the European Union, the block of democracies would suddenly be clearly the biggest economic and political zone.
Many of the problems inside Great Britain and Ukraine would be, I think, more or less automatically solved. And we would have a unit of democracies which would be able to see itself moving sturdily into the future. Now, this isn't to say that the work of other democracies outside the European Union isn't important, whether it's in Europe or Asia or Latin America or around the world. What it is to say is that if we are thinking realistically about what democracies can do, we have to start, of course, with the principles, which I tried to do, but we also have to end with the active construction, sometimes an act of visionary construction.
Thank you very much.
Leticia Zuleta de Reales
Thank you very much to Professor Snyder for this insightful message. We will now continue with the third interactive session of the forum entitled "From Legislation to Implementation: Strengthening Parliamentary Oversight at EU and National Level". The session will explore how parliaments can strengthen democratic accountability by ensuring effective oversight of how legislation is implemented, both at European and national level. It will be co-moderated by Marcos Varasin and Gaia Manco, whom I am pleased to invite to the stage. The floor is yours.
Gaia NIEMAN
Good morning and welcome to the third session of the EU Parliamentary Democracy Forum. This session is entitled From Legislation to Implementation: Strengthening Parliamentary Oversight at EU and National Level. I am Gaia Manco from the European Parliament's Directorate-General for Parliamentary Democracy Partnerships, and I'm here to moderate this session with Marcus Varassin.
Marcos Varassin
Thank you, Gaia. And good morning from my side as well. I'm Marcus Varassin, I work in the Directorate-General for Citizens' Rights, Justice and Institutional Affairs. And as the title suggests, parliaments do much more than adopt laws. They also have to follow what happens afterwards, how governments exercise their powers, how legislation is implemented, and whether political decisions deliver the results citizens expect.
And this task is getting more demanding.
Gaia NIEMAN
Governments are required to act quickly in response to crises. Effective parliamentary scrutiny is essential to preserve accountability, to preserve transparency and citizens' trust. Now, before we begin, a few notes on how the session is going to go. This is a conversation. Do not hesitate to take the floor when we open the debate.
If you would like to speak, simply raise your hand and we will call your seat number. Interpretation is available. The speaking time for the contribution is one minute and a half. Respecting the speaking time is essential so that as many people as possible can contribute to the debate. If you have questions for speakers, we'll collect them and revert to them.
Now, our discussion will be structured around two main topics. You can see them on the screen: oversight, accountability and trust; implementation of EU legislation and coordination. We will open the floor for the debate twice on each of these topics.
Marcos Varassin
Before we move on into those discussions, let's start with a quick pulse check. I would like to invite you to scan the QR code that you will find printed on the tables and open HouseSpace, the tool we will use, like yesterday, the tool we will use to gather your opinions. All participants in the forum are invited to respond to the question: how effective is parliamentary oversight in your country from a scale to one, not effective at all, to ten, highly effective? The HouseSpace question is open now.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you for participating. We see that we stayed on an average. We don't know if there are outliers, but most of you decided that how effective is oversight, well, we are at a medium level.
So these results show us what countries that are represented here think on this topic. And to put this on a broader perspective, we have a pleasure to welcome here Professor Sasha Garben. She is Professor of European Law in the Legal Studies Department of the College of Europe. Please join us on stage. Welcome.
Gaia NIEMAN
Professor Garben, in today's geopolitical and institutional context, what are the main challenges for parliamentary oversight and how can parliaments respond effectively?
Sacha Garben
Thank you very much. Well, I think the single most important and ubiquitous challenge to democratic legitimacy in general and parliamentary oversight specifically is something you already mentioned in your opening, Gaia: crisis. Crisis framing, crisis narratives, crisis governance.
Under the shadow of crisis, we have seen and we continue to see massive executive aggrandizement. This can take the form of constitutional mutations where parliaments are sidelined de jure. But it can also take a more informal form. Deals done in smoke-filled rooms. Rally around the flag discourses and fait accompli strategies that all stifle the quality of democratic control de facto.
I would like to emphasize that it is, I think, in this way, so through executive exploitation of crisis, that we are facing a democratic downturn. I agree with Princeton's Larry Bartels that in Europe, democracy is eroding from the top. It is not citizens who have lost faith in democracy in Europe. It is not voters who are specifically choosing anti-democratic positions.
It is leaders who are manipulating and exploiting certain vulnerabilities in the way we have designed our democracies, I think. The damage that can be done, has been done, and continues to be done under such a crisis framework is real and it can be lasting. A case in point, I think, is the quality and extent of budgetary control by parliaments, which has deteriorated sharply in Europe at both EU level and member state level because of the architecture that was created in the governance of first the Euro crisis and then adapted in the management of the COVID-19 crisis and the Next Generation EU program.
Changes that are introduced and presented as temporary in a crisis context tend to get entrenched. So this problem is real and I would like to sound the alarm bell a little bit as your scene setter, that it is high time for democracy now. After almost two decades of executive exploitation of polycrisis and in the face of a global surge in autocratization, we need more democracy. And we need more power to parliaments because let us not be duped into thinking that the problem with our democracies is somehow that we have too much democracy. And while we're myth-busting, here's another myth that I'd like to bust.
At the heart of this crisis narrative lies the lie that in an emergency you simply don't have time for parliament to get its act together. That's dangerous nonsense. There is always time for democracy. In any case, I don't know of any example where it was parliamentary scrutiny that made a crisis escalate so that it no longer could be resolved.
I also don't know of any example where it was precisely the sidelining of parliament that allowed a super successful resolution of a crisis. On the other hand, I do know some examples of where executive-driven and dominated and, you know, exclusion of parliament led to grave economic, societal, and democratic damage. Eurocrisis, anyone? The hopeful message is that it is never too late for democracy either, though. As we are seeing in several national parliaments, also at the moment ongoing, there are these ex-post inquiries you can do into how crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic were managed.
And this is incredibly important and powerful to hold decision-makers to account also after the fact, also ex-post. And even more hopeful, it is never too late for democracy in a kind of fundamental sense. European democracy has proven very resilient. We're seeing Hungary and Poland now bounce back from their autocratic slides.
So, keep hope and keep at it. Then more concretely as to your question, what can parliaments do to meet these challenges? So, I guess I would advise you to wise up, lawyer up, and team up. With wise up, I mean invest in high-quality independent research so that you have an information base that allows you to prevent the executive from using technical complexity as a smokescreen for the substance of their decisions as well as as a justification to structurally sideline parliament. With lawyer up, I mean first of all litigate.
Litigate to defend, perhaps even extend while you're at it, your constitutional prerogatives. In this regard, I for instance very much support the pending challenge of the European Parliament of the SAFE regulation for having been wrongly adopted on the emergency legal basis that excludes parliament.
With lawyer up, I also mean in a slightly more fundamental sense, engage in long-term legal thinking. What type of constitutional change would reinvigorate parliamentary democracy and how can you procure that? And then finally, team up, I think it speaks for itself, it's why we're here today. So within parliaments, reach across party lines and between parliaments, collaborate transnationally with the European Parliament for the joint cause of the health of representative democracy in Europe. Machiavellian executives know very well that to divide is to conquer, so the antidote must be democratic solidarity.
I very much look forward to the discussions and thank you for your kind attention.
Marcos Varassin
Professor Garben, thank you for setting the wider scene and for this inspiring scene setter. And let us now turn to the next cluster, to the first cluster actually, oversight, accountability and trust.
Gaia NIEMAN
So we were saying team up, wise up, lawyer up.
And we are talking about this now, about how oversight can be effective in practice. Do parliaments have the tools they need and how can scrutiny reinforce public trust? For this cluster, please welcome Peter De Roover, President of the Belgian House of Representatives, Nils Ušakovs, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Petitions, and Senator Ellie Whitaker from the Australian Senate. Please join us on stage. President De Roover, I start with you.
From your experience, are parliaments sufficiently equipped today to hold governments accountable? And where are the main gaps in oversight and what lessons can be drawn from the Belgian experience? Please.
Peter Moors
I hope it works, it does.
If you allow me, dear colleagues, I'm very much attached to the language richness of the European Union, which is I think a fundamental element, and for that reason I will speak in Dutch. There is a translation, but I think it is very important that we try to have that richness of Europe. Dank u in eerste instantie om hier te mogen aanwezig zijn vanuit mijn praktische ervaring met parlementen. En als u mij toestaat, dan zou ik even willen stijgen naar een overzicht waar we een model hebben, niet van scheiding der machten, maar van evenwicht der machten, balance of power. Rechterlijke macht, uitvoerende macht, wetgevende macht.
En daarmee sluit ik aan bij de vorige spreker: de wetgevende macht is van die drie de meest democratische.
Zij wordt rechtstreeks samengesteld door de kiezer. Die andere dienen een belangrijke rol te spelen in de balance of power, staat buiten kijf. Maar het is vandaag 250, of ja, dit jaar 250 jaar Declaration of Independence in de Verenigde Staten. Het is heel belangrijk om de totstandkoming van de Amerikaanse grondwet in de jaren daarna, het debat tussen de federalists en de anti-federalists even te bekijken. En dan valt het mij op dat daar een congres is georganiseerd bestaande uit twee huizen, de House of Representatives en de Senate, waarbij eigenlijk de redenering was: we hebben er twee nodig om elkaar in te controleren.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition, was het idee van Hamilton. En ik kijk daar nu een beetje verbaasd naartoe, want blijkbaar was op dat ogenblik de angst dat de wetgevende macht zou domineren. Ik denk dat die angst vandaag niet meer hoeft te bestaan, want de wetgevende macht is in het geheel van die trias politica naar mijn mening vandaag het kneusje, de zwakste van de drie. De uitvoerende macht, die wordt in een gemiddelde Europese democratie, ik spreek vanuit mijn ervaring, gefabriceerd vanuit een meerderheid in het parlement. Maar we stellen de facto vast dat nadat het vertrouwen is gegeven aan die regering, dat parlement of die meerderheid doorgaans nogal serviel is ten opzichte van die uitvoerende macht.
Men heeft ooit het vertrouwen gegeven bij de inauguratie van die regering en vanaf dat ogenblik wordt die controlerende macht eigenlijk verschoven naar de oppositie. De oppositie probeert de regering in moeilijkheden te brengen, ook om politieke redenen, en de meerderheid probeert die eigenlijk daarvan te vrijwaren. En dat betekent dat dat parlement ondergeschikt wordt aan de uitvoerende macht. En dan hebben we de rechterlijke macht die heel terecht ervoor zorgt dat maatregelen van de uitvoerende en de wetgevende macht binnen de context zijn van de regels die zijn opgesteld. Dat is het model, erg goed.
Maar natuurlijk is dat model maar volwaardig wanneer die wetgevende macht, wanneer ze bijvoorbeeld wordt teruggefloten of wanneer een uitvoerende macht wordt teruggefloten, dat die ook opnieuw de ruimte heeft om het debat te voeren over die regels zelf. Ze hoort die regels dan na te leven tot het ogenblik waarop ze die wijzigt. Vandaar dat het de wetgevende macht is. En daar zien we dat de ruimte van die wetgevende macht om allerlei redenen steeds verder wordt ingeperkt. Dus ik denk dat dat een vanuit mijn ervaring als lid van een wetgevende macht dat dat een element is dat de democratie bedreigt.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you for your intervention. Thank you, Peter De Roover. And you will be able to react later during the debate. Now I would like to turn to Mr. Ušakovs. The effective oversight is also about citizens seeing that institutions are accountable.
So how can parliamentary scrutiny strengthen the trust of citizens? And what can be the role of transparency and engagement with civil society in making this oversight successful in the end?
Nils Ušakovs
Yeah, thank you for the question. Good morning. Parliamentary scrutiny actually builds trust when people see that the problems of their everyday life are heard, are examined, and are followed up by democratic institutions. And that means that scrutiny has to be on one hand effective and on the other hand it has to be open. So it's about how decisions are taken and about what scrutiny actually delivers at the end of the day.
I will address you from the perspective of a very special committee, Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament. So I will start from procedural part.
Citizen participation is written into the European Union treaties. Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union says that citizens and their associations must have the chance to make their views known, and it calls for an open and transparent dialogue with them. From practical point of view, I would like to focus on the right to petition the European Parliament, and this right is guaranteed by two articles, 24 and 227 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. And it gives EU citizens and residents a direct line to Parliament. They can bring a concrete problem to our attention, as long as it concerns obviously an area where the European Union is active.
And petitions are also, as you would imagine, itself an important source of information for parliamentary scrutiny, because when we handle a petition, the Committee on Petitions, we call it PETI, can ask the European Commission, for instance, in writing how EU law is being applied, and this can lead to an infringement procedure against a Member State. In other words, petitions show us where EU law is not working properly or where it might be broken. And from Brussels such problems are not often, are often hard to see. Well, going further on, citizen participation and parliamentary oversight, where they meet. Petitioners can present their concerns directly to Members of the European Parliament.
This is a part of a procedure. And the European Commission can be asked to respond in public. And for me, this is a very concrete example of democracy in action.
Citizens get a unique opportunity to deal directly with both the legislative and the executive power, openly, transparently and democratically. Scrutiny builds trust only if people understand what happens after they have raised an issue. So transparency must cover the whole process. People should be able to see whether anything was done about their concern, and just as important, if nothing more can be done, which is quite often an issue, they should get a clear explanation why. In PETI, we try to make this process as transparent as possible.
On the petitions portal, anyone can follow published petitions and read the documents on how they are examined. And petitioners themselves are informed directly about each stage of the procedure and about the decisions taken on their petitions. We also keep improving access to information. One example: we have connected the petitions portal to the Commission's infringement database. So it means that now citizens can see directly whether an infringement procedure is linked to an issue raised in a petition.
And finally, people need to see that taking part can make a tangible difference.
A good example I would like to mention is the European Capitals of Small Retail. It started with a citizen's petition, then it became a European Parliament resolution, then it received 3 million euros in EU funding as a preparatory action, and then it became a working EU initiative and the first three European Capitals of Small Retail have been selected for 2026. It's an important example because tangible results, we don't have a very long list of them, but when we can deliver, that means that scrutiny actually works and it's important for such an institution as the European Parliament. Thank you.
Marcos Varassin
Thank you. Thank you very much. Senator Whiteka, the Australian Parliament is often cited as having one of the strongest scrutiny systems. Which features of that model have proven most effective and what lessons could other parliaments draw from the Australian experience?
Ellie Whiteaker
Thank you very much. I'm delighted to join this esteemed panel all the way from Australia to talk about the Senate. And I can't think of a more important moment for us to be having these really important conversations like we're having at this forum over these few days.
One of the things that drew me to the Senate was this very topic, its role in scrutiny, scrutinizing the government, scrutinizing the executive, scrutinizing legislation. And as a, we're a two-house parliament, so the House of Representatives, we call it the lower house, and the Senate, which we call the upper house. And the Senate is very much considered the house of review. Certainly that's how we teach it to kids in school. And what's particular about the Senate is it's very rarely controlled by the government of the day.
And that means debate is particularly robust. The passage of legislation is never guaranteed. And even the day-to-day running of the Senate is subject to decisions of the chamber. And so we often arrive of a morning of a parliamentary sitting day to a suspension motion or something that throws the government's plans for the day into chaos. And there are a number of ways that the Senate plays this role of the house of review.
Committee of the whole allows scrutiny of bills in the parliament where senators ask questions of ministers who are presenting a bill to the parliament. And these debates can go on for many, many hours, sometimes even days. Disallowance powers ensure parliamentary oversight over decisions of the executive.
We hold Senate estimates three times per year, which gives senators the opportunity to question ministers and government officials about the budget. Our scrutiny of bills committee assesses every bill against a set of accountability standards. These are all really important functions. But I think the thing that makes our parliamentary scrutiny system in the Senate so special is our committee system, and in particular the role that public hearings play in hearing from ordinary Australians right across our very, very large country and listening to them about their perspectives on legislation. This engagement that we have with ordinary citizens, with civil society, advocacy groups, businesses, it allows people to have a say before a bill passes the Parliament, before senators are asked to vote on a bill.
And I'm going to share one particular example of an inquiry that I chaired. I'm the chair of the Community Affairs Committee. It covers health care, aged care, disability, social services. And we recently inquired into a bill amending our National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Now, in Australia, we provide some of the best disability care in the world, if we do say so ourselves. And the National Disability Insurance Scheme provides financial support to people with disability. And over recent years, the cost of that program had become extremely high, the biggest of any social program that we run. And there had been concerns about fraud and integrity. And so the government sought to make sure that that disability insurance scheme was sustainable.
Now, of course, there were really serious concerns about that bill in the disability community. And so the committee that I chaired, we left the walls of the parliament, we traveled across the country, which is no small feat in a country like ours. And we heard directly from lived experience witnesses, people with disability, their family and their carers about the impact that the bill, that the changes that our government were proposing would have on their lives. And as a result of those hearings, the government made a series of quite significant amendments to that bill.
The bill looked quite different at the end of that process. And I think when we're talking about trust, when we are living in times where ordinary people sometimes feel like the parliaments where we are privileged to sit in don't represent them, the best we can do is give them a voice and listen to that voice and respond accordingly. And I think that's a really powerful way that we can, that we can play a role as legislators, as parliamentarians. And I'm really proud that in the Australian Senate we do that, not just for this bill but for lots of bills. It's a very, very important part of our work.
And so my best, I guess, advice, recommendation is get out of the walls of the parliament, talk to ordinary people about the legislation that you are considering and ask them how it will impact them and listen to them when they give you the answer.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you, Senator Whitaker. So now it's the moment to bring everyone of you in the conversation. We thank again our speakers and you stay with us maybe to answer some questions. We have a question for all of you for the debate. What makes parliamentary oversight effective in practice?
Where are the biggest gaps that parliament need to address?
Please you can come forward with your reactions and with your reflections and questions. I remind you that there is a limit that we would like you to respect of one minute and a half. And when you take the floor, state your name and the institution or organization that you're representing. So we want to see your hands up for your contributions. 197 please.
Table 197 please.
Ildikó Éva Szopov
Thank you so much. Ildikó Sopov of the Hungarian National Assembly. I'm just trying to work out the microphone.
I just really briefly wanted to reflect in light of this question on two elements. I think crisis was an important one as we've heard in Mrs. Garban's keynote. And the Hungarian Parliament, many of you might know that actually, that actually terminated in May the state of emergency regime, which was actually in place since 2022, which actually meant ruling by decree for over six years in the light of crisis, which obviously was a really good example of how you twist the system and basically are using lawful tools which were given by the constitution but still put aside the efficiency what is needed. A second thought I would like to bring into is never too late for a change. The very first things which we did was connected to establishing a parliamentary inquiring committee, which wasn't place in place before.
The one I'm member to, it's connected to the Hungarian National Bank. Many of you might have known that under the previous leadership, there was an amazing amount, billions, thousands of billions forints used under the National Bank's assets connected to mismanagement of foundation. So basically what we did, the committee itself has been enhanced. But what I believe is important for the matter of the question, that such a committee will have to have effective powers, enforceable powers. If it's just on the surface without the real essence of summoning, being able to summon officials, then it's not going to work.
I'm relating to one of the keynote speakers who said that scrutiny only works if the if the citizens, the voters can follow up on the issues which they've raised before. So Közhang is a brand new interface where the Hungarian citizen can actually follow and see what is happening related to their intervention, their feedbacks related to the public consultations which they took part in. Thank you so much.
This is what we recently changed. And one last item is Köszhong.
Speaker 11
Hello. My name is Axel. I'm representing EU&U, which is a civil society organization. And earlier you asked us to rank or rate the state of parliamentary oversight. And I, as many people, rated it a five.
But if I had to rate it in terms of institutional power, I probably would have said around 10.
But if I had to rate it purely on citizen initiative, probably a zero. And in Belgium, we've had a debate about basically dissolving our Senate and making it into a citizens' assembly, a permanent citizens' assembly, which is a very interesting idea. And I think that parliamentary oversight could be more effective if it was more democratic in the etymological meaning, aka people power. Yeah.
Speaker 13
Vielen Dank. Ich möchte eine Frage an Präsident Rober stellen. Er hat die drei Gewalten gegenübergestellt und davon gesprochen, dass die das Parlament die demokratischste Gewalt ist. Danach führte er die Exekutive an und zur Judikative hat er nur mehr gemeint, die zwingt das Parlament manchmal dazu, neue Regelungen zu schaffen, und das schwäche die Demokratie. Ich möchte Sie fragen, inwieweit muss die Judikative die Demokratie auch immer mit einbeziehen, also den Willen des Volkes, und wo liegen die Grenzen bei der Auswahl der Judikative aus dem Volk?
Adela Militaru
Thank you. My name is Adela Militaru from the Roma for Democracy Foundation. I want to address one word that stayed with me from the conversation we had yesterday, and that is courage, and link it to enforcing consequences. Because I think when we speak about gaps in what makes oversight effective is the courage to go all the way. We've heard about legal litigation, and I think this shift that we have been seeing even at in this house, all the battles that have been undergoing for the past few years, and for changing priorities, including more defense, like we heard yesterday.
And this is a personal, not an official position of my foundation, but I think one of the gaps that we really need to fill is the consequence of fighting all the way for what is right and to give the voice to the citizens, like we've heard on the panel earlier, to ensure that we see the outcomes clearly and that there is enforcement. Thank you.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you. So maybe we can go back to our speakers if they want to answer some of the questions that were addressed. Ah, Mr. De Roover, since there was a question directly addressed to you.
Peter Moors
Ja, dankjewel. Ik zal in specifiek op de op de vraag ingaan van de Oostenrijkse collega's of collega. Kijk, de rol van de rechterlijke macht in het evenwicht der machten. Ik denk niet dat Montesquieu gesproken heeft over de scheiding der machten. Dat is een belangrijk onderscheid.
Er is een wederzijdse controle van de machten op elkaar. Trouwens, Montesquieu heeft het niet eens genoemd in de letterlijke betekenis, maar goed.
Zie we bijvoorbeeld, en excuseer dat ik terugga naar de het het Amerikaanse model, omdat dat toch wel een debat is geweest dat ook bij ons navolging heeft gekregen in onze instellingen. Oorspronkelijk in de Amerikaanse grondwet was niet bepaald dat het Hooggerechtshof zou kunnen wetten controleren op hun grondwettelijkheid. Het was Chief Justice Marshall, in de geschiedenis misschien te weinig genoemd, die eigenlijk als voorzitter, als als van het Hooggerechtshof heeft bepaald in een beroemde zaak dat het Hooggerechtshof kan bepalen of een wet dient uitgevoerd te worden. Hij heeft dus zelf eigenlijk de ruimte van het Hooggerechtshof verbreed. In ons eigen land hebben wij nog maar sedert het einde van de twintigste eeuw een grondwettelijk hof.
We kennen natuurlijk het voorbeeld van Duitsland, het Bundesverfassungsgericht, dat omwille van de ervaring in Duitsland heel erg belangrijk is. Men wilde zeg maar ja, het gepeupel desgevallend kunnen intomen, hè, dat is toch de achterliggende idee geweest.
En dat zie je ook in die debatten in de Verenigde Staten tussen die federalisten en die antifederalisten, waar de federalisten, Hamilton in het bijzonder, opkwam voor de aristocratie van de geest. De uitvoerende, de wetgevende macht moest gevuld worden met mensen die de lange termijn in het oog hielden, die zich niet lieten opjutten door de publieke opinie, die daar boven stonden, die een mandaat kregen om de dingen te doen die nodig waren. Versus de antifederalisten die dan een heel puur direct democratisch model voorstonden en waar eigenlijk een, wie beoordeelt dan de wettigheid van de wetten? Dat is de wetgever. En dat is niet de, dat is geen hooggerechtshof.
Dus je ziet daar in de loop van de geschiedenis een, hoe moet ik het zeggen, een pendule die van de ene naar de andere kant evolueert. We hebben ook het debat of een rechterlijke macht verkozen moet worden. In de Verenigde Staten wordt het hoofd van de uitvoerende macht verkozen. In België niet en in vele van onze landen niet, dat is indirect. In de Verenigde Staten worden vele rechters verkozen.
Ik vond dat heel vreemd toen ik in de Verenigde Staten was bij de verkiezingen, dat je dan niet alleen, je ziet daar ook affiches van stem voor mij als rechter. Het is iets wat wij in Europa een vreemd, vreemd iets vinden. Daar zijn misschien argumenten voor. Bon, dat wil ik hier in het midden laten. Wat ik belangrijk vind en wat ik daarstraks heb proberen te zeggen, is dat in dat evenwicht der machten iedereen zijn rol heeft, want men spreekt dikwijls over het respecteren van de scheiding der machten.
Eigenlijk respecteert niemand die. Als een rechter zegt: die wet moet niet, of een Hooggerechtshof zegt: die wet is ongrondwettelijk, zou je op een bepaald punt kunnen zeggen dat die de scheiding der machten niet respecteert. Maar dat is nu net waarom we niet over de scheiding der machten spreken, maar over de balans, het evenwicht der machten. En dan vind ik het volkomen terecht dat een rechter, een Hooggerechtshof, kan scheidsrechter zijn in de vraag of de hoofdregel, wat de grondwet dan toch is, de hoofdregel boven de gewone wet, of die wordt nageleefd. Ik vind dat volkomen terecht.
Maar dat evenwicht is maar voldoende gegarandeerd als die wetgevende macht vervolgens, na die uitspraak en zich daarbij neerleggend, de ruimte heeft om een debat te voeren binnen de regels zoals die voorzien zijn, of men die regel zelf ja dan nee moet aanpassen. Dat is natuurlijk de essentie van dat evenwicht der machten. Als dat niet kan, als wij de regels waarop het Hooggerechtshof zich baseert een beetje beschouwen als een heilig boek waar niet aan kan getornd worden, dan denk ik dat je een onevenwicht der machten krijgt.
En dan denk ik, want we zien ook in de Verenigde Staten dat je twee scholen hebt. Moet je een regel interpreteren in zijn oorspronkelijke betekenis of moet de rechter de evolutie van de samenleving meenemen in zijn of haar oordeel? De mate waarin de wetgevende macht de evolutie van de samenleving kan meenemen in nieuwe regels vermindert de verplichting van de rechter om dat te doen. En als de wetgevende macht, hoe zou ik zeggen, gedwongen is om om bij het status quo te blijven in alle omstandigheden, dan zien we dat de rechter eigenlijk de interpretatie in nieuwe omstandigheden overneemt. En ik weet niet of dat vanuit democratisch oogpunt de beste oplossing is.
Marcos Varassin
There's one more question, one last question please at the table 156 please.
Speaker 15
Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, my name is, I'm a member of Latvian national parliament and I would like to address and make a question about the trust.
This week till this Saturday our national government is holding national governmental elections. How would you see the biggest challenges that the small democracies like Baltics are facing from the populism during this election time? And how would the political parties and the parliaments would respond while maintaining this public trust? Thank you.
Ellie Whiteaker
I think it's a real important question, it's something we're thinking a lot about in Australia. I think the biggest challenge is misinformation, disinformation online. That's certainly what we're seeing. We've taken some pretty strong action to try and manage some of those challenges. We've banned social media for people under the age of 16.
We are looking to implement a digital duty of care, which will put the onus on platforms, big tech, to take more responsibility about the kind of content that they allow online. We are also undertaking an inquiry into our most recent federal election and looking at misinformation, disinformation, and how we can look to make sure that the conversations that we're having during an election campaign are based on fact and that people are able to make a real choice when they go to the ballot box. I think these are really, really crucial questions for protecting democracy. There's lots of work to do and I think there's lots of lessons that we can share across the globe to make sure that we protect what is most important in our democracy.
Nils Ušakovs
The populism we experience in Europe, on one hand, is obviously a result of deliberate disinformation and deliberate activities against our societies, against our democracies in general and of course in the Baltic states in particular. On the other hand, populism is a result of mistakes done by democratic institutions and by mainstream political forces. Every time we do something wrong, it gives an opportunity for people who use populism as an instrument, as a tool, to use it more effective way. We have to keep it in mind.
We also have to keep in mind that we are, our societies at the moment are experiencing the transition of the magnitude not experienced before. I am talking about the way people communicate, the way information is circulating, the way people are participating at a civil, at a political level in the processes. And the forms of this participation, they will be changing as well as intensity. And the ability of democratic institutions to cope with new forms of participation, of course taking into account legal, practical, probably most important budgetary limits, but the abilities to deal with these new forms of participation actually in the future will be the key to the survival of democratic institutions. So that means, making long story short, we have to be more effective in delivering results and then populism will have less chances to deliver their own success.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you, thank you for your replies. Thank you all for participating. So we have heard that effective oversight depends on many factors such as institutional capacities, transparency, but also formal powers.
So for now we would like to thank again our speakers for this first part as we will move now to our second part for our session. Thank you. Let us now move on to our second cluster. The second cluster is about implementation of EU legislation and coordination. The European Parliament and national parliaments have distinct roles and competencies, but better exchange of information, expertise and good practice can help each parliament exercise its own scrutiny role and more being more effectively.
Before we hear from our speakers, we would like to take again the pulse of the room, thinking about the issues we just discussed and posing the following question. What would most improve the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny?
Marcos Varassin
Better and more timely access to information, stronger parliamentary expertise, greater transparency and public engagement, better cooperation between parliaments, stronger follow-up on implementation, or other subjects. The house-based question is open now. You may choose up to two of the following options. So, we see many replies coming in. If we can see on the screen, so we'll have stronger follow-up on implementation and greater transparency and public engagement as the ones that you chose the most.
Thank you for taking part in our little survey.
Gaia NIEMAN
These results provide us a bridge to our second cluster, where we will look more specifically at scrutiny of EU decision-making and implementation, and at cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments. And to explore this, we are delighted to welcome Mariëlle Moorman, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, and Brando Benifei, Chair of the Delegation for relations with the United States and co-chair of the Working Group on the implementation and enforcement of the Artificial Intelligence Act. Thank you. Welcome. Let me start, Vice-President Moorman, the Dutch Parliament has well-established a well-established role in scrutinizing EU affairs.
And drawing on this experience, how can national parliaments strengthen scrutiny on EU decision-making and the implementation of EU legislation once it has been adopted?
Mariëlle Moorman
Good morning. Thank you very much for having invited the Dutch House of Representatives to share some practices on the scrutiny of EU decision-making, legislation, and implementation.
Our House in the Netherlands feels the responsibility of strong parliamentary oversight and the added value of timely and transparent involvement in the European policy-making process. In that way, we aim to contribute to active participation and public trust in the process as well as in the outcome. And hopefully today's exchange of experience may contribute to doing that even better and of course hopefully together. From my own previous experience as an alderman for the municipality of Amsterdam, I know that many citizens still perceive European decision-making as distant, as insufficiently transparent. And at a time when Europe is confronted with growing external challenges and geopolitical uncertainties, the value of European cooperation is, it is clear.
And this creates all kind of a dilemma. While effective cooperation at the European level is increasingly necessary, public support for that cooperation depends on people understanding how decisions are being made and being able to hold decision-makers accountable, exactly yes, as Professor just said.
Actually, it is a false dilemma because strengthening transparency and scrutiny of national parliaments throughout the EU decision-making process is not only a democratic necessity, but also an essential condition for maintaining public trust and legitimacy. So over the last four decades, the House of Representatives has made much progress in gathering the right type of information at the right time. To that end, the government provides us with a public appreciation of every new proposal of the European Commission. Every. We use to, for example, use it in debates with the responsible Dutch ministers before they take part in Council meetings.
And following such a debate, members of parliament may table motions that are politically binding. So last year, it concerned a total of 500, of which half was adopted. And of course, this may sound inconvenient for the government. And it is. But nevertheless, we regard this as a best practice because it strengthens the democratic process.
So to give you an example, in January this year a special European Council was called at a short notice about the situation in Greenland and possible trade tariffs from the US. And the Dutch Prime Minister could only enter the meeting room in Brussels after the Dutch House of Representatives has voted on motions on this negotiation position. So yes, more democratic and a bit inconvenient for the government of course, but it's better. Another instrument to inform ourselves is also to nominate so-called EU rapporteurs. And their role is slightly different from rapporteurs of the European Parliament.
They are not so much co-legislators, but they gather information on behalf of the standing committees, coordinate the scrutiny of EU file within the house and represent in Brussels and other capitals to advocate for particular position. So in this respect the House of Representatives warmly welcomes recently established practice of rapporteurs dialogues where rapporteurs of the European Parliament take the initiative to discuss their work with counterparts from national parliaments.
But nevertheless, we still miss information on the outcome of Council meetings, trilogues and more informal procedures such as non-papers, so we need more transparency on that. Last year, our EU rapporteur on implementation of EU legislation drew two striking conclusions. One, there was too little knowledge on the actual consequences of EU legislation at the national level and two, there was too little involvement of implementing organizations and their expertise, such as our national agency on infrastructure or on supervision of financial markets. This has led to the problems that could have been tackled earlier on. In order to address these issues, the house is currently carrying out a pilot project which is so-called EU scientific assessment, the EU-wetenschapstoets.
And through this project, independent experts evaluate proposals from the European Commission to estimate the impact on Dutch society and the economy. So far, assessments have already been completed on one, the food and feed safety simplification omnibus package and two, climate targets 2040. So I'd like to thank you very much for your attention and I'm looking forward to the discussion and to learn from best practices from all the different parliaments. Thank you very much.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you, Deputy Speaker Moorman. Thank you also for mentioning the importance of dialogues between rapporteurs. Now we turn to Mr. Benifei. The implementation of the Artificial Intelligence Act, the AI Act, has highlighted the importance of cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments. You yourself met with national parliaments in April during the Artificial Intelligence Days here at the European Parliament.
So, drawing on this experience of collaboration, how can this cooperation be strengthened to ensure that EU legislation is applied effectively, but also consistently?
Brando Benifei
I think this discussion is very timely and necessary for the reasons that the colleague has already explained, but also because I really feel that today it's a very important duty of the parliaments in a moment when democracy is under tension all over the continent and elsewhere, that we keep our executives accountable on realizing, implementing effective operational instruments to make the legislation reality. Because our citizens often are worried that we have rules that are unclear because it's not clear how they will be really implemented, if they will be implemented and when. Think, for example, on the latest report of the European Parliament on the application of EU law that found that the single market directives are transposed on average 12 months after the prescribed deadline. So we have a structural delay that is not okay, because we have discussions, we exercise our powers, but then we need the executives to do the part that is in their duty, in their responsibility to make the legislation effective. And this is very important, for example, when we talk about the AI Act, because we discussed with the national parliaments about implementation, as you said, also in a specific meeting, because we have national authorities that need to be designated to exercise their functions.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
And in fact, the majority of the member states missed the August 2025 deadline to designate the AI Act authorities. But let me talk about another digital legislation piece, on the DSA. The Commission had to take five member states to court for failures regarding the Digital Services Act. So I think that when we look at these topics, we need to be frank. Our businesses, our citizens, our civil society is being damaged by fragmentation, delays, and unclearness on how we implement legislation.
And I think that our scrutiny role is extremely important to make this clearer, to streamline all of this, and to keep our executives accountable. Because I give you an example. Today in my country, in Italy, there will be some new rules entering into force with a government decree regarding some aspects of civil responsibility on AI. And this is the fruit, in my view, of an error by the European Commission, because the European Commission has withdrawn the AI Liability Directive at the beginning of this mandate, contrary to the willingness of the majority of the JURI Committee of this Parliament, that was the one dealing with it.
And it made a mistake because now we have fragmentation on AI liability rules. I think we need to to get clarity and and when we talk especially about complex issues, because otherwise the EU fails, because we become extremely fragmented, our single market becomes not coordinated, not harmonized in a sufficient way and we end up with creating more problems than solutions for for our citizens. And in fact, I conclude on this, today we have a scrutiny meeting of the AI working group that I co-chair on very important topics. The issue of contrasting systemic risks of AI, the topic of the debate of these weeks everywhere in in the news. And this is a typical issue where we need cooperation from the level of the member states to actually gather information, to coordinate between their authorities and the AI office of the European Union.
And to support this real cooperation that can let us deliver on such difficult topics like preventing systemic risks, humanity risks for AI, the Parliament can play a crucial role in verifying that the procedures are applied, that the organizations are given the right resources to work, and that there are no unnecessary delays or wrong behaviors from the executive level. So in my view, cooperation when we deal about these topics, because parliamentary cooperation between European Parliament and national parliaments is exerted in very different ways, when we look at such difficult topics like dealing with AI regulation, the crucial point is to keep our executives accountable in a coordinated way so that we can be sure that we deliver for what the citizens are asking us. Because otherwise we say that we are, as you said, the first legislation in the world, but then the application falls short, and I think it's not what our citizens want from us.
Marcos Varassin
Thank you. Thank you to both. Very inspiring input to our discussion. So we would now like to open up, bring in the participants in the room into the conversation. And we would like to welcome any reactions to the statements, to the input, any thoughts on your side, always on the specific topic of how can European Parliament and national parliaments strengthen the scrutiny of EU decision-making and implementation.
Please.
Malika Sorel
Bonjour, Monica Sorel, je suis députée européenne. Je trouve que les tables rondes sont extrêmement importantes dans un moment où nos démocraties, faut pas se voiler la face, ça a été dit, sont en danger. Mais je pense qu'il y a un certain nombre de sujets qui n'ont pas été abordés, même si ça a été cité à plusieurs moments. Il y a aujourd'hui une nécessité de l'exemplarité des élus. Un proverbe chinois dit : le poisson pourrit par la tête.
Surtout en période de crise économique, certaines choses ne sont pas acceptées par nos concitoyens. Ça a été abordé aussi, la question de la corruption. On a une commission qui va parler de la corruption, je pense qu'il faut être intraitable sur ces sujets. Je pose la question aussi à mon collègue : lorsque nous votons au sein du Parlement européen sur la levée d'immunité de députés, il arrive que, parce que ce sont les députés, figurez-vous, qui décident si on doit lever l'immunité ou pas. Moi je trouve que ça ne devrait même pas exister, l'immunité des parlementaires, on doit être jugés comme les citoyens.
Il arrive que des demandes du parquet européen soient refusées, des demandes de levée d'immunité, je trouve ça catastrophique. Donc l'exemplarité.
J'ai une question, par exemple, parce qu'il n'y a pas que la question, cher collègue, de la difficulté de la transposition des lois. Lorsque nous avons voté, moi je n'étais pas encore député, des règles qui ont mis l'industrie européenne à genoux, l'industrie automobile à genoux. On n'a pas fait de mea culpa. Il y a véritablement un problème. Et aujourd'hui, pourquoi il y a la montée des populismes ?
Ça a été dit, parce que les populistes surfent sur les erreurs des élus. Donc il faut pouvoir aussi revenir sur cette expérience. J'ai une question aussi, mais c'était dommage à la précédente table ronde, notre collègue, alors c'était des Pays-Bas, qui a parlé de quelque chose de très important. Non, je ne sais pas, je crois que c'était la précédente, qui a parlé de quelque chose de très important. Elle a dit, non c'est vous madame, le ministre est arrivé et le ministre a dû attendre que les élus décident est-ce que l'augmentation des taxes des Américains sur les produits européens était acceptable ou pas.
Alors je voudrais vous poser une question. Qu'est-ce que vous pensez des discussions actuelles ? Ici au Parlement européen, il y a une montée en puissance d'une demande de la disparition de l'unanimité au sein du Conseil. Parce que ça voudrait dire que certaines décisions peuvent être prises en méprisant, c'est comme ça que les citoyens vont le vivre, une partie de la population européenne. On peut passer outre.
Et dernier point sur les élargissements de l'Union européenne.
Moi je le vis ici au Parlement européen, j'estime que 720 députés c'est déjà trop nombreux. Est-ce que vous pensez pas, parce que c'est une question de dilution de la responsabilité et du fait de s'engager dans les discussions, plus on est nombreux plus il y a dilution des responsabilités. Qu'est-ce que vous pensez du fait d'imposer avec les élargissements qu'il y ait un maintien du nombre de députés et aussi un maintien du même nombre de commissaires européens ? On le voit actuellement avec la Commission européenne, 27 c'est trop et il y a beaucoup de portefeuilles qui se superposent. Et pour nos chers collègues et on le vit, parfois on ne sait même plus à quel commissaire européen il faut s'adresser et eux-mêmes ils empiètent sur les responsabilités des commissaires d'autres commissaires et cetera.
Que pensez-vous de ces propositions ? Je vous remercie.
Marcos Varassin
We are gathering more questions and more input and then we come back to our guest speakers. We have one in the here, 74.
Jiří Barták
Hello, my name is Jiří Barták and deputy deputy speaker of Czech Chamber of Deputies.
We have two chambers, Senate and, and Deputies. And I would like to continue with the question of my colleague before. Maybe I will try speak in Czech.
Marcos Varassin
Umberto Eco said the language of Europe is translation and simultaneous interpretation. Please.
Jiří Barták
Děkuji. Dámy a pánové, tady zazněla podle mého velmi důležitá slova od mé předřečnice a já bych rád ještě možná doplnil jednu věc, která si myslím, že trápí i více občanů v naší zemi. Zvolili si své zástupce, ti se dostali v rámci řádných voleb do Evropského parlamentu a najednou v Evropském parlamentu došlo k tomu, že se využil cordon sanitaire. Patří, patří tenhle způsob demokracie, nebo je to ještě způsob demokracie, když volené zástupce z nějaké země jiní zástupci odsunou někam za bránu?
Vím, že se v tom v té reálné politice se až tak úplně nedodržuje, ale patří vůbec tohle do parlamentní demokracie? Děkuji.
Speaker 22
Thank you very much. My name is Hind and I'm here representing European Parents' Association, which brings together more than a hundred parents' associations across Europe. So we heard today that citizens actually worry when it is not clear how and when rules will be implemented, and also the idea that civil society is among those affected when implementation is delayed and fragmented. So we heard this over this session and other sessions and we fully share that concern and we see it very concretely, mainly in education. So education is a high-risk area under the AI Act.
AI tools are already entering classrooms, in assessments, in learning platforms, sometimes in how children are guided and evaluated in on a pace that is very hard to follow. If if implementation actually differs from one country to another, children across Europe may not be equally protected.
So parents are often the first to see how these tools are actually used with their children. Yet today there is no clear channel for that experience to be fed into oversight. So we believe that parliamentary scrutiny would be stronger if it could draw on this knowledge from the ground and if families were treated as partners in checking whether legislations deliver. So my question to the panel is as follows: how can civil society and mainly parents' organizations be structurally involved in monitoring and in implementation of AI Act in education together with the European Parliament and national parliaments? Thank you very much.
Marcos Varassin
I have another request for taking the floor on 304 from Portugal, please.
Speaker 23
Muito obrigado, venho do Parlamento português e, focando-nos neste tema, nós, num contexto geopolítico cada vez mais exigente, nós consideramos que uma questão central é saber se os mecanismos de fiscalização existentes se são realmente suficientes para garantir a responsabilização das instituições europeias.
E bem sabemos que a Comissão Europeia tem um papel fundamental enquanto guardiã dos tratados e na fiscalização da aplicação do direito da União. No entanto, se o Parlamento Europeu exerce uma espécie de supervisão do supervisor, importa perceber até que ponto é que essa supervisão é efetiva na prática. Por isso, a minha questão é muito concreta: que mecanismos é que podem ser reforçados para garantir uma fiscalização mais eficaz da Comissão Europeia quando existem falhas na aplicação ou execução do direito da União? E sobretudo, que papel concreto podem desempenhar os parlamentos nacionais nesse controlo? Muito obrigado.
Speaker 25
Sì, grazie. Io penso che il dialogo tra i parlamenti sia importante per far sì che una democrazia sia decidente. Perché quando la democrazia non decide, quando si blocca il processo decisionale, allora lì arriva la sfiducia. E prima c'è stato detto giustamente che noi abbiamo un ruolo come parlamenti nazionali quando normative adottate dall'Unione Europea non vengono recepite dai governi. E questo attribuisce a noi parlamenti nazionali quel ruolo di controllo rispetto ai governi nazionali.
Questo rafforza la democrazia decidente a livello europeo.
Dall'altro lato, ogni volta che si apre una procedura di infrazione, ogni volta che noi deleghiamo questo controllo a un'attività giurisdizionale, vuol dire che stiamo arrivando tardi. Quando noi adottiamo una direttiva che ventisette stati membri su ventisette non recepiscono, forse in quel caso vuol dire che è la direttiva a essere sbagliata, che non doveva essere adottata. Quindi questo dialogo vale sia dal punto di vista dei parlamenti sui governi, sia dal punto di vista dei parlamenti nazionali per aiutare il Parlamento Europeo a prendere decisioni che possano davvero essere effettive per i cittadini.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you. We scan the room. So, if we don't have, we have already a lot of content and questions, so I thank you for bringing so many contributions to the discussion. And before we move on, actually we have time for our speakers to react, reply many questions, and maybe Vice-President Moorman, we could start with you.
Mariëlle Moorman
Yes, thank you very much for all the questions and your involvement with this subject. I think it's very important that we discuss this. And I think that also your questions reflect that, that we really see that we have to be more transparent, that it has to be more clear to all the citizens how our legislation works. I really loved the keynote of Professor Garben because she made really clear that democracy erodes from the top. And I think that's a very important notion to keep in mind, especially for us, because we are the top.
So we should take this in mind in thinking how we make everything clear and transparent every day. So I really loved the question from the parents' association. Thank you for being here because I think this really nailed it to the bottom of what we need to discuss here.
But I think it starts with the question why it is necessary. It is necessary because we work here for the people, for the, for all the different countries. And the fact that you are here and that you take your notions on the table from the parents who are sometimes scared, worried about their kids because they learn things in the classrooms from big tech and they are worried how they are made consumers of big tech, how they are, how information is sometimes not real. So these are the notions we have to take in mind. And I think the question is not so much how, because we can do everything, but why it is necessary.
And we have to think about that every day. I also really liked what Professor Timothy Snyder was saying in his remarks at the beginning. He said, and I think this is something we really have to take in mind as well, if we go this way, we have a futureless future. A futureless future. There is no future without democracy.
So what we are doing every day, the whole democratic process, we have to take in mind how we shape the future and how we can do that in a democratic way. Thank you.
Brando Benifei
First of all, on this intervention from the organization of the families, I think that today, when we are now starting the work on the Kids Act, so regarding finally legislation on how we deal with the addictive design and manipulation through algorithms on our children, again, things are quite intertwined because the AI Office, which was established by the AI Act, will have to supervise on the chatbot companions, that is one part of the story, not the social media platforms, but the chatbot companions that create emotional dependence on children. I'm saying this because, again, this is something where the parliaments are closer to the people and they can more easily get the inputs on such important discussions to bring them to the discussions that we have with the executives. But also, we need to be sure that we are exercising our powers to the full extent, which means requesting information on how the member states implement the legislation, also in these topics.
I give you an example at the end, to pick up on what you said, at the end of 2027, there will be the full application of the so-called high-risk use cases of the AI Act that you referred to also regarding education. This means that at the end of 2027, there will be technical standards in place so that developers will have to check their systems before putting them on the market to be sure they are safe based on the data, on cybersecurity, on human control. But this part of the law is not supervised by the European level. It's fully on the national authorities. This means that each country, for example, in Netherlands is mainly the data privacy, data protection authority, in Italy, for example, is the agency for digital and the cybersecurity agency.
They will have the responsibility to do that. It will not be us here, while us at the European level, for example, we have to deliver on the transparency, so for example, to contrast the abuse of the deepfakes that is already applied now in the law and it's very important because the deepfakes are used for cyberbullying, for actions against the minors and there are kids that unfortunately did self-harm of themselves because of shame due to deepfakes. So you see the complexity of the implementation. I hope we can also do more to simplify. More simplified enforcement means more effectiveness.
But this shows just with this example how much we need to do each of us their part at the various levels.
I want to briefly just say very briefly on two other points. On the cordon sanitaire, I just want to clarify one thing, just that everyone knows. I understand the point of the colleague, it's a political point of view, but there is no limitation of the powers of the Member of European Parliament. There is in any way. So I've been here since 2014, so I've seen it happening three times in different forms.
It's simply the decision, which can be contestable, that the other political groups decide that one political group should not be elected in certain positions. In my view it's democracy. Obviously it's disputable. There is also those that say this is limiting democracy, but it's a debate that is happening. But I want to clarify that no MEP has any limitation on their individual powers based on this kind of cordon sanitaire consideration.
I think it's important to clarify this with everyone. Finally, on what Senator Lombardo was saying, I think he said a lot of things I agree to, but I want to make a final note on what he said at the ending of his intervention. When he said that if 27 member states do not apply a directive, they are late, they are under an infracción, the directive was wrong at the beginning. This is something we could discuss, but there is a little factor that we should never forget, that the same member states voted for this directive. In the case I think about, there is one case where we have the 27 member states not applying, there was a majority that only two or three voted against in the Council.
So it means that at least 23, 24 member states who voted in favor of the directive didn't apply it. So we should also tell the governments, if you think you cannot apply a rule, don't vote for it, because then you will say it's, you blame Europe, you blame a generic Europe, it's you who voted for that law. We should say it clearly also from the members of Parliament, because otherwise the governments are left to say it's Europe's fault. It's their fault. They voted for it.
Marcos Varassin
A big thank you to our panelists for this very inspiring discussion.
And it showed that a stronger cooperation does not mean blurring institutional roles. It means helping parliaments use their own scrutiny powers more effectively, better information sharing, expertise exchange in practice. And what we need maybe is what we do here in the room as well, checking the pulse, maybe checking each other's pulses and helping each other is a good, is a good way forward.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you. Thank you to our speakers. Thank you to our speakers and thank you to you all for this very participated discussion. Across both topics of this session, we heard that parliamentary oversight is not a single moment in the legislative process. It needs to continue from political decision-making through implementation and evaluation and oversight.
Marcos Varassin
And we have also heard that effective scrutiny depends on practical conditions, very practical, pragmatic conditions: access to information at the right time, sufficient expertise, very important, transparent follow-up, and the cooperation between the parliaments allows for really respecting each other's responsibilities.
So, what happens now? The challenge now is to turn these very productive exchanges into practical cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments. We are leaving you with this to reflect on and we thank you again, and thank you Marcus.
Gaia NIEMAN
Thank you again for this engaged discussion. We will now take a short coffee break and we look forward to seeing you back here at 11:50 for the next session. Thank you very much.
Speaker 27
Test 1 2 3. Hamid, can you hear me? Okay, can you say a few words? Okay, very good. We'll test the languages in the background.
Thank you.
Jim Maher
Good afternoon everybody, welcome to this fourth session of the EU Parliamentary Democracy Forum. We would invite you to take your seats as we would like to commence shortly. Thank you.
Speaker 30
Against a heavy current, raw strength is not enough. A rowing team only cuts through the water when every blade strikes the surface at once. Today, geopolitical disruptions are pushing against multilateralism. No country can row against this tide alone. To defend democratic values worldwide, our parliaments should pull together at the same pace, uniting under a Team Europe approach.
Navigating global challenges. Stronger in sync.
Sarah Sheil
So good afternoon everyone. Welcome back to the hemicycle for the fourth and the final session in this format of our event. My name is Sarah Sheil, I'm director of the Members' Research Service in the European Parliament.
Jim Maher
And I'm Jim Maher, deputy spokesperson here at the European Parliament, a pleasure to be moderating this fourth session with you.
Sarah Sheil
Our session today, this final session is looking at the role of parliaments in defending democracy in a very difficult, we all know it and we don't need to tell you about it, geopolitical environment. And what we would like to ask our speakers today and to discuss with you is the role that parliaments can play in ensuring the legitimacy and transparency in international cooperation and relations. And we want to ask the question, what is the role of parliamentary diplomacy or what role for parliamentary diplomacy in our external actions?
Jim Maher
And we'd also like to explore whether more could be achieved if our parliamentary diplomacy efforts were more coordinated on the EU level and with national parliaments. Could stronger cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments help Europe project a more coherent and effective voice internationally? Our discussion for this segment will be structured around two main topics, which you can see now on screen. Firstly, parliamentary diplomacy, democracy and geopolitical challenges. And secondly, towards a Team Europe parliamentary diplomacy approach.
We'll open the floor twice as we have done in the previous sessions on each of these two topics. And to ensure as many contributions as possible, I'd really like to remind you to keep your contributions to maximum a minute and a half.
Sarah Sheil
Before we begin, we're going to take a check of the pulse using HouseSpace, as we've done already today. You should see a question now on the screen: which geopolitical challenges should be at the center of parliamentary diplomacy? You may select up to two options: democratic backsliding, foreign manipulation and interference, security and defense cooperation, climate change and its geopolitical implications, the rules-based international order, and global digital governance and new technologies. So select up to two which you feel might be the most important. Thank you for participating.
So I'm still seeing the results coming up on screen. It's a useful snapshot of your views in the room as we head into this fourth session.
Jim Maher
So from what I can see, the most popular choices, and there's still one or two votes coming in, foreign manipulation and interference, climate change and its geopolitical implications, followed by security and defense cooperation. So to moving from that to set the tone further by looking at the role of parliamentary diplomacy in responding to today's geopolitical and democratic challenges, I'm very happy to welcome our scene setter, Elena Panchulidze. Elena is head of research at the European Partnership for Democracy. She leads the European Democracy Hub, a joint initiative of EPD and Carnegie Europe, and brings extensive experience of European democracy and foreign policy. Elena, thank you, the stage is yours.
Elena Panchulidze
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Jim. Distinguished speakers, members of European and national parliament, national ladies and gentlemen. In an increasingly securitized world of competing interests and outright power competition, we are watching authoritarian regimes do something democracies have been slower to do: build alliances.
Disinformation tactics, legal tools to suppress pro-democracy actors, these travel between authoritarian capitals with remarkable speed. We do have emerging coalitions across democracies, yet the coordination still falls short of theirs. This matters because democratic backsliding is no longer only a democracy issue. It can quickly turn into a security issue, into a climate issue, into an economic issue, a challenge on every other strategic file. And especially in backsliding countries, we increasingly see parliaments and opposition political parties under attack.
Parliamentary delegations and visits have a long history, but a specific, more political support is needed for democratic opposition forces at this time. Parliamentary diplomacy should be better integrated into the external democracy support toolbox. A government that stops respecting democratic principles at home is also a government that becomes harder to trust on an international level, because it is the same institutions that erode democratic checks at home that guarantee that the governments respect them at the international level. Which is exactly why building alliances across like-minded partners has never mattered more than it does right now.
And here, what makes it harder than it was before is that the line between internal and external democracy support has never been more blurred. Authoritarian powers now work through actors inside EU member states, funding and amplifying those who challenge democratic institutions from within. And the challenge is not the lack of proper infrastructure, the gap is in coordinated, joined-up approach. A national parliament and the European Parliament can each send a delegation to a specific country to explore a very specific backsliding concern within weeks from one another, and in many cases, each draws its own conclusions. This is more than a coordination issue, this is a strategic vulnerability, and illiberal governments know how to use it.
One message for the visiting committee, a different one for the parliamentary delegation, calibrated to what each audience wants to hear. Too often, the absence of coordination does not just waste collective leverage, it just hands it away.
Take the example of the EU membership country Georgia. The Foreign Affairs Committee has been engaged on Georgia's backsliding issue, including preparing a critical report earlier this year. National parliaments raised similar concerns separately, but it could have been better coordinated. Authoritarian governments know how to read those gaps. Alignment has to be built, and Georgia shows the cost of not building it.
So let me put forward three ideas to step up parliamentary diplomacy and fuse it more closely within the EU democracy support toolbox. First, we need to make sure that parliamentary delegations dovetail with the EU's actual democracy support activities on the ground, rather than running alongside them. Too often, delegation visits hears concerns, issues a statement, and has no visible connection with the funding projects and the programs already working on those same issues in the same country.
Sequencing visits with each other matters, but sequencing them with democracy support programming matters just as much. Second, we need to make sure the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs is a real clearinghouse. The UN General Assembly, COP, Global Democracy Summits are the predictable dates on the calendar. There is no reason for parliaments not to coordinate prior those meetings. Third, to turn the European Parliament's own commitment into practice.
Parliament already adopted the resolution calling for an annual list of focus countries and coordinated Team Europe response on the ground. Team Europe coordination is not Brussels asking everyone to fall in line. It's each parliament being more effective of its own terms because it's not operating blind to what its counterparts are already doing on the ground. Working in the dark is not an independence, it's a limitation.
So to direct answer to this opening session's question, parliamentary diplomacy has real potential, but what is missing is political will to better integrate it into Union's foreign policy strategy and external democracy support toolbox. Thank you.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much Elena for setting the scene. You mentioned the importance of coordinated and a joined-up approach and the need to ensure and work towards ensuring effectiveness of the Team Europe approach in parliamentary diplomacy. I can't think of a better speaker to come in first than our chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, Mr. David McAllister. So Mr. McAllister, would you kindly come to the stage? Welcome.
How are you? Nice to see you. And Mrs. Carmen Navarro from the Spanish Congress of Deputies, who I don't see in her seat but is in the room. Yes, welcome.
Jim Maher
Thank you both for joining us on stage. Take a seat. Chair McAllister, let me start with you. As you know very well, the European Parliament has developed a wide range of tools for parliamentary diplomacy, from inter-parliamentary dialogue to election observation, mediation efforts, democracy support, and also representation offices abroad. How in your view is the Parliament using these tools to reinforce Europe's political voice, democratic values, and strategic partnerships around the world?
David McAllister
Well, first of all, let's try again. Well, first of all, hello to everyone, delighted to be here and thanks for the invitation. I just listened very carefully what was said as an introductory statement and indeed I would see that parliamentary diplomacy plays a key role. Yes, there is still untapped potential, but in general we have moved things forward in the European Parliament over the last years in an impressive way. The European Parliament considers to be an essential part of Team Europe, Team Europe that is the European Commission, the European External Action Service, our 27 member states, and the European Parliament.
And what do we do in the external affairs sphere?
Well, first of all I would say there's the hard power and then there's the soft power. The hard skills are classical parliamentary work: the budget, legislation, or also the consent European Parliament has to give to international agreements. Then the agenda-setting role: reports, recommendations, studies and hearings. And then to conclude, there's also a soft dimension of parliamentary diplomacy. Look, people enjoy most speaking to people who are in a similar position.
Diplomats love talking to diplomats. Politicians love to talk to politicians. Parliamentarians prefer to talk to parliamentarians. That means as parliamentarians we also have our very own network of peer-to-peer contacts to parliamentarians in other parliaments all around the world and also through our political families, be it the European People's Party, be it the socialists, be it the liberal network, the green network and others. We also have opportunities to deliver certain messages and also to receive messages perhaps in a more clear and more distinct way than that might be happening through classical diplomatic channels.
So I think this is more or less in summary where parliamentary diplomacy can play a real role and where we can give added value to the Europeans' Team Europe approach.
Thank you very much, Mr. McAllister. I'm going to go now to Madame Carmen Navarro from the Spanish Congress of Deputies and would ask you the same question. Obviously you come from a national parliament, can you think of some examples or give us some examples of how you approach this in Spain?
Carmen Navarro
Pues muy buenos días, muchísimas gracias por la invitación. Quería darle la enhorabuena al Parlamento Europeo por lanzar esta iniciativa de un foro por la democracia en un momento también de desafección política ciudadana importante, incluir a la sociedad civil que está representada esta mañana aquí es importante, no solo para darles la palabra en el debate, sino también para incorporarlos en el futuro en la toma de decisiones.
Yo creo que además abordamos este debate de la diplomacia parlamentaria en un momento en el que vivimos un cierto desorden internacional y que además nos enfrentamos a problemas geopolíticos cada vez más complejos, no solo por la amenaza de nuestras fronteras, por la desinformación, por una competencia desatada por las materias críticas, sino también por el cuestionamiento constante de las reglas internas e internacionales del juego. Todo ello exige que juguemos desde Europa, pero desde una Europa más fuerte. Que tengamos un liderazgo en el que seamos capaces de aunar consensos, pero además tenemos que poner en práctica nuestra capacidad de análisis para poder anticiparnos a los problemas que podamos tener en el futuro y siempre con una voluntad decidida de actuar juntos. Por eso la diplomacia parlamentaria es más importante que nunca porque viene a ser un complemento esencial de la política exterior de los Estados. Además, esa diplomacia parlamentaria se convierte en una herramienta estratégica porque tenemos la legitimidad democrática de representar a los pueblos.
Desde esa legitimidad democrática somos capaces de representar el pluralismo político, pero también de garantizar la continuidad de las instituciones más allá de los ciclos electorales.
Es importante también nuestra función como parlamentos porque tenemos en nuestras relaciones diplomáticas mucho más cercanas y menos encorsetadas que las de los poderes ejecutivos. Por eso podemos mantener canales de comunicación que sean estables en el futuro y también relaciones que nos permitan adelantarnos a tensiones y sobre todo para evitar esas tensiones. En cuanto a los ejemplos de la diplomacia parlamentaria en España en las últimas legislaturas, en la última legislatura, quería empezar por un ejemplo de una visita que no por extraordinaria, pero sí por inusual, la primera vez que el Papa León XIV y de las pocas en las que hubo un Papa y como jefe de Estado del Vaticano se dirigía al Parlamento de España reunido en las Cortes Generales en sesión en el Congreso de los Diputados. Porque habló de la diplomacia, de la importancia de alcanzar la paz, los consensos, los acuerdos desde relaciones diplomáticas con valentía, que también se ha hablado esta mañana aquí, una relación diplomática valiente, con estrategia de futuro y siempre poniendo la dignidad humana, la justicia y el interés general por encima de todo.
Por eso estas también deben de ser las cuestiones principales que nos rijan en la diplomacia parlamentaria entre los distintos parlamentos de distintos estados. Y que tuvo una ovación cerrada durante más de cinco minutos en España con de todas las fuerzas políticas, lo que significó el compromiso precisamente con aquello que estaba en ese caso transmitiendo como jefe del Estado del Vaticano a todo el pueblo español representado en sus Cortes Generales. Porque allí abogó por una cosa importante en un momento de conflicto, en un momento de desorden internacional: más Europa. Y una Europa más fuerte. Y eso es precisamente lo que estamos intentando desde el Parlamento de España.
Tenemos los foros bilaterales y los foros multilaterales. El último foro bilateral lo celebramos con Polonia en Varsovia el pasado mes de mayo, el Parlamento español y el Parlamento polaco, para afrontar retos que compartimos y sobre todo no se trata de intensificar el número de reuniones, se trata de dotarlas de contenido y de estrategia.
Allí Polonia y España compartió que somos ambas fronteras de Europa, España también es frontera de Europa por el sur y que hay que defender las fronteras con contundencia, también con seguridad, porque cuanto más seguras sean nuestras fronteras, más seguros son nuestros ciudadanos y a mayor seguridad de nuestros ciudadanos, mayor libertad de nuestros ciudadanos. Y se debatió también la inmigración, el problema migratorio y convenimos en que esta figura hay que abordarla desde una regulación legal, segura y también humana. Hoy en este contexto de guerra de Rusia contra Ucrania, Polonia está jugando un papel fundamental y tenemos que reforzar nuestras relaciones bilaterales porque sabemos que la contención de la y la protección de la democracia y contener la democracia, contener Ucrania es garantizar también la democracia en Europa, se ha dicho aquí esta mañana. Si vencen a Ucrania, vencen a Europa y esta relación bilateral nos permitió afrontar problemas muy similares. Mañana mismo también en España empieza un foro multilateral con todos los países iberoamericanos y yo también quería dejar constancia de la importancia que tiene el Parlamento español y que tiene España en una relación atlántica de Europa con Iberoamérica, no solo porque compartimos lengua, historia, cultura, sino porque también tenemos una conexión que nos permite fortalecer una relación económica, una relación de trabajo por la democracia, por la libertad de las personas basada en el estado de derecho, en la igual en el en el estado de derecho, en el imperio de la ley, en la igualdad de todos los ciudadanos con nuestros países y con nuestros ciudadanos.
Muchas gracias.
Jim Maher
So, we need a stronger Europe. We need parliamentarians, of course, to play a stronger role, and I think crucially, as you said, to do so together. Now, that sets us up very nicely. Muchas gracias, Secretary Navarro, for our open debate. The focus of this open discussion should appear now on screen.
The Secretary from Spain gave an example of successful examples of parliamentary diplomacy from her national experience. We'd also like you in the audience to do so as well. A kind reminder, as always, please keep your contributions to under a minute and a half, and when introducing yourself, introduce yourself, of course, and also the institution that you are representing. So, put your hands in the air, anybody who wants to jump in now. So, I see, my eyesight is not wonderful, but I think in seat 292, and I also see in seat 395.
Maybe take those two first. Thank you, yes.
Eva Biaudet
Yes, thank you so much, and thank you for the interesting, the whole meeting has been really very interesting and inspiring. I am Eva Biaudet, I'm coming from the Finnish Parliament, from Helsinki, and I'm also a member of the Nordic Council, which in a way is about parliamentary diplomacy. But I think a very good example in these times of anti-right movements and anti-gender movements is actually the parliamentary diplomacy that women organizations and women parliamentarians do within Europe but also outside Europe. And for instance in the last CSW meeting in New York, in the UN meeting on women, the Nordics actually gathered parliamentarians all over to discuss and to come together how to enhance and push back the pushback, to ensure that the development should not go backwards in an anti-right way. And I think that's extremely important also when reaching out further to have this connection.
In Finland and I think in Iceland actually we have a strong tradition of women politicians working cross-parties and uniting their efforts to make change and social reform. Thank you.
Jim Maher
Thank you and let's now go to 395 and I think then we also have a Cypriot member in seat 115.
Bilal Aktas
Yeah thank you so much Bilal Aktas from Paris Center for Democracy. So you mentioned soft and hard power and I'm not sure Europe is still taken seriously when it comes to soft power partly because of of the double standards in its approach to to certain countries and also in certain European countries in terms of internal politics. And when it comes to hard power Europe has long been heavily dependent on its transatlantic relations which are also facing a crisis. And Europe's voice used to carry more weight because it was economically and militarily dominant in the world order basically with its allies which is no longer the case. At the same time anti-democratic voices are rising and some countries are showing that they can prosper without democratic institutions economically so namely China.
So as Europe increasingly needs military and geopolitical allies how should the EU balance this with its goal of promoting democracy in its foreign policy?
And finally, what kind of soft power can Europe have and why should other countries take Europe seriously under these conditions? Thanks a lot.
Speaker 36
Χάρης Γεωργιάδης, Γιώργος Κάρουλλας, Πρόεδρος Επιτροπής Εξωτερικών και Ευρωπαϊκών Υποθέσεων της Βουλής της Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας. Αγαπητοί συνάδελφοι, θα πρέπει να κάνουμε όλοι μία διερώτηση. Ποιος είναι ο στόχος της προσπάθειας της κοινοβουλευτικής διπλωματίας; Και φυσικά η απάντηση είναι αποδεκτή από όλους μας. Η προώθηση και η υπεράσπιση οικουμενικών αξιών, των ευρωπαϊκών αρχών και αξιών, του ευρωπαϊκού μας κεκτημένου προς κάθε προσφερόμενη κατεύθυνση.
Και φυσικά με τα ανάλογα εργαλεία. Η Κύπρος, ένα μικρό κράτος στην πρώτη γραμμή αυτής της προσπάθειας, με μεγάλο δυσανάλογο αποτύπωμα διπλωματικό για το μέγεθος της Κύπρου.
Σαν πάντα η Κύπρος στα νοτιοανατολικά εξωτερικά σύνορα της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, δεχόμενη η ίδια απειλές πολλές φορές, συνεχώς θα έλεγα. Επιλέγουμε τη συνεργασία, το διάλογο και τη δημιουργία και τη δημοκρατία. Προκαλώντας πυλώνα υπεράσπισης των ευρωπαϊκών αξιών. Με πάνω από 50 ομάδες φιλίας, συμμετοχή στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση, στην Κοινοπολιτεία και στη Γαλλοφωνία. Επιδιώκοντας και ενδυναμώνοντας συνεχώς διμερείς και τριμερείς συνεργασίες μαζί με την Ελλάδα προς το Ισραήλ, την Ιορδανία, την Αίγυπτο, ακόμα και προς το Λίβανο.
Επιδιώκοντας, όπως πράξαμε και με την δική μας προεδρία της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, μια δημιουργική γέφυρα προς τη Μέση Ανατολή, προωθώντας πάντοτε τη σταθερότητα και την προώθηση των αξιών μας. Έχουμε υποχρέωση συλλογικά ως Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση να διοχετεύσουμε αυτές τις αξίες μέσω της διπλωματίας και ενδυναμώνοντας τη δημοκρατία εκεί που απειλείται, συμβάλλοντας στην εγκαθίδρυση ισχυρών δημοκρατικών θεσμών.
Και μέσα από το Team Europe, ναι, μπορούμε μέσα από αυτή τη μεθοδολογική συνεργασία να προωθήσουμε πολλά όσον αφορά την ευημερία, την ασφάλεια και τη σταθερότητα στην περιοχή μας. Ευχαριστώ.
Jim Maher
Ευχαριστώ. And next is Senator Seán Kyne, seat 64 from the Irish Parliament.
Speaker 37
Go raibh maith agat as sin. Right, go raibh maith agat as an seans cainte inniu maidir leis an ábhar seo. And look, once again, I suppose there's a Venn diagram crosses over in relation to all the issues we've spoken about. And look, we know the issues that there are in relation to democracy. We spent an awful lot of yesterday talking about the issues we have, whether it's social media companies, the power, the algorithms, the bots, the state and non-state actors that are operating and the protections we need to have.
But we also know we're in a geopolitical sewer at the minute. I accept some people will have an issue with Ireland and its absolute adherence to non-alignment and neutrality. And I accept others have always seen the necessity from their point of view of the American security blanket, which no one can rely on anymore. Not only that, we're talking about an American administration that has actually facilitated some of the other issues.
And look, Europe has been very strong in relation to Belarus, in relation to Ukraine, and rightfully so in standing up against Russia. But its biggest, biggest failing is the fact that it has not dealt with the issue particularly of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, how the absolute crimes committed on the West Bank as it tries to remove any chance of a two-state solution. We see what it is doing in Lebanon, backed up with America as it involves itself in the absolutely mad attacks on Iran, which have led to absolute chaos throughout the entire region. But it is very difficult to have the moral high ground when you don't take it across the board. And it is a particular issue, and Europe has been incredibly weak in relation to an ongoing genocide.
And the fact that it is meant to, we all say we believe in a two-state solution, well we'd need to stand up for it. Go raibh maith agat.
Jim Maher
Geopolitical sour, go raibh maith agat a Theachta Dála, thank you. Go raibh maith agat, thank you. So we will need to wrap this session up in a couple of minutes. So I have four other contributions as far as I could see. I'd like you to keep your contributions to under a minute if you can.
Let's go to the four of you and then we go back to our panelists.
So seat 431, then unless I'm mistaken seat 482. No. It's just seat 431, then let's go to 252 and then 197. Thank you. Please turn on your mic.
Magali ALTOUNIAN
Bonjour à tous, je m'appelle Magali Altounian, je suis élue française dans le sud de la France, mais également présidente de la commission CIVEX du Comité européen des régions. Et ce forum nous rappelle naturellement une chose, c'est que la démocratie n'est jamais acquise. Et pour faire face à ce recul démocratique, nous avons besoin de mobiliser tous les niveaux de gouvernance, qu'ils soient local, régional, national et européen. Et dans l'avis du Comité européen des régions sur l'importance de la diplomatie des villes dans les contextes fragiles, dont j'ai été nommée rapporteure, nous insistons notamment sur le rôle unique que nous pouvons jouer dans les relations de l'Union européenne avec les pays fragiles où le fonctionnement des institutions démocratiques est très limité, souvent suspendu par les régimes mis en place.
Via la coopération décentralisée, nous sommes en relation directe avec le niveau local de ces pays, souvent le seul à conserver une légitimité aux yeux des populations. Ceci est un atout fondamental non seulement pour la diplomatie de l'Union européenne, mais aussi pour poser les bases d'une reconstruction sociale et institutionnelle participative et démocratique avec les pays les plus éloignés politiquement de l'Union européenne. Et c'est d'ailleurs tout le sens de l'approche Team Europe : mieux coordonner les actions, éviter de travailler en silos et faire de la complémentarité entre nos institutions, les collectivités, une véritable force en faveur de la démocratie. Je vous remercie.
Jim Maher
Merci beaucoup. Now to 252, please keep your contribution to under a minute. 252, I don't see where you are. Yes.
Przemysław Witek
I am here, hello, good morning. Dzień dobry, Przemysław Witek, poseł na Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej.
Witam was serdecznie. Chciałem powiedzieć o dwóch sprawach mianowicie z demokracją to jest tak że my często bronimy jej wtedy kiedy znajduje się ewidentnie w kryzysie może możemy jej też bronić wtedy kiedy poddawana jest próbie. My w polskim Sejmie to zrobiliśmy jednym z instrumentów to jest obserwowanie wyborów. Mówię tu konkretnie o Mołdawii już w 2025 cała rzesza posłów udawała się do Mołdawii wielokrotnie próbowaliśmy przekonywać wykonywać pracę u podstaw tam ale także obserwowaliśmy byliśmy niczym kontrolerzy w trakcie trwania procesu wyborczego. Jest jeszcze drugi element o którym doskonale wiecie my graniczący z Ukrainą od samego początku wspieramy Ukrainę w wielu wymiarach i w wielu formatach i także dzisiaj kiedy prowadzimy działania polegające na wyjeżdżaniu tam one wiążą się nie tylko z niesieniem pomocy ale także na przykład w pracy z samorządowcami mówieniu o instrumentach tak podstawowa praca u podstaw w kraju który jakby pragnie demokracji ale jeszcze nie dostrzega do końca ścieżki jak do niej dojść a znajduje się w wyjątkowo trudnej sytuacji czyli w trakcie wojny.
Także podaję te dwa przykłady dziękuję i pozdrawiam.
Jim Maher
Dziękuję bardzo and now for the final contribution in this round seat 197 thank you.
Ildikó Éva Szopov
This session cannot pass without me saying one successful example, because I think when talking about democracy, we also establish certain partnerships, but we also re-establish them and kind of channel new energy into them. And V4 cooperation between our parliamentary committees, most specifically the Foreign Affairs and the European Affairs committees within the V4 countries, was one of the primary examples from earlier this summer, which I truly believe just gives this example that if you focus on your targeted, that could be a targeted geopolitical issue, that could also be a targeted, let's say, European legislation issue within the European Affairs committee, that also moves things forward within a very short timeframe. Thank you.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much everyone. You've given a very rich array of examples in your in your own countries or in your own institutions. Thank you for that debate. We will wrap up this session now by giving our two speakers a chance to say a few final words. So David McAllister, if I can turn to you first.
You already outlined a very large range of tools at the disposal of the Parliament when it comes European Parliament when it comes to parliamentary diplomacy. Do you think there's anything further that we can do or do you see any new areas for exploration? And of course, if you wish to come back on any of the individual points raised, feel free to do that.
David McAllister
Well, first of all, thank you very much for your contributions.
I would just briefly like to come back to the gentleman from France about the hard and soft skills. When asked about what role the European Parliament plays in diplomacy, I was referring to our classical hard skills like budgetary work, legislation, or agenda setting. But I also wanted to underline the opportunities we have with our soft skills, that means dialogue, peer-to-peer contacts, these kind of things. But you were referring to hard and soft power, and I think that is the main challenge for European foreign and security policy in the next years. The European Union is, from my point of view, still the world's leading soft power when it comes to crisis prevention, humanitarian support, strengthening and fostering democracy and rule of law around the world.
Please tell me another institution, another country in the world which is as active as the European Union. And let me also underline, we are the largest donor of development cooperation in the world, by far.
If my figures are still correct, the European Union gives more development support than the United States and China together. So here we have real hard, real soft power. But where we have to work on is obviously hard power, and hard power begins and ends with the ability to defend ourselves. It cannot be in the year 2026 that 450 million Europeans are dependent on 330 million Americans to defend our continent. It is not about doing something against the United States of America.
I still believe that the US is our most important security and trade partner, but under this current administration in Washington, we all know what challenges we are facing. We have to be able to defend ourselves without the United States if push comes to shove. That means establishing a European Defense Union within the next few years is a key priority. And when I say that, it is not about doing something against NATO or in competition with NATO, it's about strengthening the European pillar within the well-established framework of NATO. And I think this is also a position which the four EU member states who are not members of NATO, like the Republic of Ireland, can agree with.
And finally, what can we do in future? Well, I think in these geopolitical shifting times, and we all know that democracy, the rule of law, and many other fundamental rights are under attack, it's very important that we first of all maintain our unity in Europe, that we reach out also to the national parliaments in our 27 member states, that we try to deliver the same messages, that we try to follow a similar agenda. And it's also about reaching out to other partners in the country. We are not on our own in the world in defending democracy, the rules-based international order, human rights, and other issues. There are many, many other partners from North America like Canada right down to the other part of the world, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand.
So that is one of our main challenges.
Let's work on those countries who are willing to defend the international rules-based order and who are open for multilateral cooperation. Why? Because it is the international rules-based order which defends the small-sized, the medium-sized, and the not-so-large-sized countries in the world against the bullies. If we don't defend the international rules-based order, then the bullies will have a say. And if there's something we have learned from our European history, we will always be at the helm of supporting those who are in favor of an international rules-based order which defends the rule of law and especially international law.
And this is my call on all 27 member states to be united in their messaging and also to apply the same standards all over the world. Thank you.
Jim Maher
Herzlichen Dank, Herr McAllister. Thank you very much. Secretaria Navarro, in your contribution earlier you mentioned of course that geopolitical crises are increasing. Can you speak a little bit about the role where acting together as a Team Europe we could bring added value in addressing these geopolitical challenges and crises and also by all means if you wish to follow up on any of the contributions from our audience and your fellow parliamentarians, please do so. Thank you.
Carmen Navarro
Pues voy a hacer tres referencias... The microphone. Ay, perdón. Gracias. Voy a hacer tres respuestas desde mi punto de vista particular a tres intervinientes.
En primer lugar, a la diputada que ha dicho cómo seguimos implementando la mayor participación de las mujeres en la política, en la toma de decisiones y también en esta diplomacia parlamentaria. Precisamente porque a veces tenemos asuntos urgentes que posponemos lo importante. La igualdad y la participación de las mujeres tiene que seguir siendo muy importante en la agenda política y también en las relaciones diplomáticas entre los parlamentos.
España tiene un gran ejemplo de ello. En el duodécimo foro iberoamericano que celebramos mañana y que comienza en Madrid, una de las cuestiones claves será la igualdad. Porque las conquistas que se han alcanzado en determinadas políticas no pueden verse o ponerse en riesgo por determinadas amenazas. Aquello que ya hemos alcanzado y sobre lo que ya hemos trabajado y ya hemos conquistado tenemos que seguir protegiéndolo y eso implica seguir trabajando en ello. Quería también contestar a otros de los parlamentarios en cuanto a nuestras relaciones con otros parlamentos desde el punto de vista diplomático por la sostenida relación que ha tenido el Parlamento español en los últimos años con el Parlamento ucraniano.
Antes se ha dicho aquí esta mañana. España, Europa tiene que crecer.
Tenemos que ser más estados, tenemos que ampliarnos. Bueno, Ucrania está ahí, quiere consolidar su democracia y el Parlamento español hace una tutela y una coadyuva, colabora, estamos en una constante cooperación en mejora de técnica legislativa y también en la profesionalización de los medios técnicos y de los recursos técnicos de los que disponen, teniendo en cuenta toda la trayectoria democrática de España, nuestro buen ejemplo también en la consolidación de la democracia tras la transición española, una rápida consolidación de la democracia en ese ejemplo de transición española del 78 y creo que hemos mantenido una relación constante con el Parlamento ucraniano que es muy importante. Y por último se ha dicho aquí en otra de las intervenciones en un público muy participativo que tenemos que sostener y educar en la democracia, seguir regando nuestra democracia para hacer democracias más fuertes. Y yo junto a la reflexión que ha tenido el diputado McAllister sobre la fortaleza de trabajar todos juntos y de trabajar desde el mismo punto de vista, las mismas reglas, consolidar el imperio de la ley, la igualdad de las personas, creo que es importante también que a nuestros niños y a nuestros jóvenes les eduquemos desde Europa y que les hagamos conscientes de que somos españoles pero somos europeos porque solo juntos sentiremos la importancia de que somos más fuertes y por lo tanto podremos hacer frente a esos desafíos geopolíticos que cada vez son más complejos y que van a tener que afrontar las generaciones próximas. Muchas gracias.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much. We're going to bring this part of the session to a close, so I only would like to thank both Carmen Navarro and David McAllister for their interventions and their participation. Thank you very much. And thank you also to the colleagues and parliamentarians and other colleagues in the audience who have contributed. So, we will now move to our next session, or next part of the session.
Thank you so much. We remain very much in the theme of parliamentary diplomacy. We want to look at our structures, our channels for cooperation, and once again, I think we're very happy to have three expert speakers who will join us to kick off this part of the discussion. I'd like to welcome Mr. Sven Simon. He is chair of the Constitutional Affairs Committee here in the European Parliament.
Welcome to you. I also a big welcome to Graziano Delrio. He is chair of the Committee for the Schengen Area, Europol and Immigration and member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Italian Senate. So welcome to you, Mr. Delrio. And then online, and I hope we will see her on screen, we have Naaja Nathanielsen, who is chair of the Greenland Committee in the Danish Parliament.
Welcome to you.
We see you well. Yes. We don't know yet if we can hear you, but we will establish that as soon as we kick off. So, please.
Jim Maher
Thank you, Sarah. So let's start with you, Mr. Simon. We already have mechanisms which were mentioned earlier, including COSAC, for example, the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs, and also the, which you are co-chair of, of course, and the Conference of Speakers of EU Parliaments. Can you tell us a bit more about these platforms for dialogue, including, of course, on issues of external policies, the external dimension? Are they flexible enough, in your view, to respond to the situation we are geopolitically and globally at the moment?
And could we make more use of them in terms of parliamentary diplomacy? Thank you, Mr. Simon.
Sven Simon
Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me. Well, I think you already mentioned it. As a first point, I think we do not suffer from a lack of forums. As you mentioned it, we have COSAC, we have the Conference of Speakers, we have inter-parliamentary meetings and many other channels of exchange.
All of them are somehow useful. But the real question, I think, is whether this dialogue is sustainable and whether it has a sufficient clear link to political decision-making. This is true for this meeting here as well to a certain extent. When we speak about international crisis, of course, parliaments face a problem that international crises are rapidly evolving and emerging, and parliaments' working methods are slow because we have, we need debates, accountability plays a role and so on and so forth. So, I would be cautious about simply creating more meetings, more conferences or more ad hoc formats that may increase activity, but it does not necessarily increase influence.
What we, I think, need is a more systematic mechanism through which national parliaments can contribute to European decision-making at an early stage without, of course, adding another veto point and without making an already complex legislative process even slower. That is, I think, the central institutional challenge.
In the long term, I think we also have to confront a more fundamental question. The European Union combines a directly elected European Parliament with member states that remain central to its political and constitutional structure. If we want national parliamentary representation to have a permanent and meaningful place in the European system, then at some point, I say that as chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee of course as well, we should discuss a genuine bicameral structure. A system in which one chamber represents European citizens, directly elected, and a second chamber provides structured representation of the national democratic level. That would in my view be more coherent than adding informal mechanisms around the existing architecture.
So yes, we should use COSAC and the Conference of Speakers more strategically, but the objective should not simply be more parliamentary diplomacy. It should be to turn cooperation between the European Parliament and national parliaments into a stable part of the European democratic architecture.
Sarah Sheil
Very good, thank you Mr. Simon. I'm going to go to our online speaker now, which is Mrs. Nathanaelsen from the Danish Parliament. She is chair of the Greenland Committee and I don't think I need to tell you that Greenland has been a lot in the news in 2026. So I would like to ask you now, how from your experience, especially let's say this year when Greenland has taken on a certain role, let's say in transatlantic relations, what was the parliamentary cooperation aspect in your experience of this challenge? Were there lessons that you could offer in other areas or in other parts of the world in terms of a parliamentary diplomacy and Team Europe approach?
So we'd be grateful if you could say some words on that. Thank you.
Naaja Nathanielsen
Thank you, thank you so much and thank you for the invitation. I hope the light doesn't distract too much. The Greenland case I think has shown how, yeah, I think, let me start another place. I think we need to understand that the current state of the world is not merely a disruption, what happened in Greenland was not a disruption. So this is not a passing moment that will culminate in us returning to past conditions or past realities.
So what happened in and around Greenland was not a sudden unexpected incident. It was, or should I say it is, a symptom or an escalation of a polarization that really has been happening for quite a long time, not only in the US but also in Europe. And I think what we saw in Greenland was an attempt at power politics where a country is strong-armed into submission. And I think we will make a great mistake if we isolate this to a certain single country or single person. I think the problem is much bigger than that and has really been brewing for decades.
I think it is a monster of our own making. And I think we must acknowledge that we in the Western world have been somewhat naive when it comes to taking democracy and peace for granted. And I think also that we have failed to acknowledge the power of suggestion. Suggestion is a psychological term in which feelings and thoughts can be guided in a certain direction while bypassing critical thinking.
And this is, for instance, how hypnosis works. And in the old days, I think you limited this way of acting to maybe dictators or marketing. But with the internet, with big tech, with social media, I think the method of suggestion can promote anti-democratic content and anti-democratic belief systems on numerous levels and in a very, very potent way. So from a parliamentarian perspective, I think our response also must be manifolded and target numerous levels. And one level is, of course, oversight and legislation.
I think the idea of Shield is a good example of this. And these methods are necessary if you want to fight anti-democratic movements. But legislation and oversight only fight the symptom and not the cause. I think we must also try to understand why these anti-democratic thoughts and ideas are introduced to people and driven by people, so we can target what drives them. And for me, I think that inequality, poverty, insecurity, and scapegoating creates anger and polarization and hopelessness in people.
And this enables movements and organizations to dismantle our democratic structures, done for different purposes.
Some, of course, are motivated, as we might have experienced with the past, by political or religious ideology. But I think you also today see that profit is a strong motivation by a nihilistic elite. So hate and fear is now a business model. And in this business model, inequality, poverty, and insecurity is the road, and anger, polarization, and hopelessness is the destination, and the algorithms is that vehicle that drives us and takes us to the destination. And this vehicle, these algorithms, are owned by companies, designed by companies, making us the product, our emotions are the product, and we cannot stop this by legislation alone.
So even though this has been going on for a long time, I think as politicians we are still adjusting to this scenario. And we are used to tackling problems by building something or regulating something. But in this case, I think we must also fight the problem with thoughts of humanity, of morality, and that can only be done by cross-border alliances. And I think what is needed now is not only a Team Europe response, it's a Team World response.
We must identify allies all over the world, since the basis of this crisis is not a single country or a single person. It is a conglomerate of nihilism, profit, ideology, poverty, feelings of inadequacy. And in the Greenland case, I believe that we succeeded by collectively taking a stand. Allyship really worked. No piece of legislation did this.
It was done by displaying moral values and a strong position on democratic principles, for instance by the European Union and a show of will to not back off but back up, even though it was possible it would hit your economy. So it was a very strong effort on the European Union side and I really want to thank you for that. So that was my thoughts on this matter.
Jim Maher
Thank you very much, Chair Knudsen, and we welcome you to stay online for the rest of the session of course. Now to back to the room, to Senator Graziano Delrio, you are chair of the Parliamentary Committee for the Schengen Area, Europol and Migration at the Senate of the Italian Republic.
Can you tell us what role does parliamentary diplomacy play in your parliament's external engagement, and how can cooperation between national parliaments like yours and the European Parliament make our parliamentary diplomacy as Europe as a whole more effective? Thank you.
Graziano Delrio
Grazie, allora buongiorno. Credo che sia importante, prima di entrare in una breve descrizione di quello che il Parlamento italiano fa per promuovere, appunto, la diplomazia parlamentare, sia importante che ci facciamo una domanda, come diceva il collega Simon, cioè quanto effettiva, quanto sia efficace la nostra azione. E io credo che una prima risposta stia in un fatto: che prima di tutto i parlamenti devono essere coscienti dell'importanza del loro ruolo. Molto spesso, io ho fatto il ministro per cinque anni nelle precedenti legislature, molto spesso i parlamentari si sentono frustrati dal potere dell'esecutivo, dalla capacità, dalla necessità delle decisioni rapide, e quindi molto spesso il Parlamento stesso non crede nel proprio ruolo.
E così noi affrontiamo le ventate populiste che prima sono state citate anche dalla collega danese, queste ventate populiste in cui forze dicono "il popolo siamo noi", quindi pensano di rappresentare la totalità del popolo, e il Parlamento non si alza in piedi per dire "no, il popolo siamo noi". La sovranità appartiene a noi tutti nella nostra diversità, nella nostra capacità di dialogare dentro queste aule parlamentari per difendere i valori e i principi della democrazia. Questo è un punto fondamentale. Come l'Europa deve credere che è uno spazio unico, insostituibile ed è un'esperienza straordinaria di vittoria della cooperazione sulla competizione, di vittoria delle relazioni di dialogo e di pace contro le relazioni di forza e di diritto della forza, così il Parlamento deve prima di tutto, per essere efficace, credere nel fatto che rappresenta realmente e custode realmente del bene più prezioso che la gente possa avere, cioè la propria, la democrazia, cioè la difesa della propria dignità. Questa è una premessa.
Poi con questa premessa bisogna credere anche che questo, proprio perché si è custodi di questo bene prezioso, insostituibile, che è la democrazia, che avrà anche procedure lente, avrà anche difficoltà, ma è l'unico modo che abbiamo, il più efficace per difendere i diritti, specialmente dei più deboli.
Una volta convinti di questo ruolo è evidente che lo scambio con gli altri paesi è molto può essere molto fruttuoso perché appunto si va a incontrare non semplicemente dei rappresentanti, ma si va a incontrare i popoli, si va a incontrare le culture, le tradizioni di altri popoli. In Italia c'è un'esperienza molto consolidata per esempio di relazioni con i paesi dei Balcani occidentali, con l'Albania, con i paesi con c'è sono gruppi di amicizia con la Serbia, anche con paesi con cui ci sono difficoltà ovviamente no di differenza di valori e di tradizioni di culture. L'Italia ha messo in piedi il Parlamento europeo una iniziativa si chiama iniziativa centroeuropea in cui c'è una un grosso dialogo tra i parlamenti su con i paesi dell'Europa centrale per esempio è stata molto importante nell'accompagnare il processo di allargamento. E idem ovviamente per la posizione che ha l'Italia che è un grande molo diciamo di un porto che è il nel Mediterraneo per la sua collocazione geografica ovviamente la vocazione con l'Unione per il Mediterraneo con altre associazioni di parlamentari dei paesi della sponda del Mediterraneo permette un dialogo, una conoscenza, uno scambio di esperienze molto fruttuose credo nel promuovere la validità e la forza dei dei principi democratici.
Quindi credo che questa esperienza, anche italiana, pur con tutti i suoi limiti, dimostri che se il Parlamento crede nella sua funzione, crede nei suoi valori, nei valori che difende, in primo luogo la democrazia, lo spazio perché la diplomazia parlamentare diventi più efficace c'è tutto, specialmente se il coordinamento con iniziative come Team Europe migliorano, specialmente se questo coordinamento migliorerà, ci sarà lo spazio, credo, per valutare e rendere più efficace davvero le iniziative di promozione della democrazia e della pace.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much, Senator Del Rio, and thank you to our three contributors on this panel. It's a moment now we can go to the floor, so I would like to ask who would wish to take the floor. We ask you as always to keep your interventions relatively brief so that we can get to you. Yes, please. I don't see your number, but please go ahead.
Speaker 44
Szanowni państwo, ja jestem dumnym Europejczykiem i bardzo się cieszę z poziomu debaty, która toczy się na tej sali.
Wszyscy jesteśmy zgodni co do podstaw i wartości, które nas łączą i prowadzimy tę debatę naprawdę w sposób, którego wielu ludzi w innych częściach świata mogłoby nam pozazdrościć: spokojnie, merytorycznie, opierając się o fakty, historię, wielkie doświadczenia fantastycznych narodów z ogromną kulturą, które reprezentują naszą wspólnotę. Natomiast chciałem państwu powiedzieć, że prawie nikt oprócz nas nas nie słucha teraz w tej chwili. Europejczycy nie zajmują się tym, o czym my dzisiaj na tej sali mówimy. A w tym samym czasie nasz największy wróg — jestem reprezentantem Polski, tak jak pani poseł z Hiszpanii z jednej strony, tak my z drugiej — musimy się wadzić z przedstawicielami świata o zupełnie innych wartościach, o braku wartości z naszego punktu widzenia. I dlatego chciałbym zwrócić uwagę, żebyśmy te wszystkie formaty, grupy, sposoby komunikowania, platformy przenieśli również do części świata, która jest dzisiaj być może niedostępna dla nas parlamentarzystów, a być powinna, bo w wielu innych miejscach właśnie ten sposób komunikowania jest wybierany przez setki czy miliardy nawet obywateli świata — to jest internet.
Nasz wróg, Rosja, Federacja Rosyjska wydaje miliardy na dezinformację, na sianie zamętu i niepokoju w naszych krajach, wśród naszych obywateli, w tym czasie my wydajemy dziesiątki razy mniej, a stać nas na dziesiątki razy więcej. Ja apeluję, żebyśmy w tym momencie przestali — nie, wycofuję, nie przestali — dalej dyskutowali w ten sposób, który jest naszą tradycją.
To bardzo dobra tradycja, jestem z niej dumny. Ale przenieśli też również to na poziom operacyjny i starali się w tych miejscach, w których możemy podejmować decyzje, przekazać konkretne decyzje dotyczące tego, żebyśmy my również informowali tych, którzy nam zagrażają dzisiaj o tym, jak sprawy się w istocie mają i jakie są zagrożenia. Bardzo dziękuję.
Thank you very much. I'll go now to the Irish Parliament, 63.
Please introduce yourself.
Erin McGreehan
So, Deputy Erin McGreehan from the Irish Parliament. I suppose when we look at Team Europe and what we want to be as Team Europe going forward in a Europe that is diverse and a Europe that is facing incredible amount of different types of challenges, we have to look at what is our common goal. Ireland knows about European solidarity, and we use examples of that during the Brexit debates.
We could not have carried the weight of explaining what the border on the middle of our island would have meant and the consequences of Brexit if it was not for our European solidarity. When Europe has a common goal, it works the best. And it is with that common goal that we will come together successfully. And I echo the comments of my colleague Deputy O'Rourke, our common goal when it comes to supporting this two-state solution has not been there. We have failed at a European level at that.
So when history judges us, when we face a common goal, we are successful. When we don't collectively work together to face down challenges, we fail. And we are failing in Gaza, we are failing to protect the Palestinian two-state solution. And that is, we succeed when we work together, we fail when we do not. Go raibh maith agat.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much. Carmen Navarro, did you wish to come back in please from Spain?
Speaker 47
Muchas gracias, no quiero abusar del tiempo brevemente en un minuto porque España recientemente ha recibido un ejemplo de lo que es el Team Europa, ¿no?
Carmen Navarro
Y lo ha dicho el parlamentario de Polonia porque tenemos retos que no comparten otros países que son que nosotros tenemos la frontera, somos país frontera de Europa. Y si hemos tenido una respuesta coordinada que ha demostrado que Europa es un gran equipo y que solo con su fuerza podremos hacer frente a retos geopolíticos, ha sido en Ceuta. Europa ha dicho si atacan a Ceuta, si la estabilidad territorial, si la integridad territorial y la seguridad de los países y de Ceuta se ve comprometida, se ve comprometida la seguridad de Europa. Y quería agradecer especialmente la recepción que tuvo la presidenta Metsola del Parlamento Europeo al presidente Vivas y con ello al presidente de Ceuta y a todos los ceutíes para dar una respuesta contundente cuando hay un desafío migratorio que afecta a nuestras fronteras y que compromete nuestra seguridad. Miren, cuando los gobiernos son débiles es necesario que los parlamentos sean más fuertes que nunca.
Cuando los gobiernos son débiles los parlamentos tienen que ser fuertes para proteger los intereses nacionales.
Cuando los gobiernos y los poderes ejecutivos hurtan el debate de la política exterior en los parlamentos, los parlamentos tienen que hacer la labor importante de controlar a ese poder ejecutivo en materia de política exterior para proteger los intereses de los nacionales. La política exterior tiene que ser reconocida, fiable, con certeza y con firmeza no solo a los aliados, sino también a otros países con los que tenemos unas relaciones estratégicas, pero que también son países que suponen una amenaza para la seguridad y la integridad de los territorios. Y ahí Europa ha hecho un ejemplo magnífico con España y con Ceuta. Muchas gracias.
Laura Harmon
Thanks very much. My name is Senator Laura Harmon from the Irish Parliament. It was a really interesting discussion and I really agree with what was said in relation to anti-democratic forces and how they play on people's fears and how they try and stoke up anger and that that is the destination that they are looking for. And I think as parliamentarians and as parliaments and the European Union, we have a responsibility not just to name problems, but to come up with solutions. And we have to be able to provide hope for people.
What people are seeing across the world now, they're seeing a genocide unfolding before our very eyes in Palestine. They're seeing conflicts and wars and immense human suffering.
We need to be able to use our collective economic weight and diplomatic weight in order to provide solutions. So my question is in relation to Palestine in terms of working towards that two-state solution. What can be done? And do you believe that we have failed so far in that goal? Because I think that we have let down so many people in Palestine that are dying every day, that have been murdered.
And I believe that in the future, when our children and our grandchildren ask us what did we do when this was happening, then we need to be able to collectively say that we did everything we can and that we called out the genocide for what it is. So I wanted to put that on record. Thank you.
Thank you for that. 155, which I think is a member of the Latvian Parliament, please.
Thank you for taking my question. My name is Irma Kalniņa. I'm a member of the Latvian Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Committee co-chair. May I ask to have Naaja Nathanielsen come back online? Because I know she's watching us, if she could.
My question is to Greenland.
Oh, yes, could we see her? Please go on.
Irma Kalniņa
Europe and the Baltics as well held our breath when we learned about the US intervention in Greenland. Our sympathies were with you, our thoughts were with you, and we trembled in trepidation of what you would do. And I think my colleagues in this room could agree with me that this was a moment in history on what do you do when your ally says that they want to take over your land. So my question to you is, in the level of parliamentary diplomacy, what was in your toolbox? And how at that moment in time, how did you handle the situation where we can learn from?
Thank you for taking my question.
Sarah Sheil
Thank you very much. And I think that with that final question, I'm going to wrap up the questions from the floor. We have about 10 minutes and then we must move on. So I'd like firstly to give the floor back to Ms. Nathanielsen to answer the question and to make any concluding remarks, and then we'll go back to our two panelists in the room. So please, over to you.
Naaja Nathanielsen
Well, thank you, and thank you for the question. The thing is, when you live in such a small country as Greenland, we cannot do anything but rely on allies and dialogue and international law.
That is our toolbox. We are totally reliant on other countries to believe in that system that we have built since Second World War. So that was our strategy, to make sure that as many countries, country leaders as possible was supporting the idea from a Greenlandic perspective, supporting us and stating clearly their commitment to international law and to the rights of self-determination for a small people, even though we were in the great world stage very insignificant. So for us, that was really our only tool in the toolbox. And I think that we succeeded in playing that and of course insisting on the dialogue, insisting that it's possible to talk to your adversaries and to somebody you have a disagreement with.
The US is still our ally, it has always been so, but we are like any other country struggling to figure out how can you be both an ally but not necessarily a good friend. How can we have a relationship such as that? So we were trying to figure out what sort of day-to-day collaborations were we pausing for a moment and which were we still continuing.
And I think you might find on a different level I understand the same we have with with Russia. How do we deal with Russia? How do we they have an act of war and they are threatening a people and disrespecting international law, but how do we still maintain some sort of dialogue in all of that? It's very difficult. I think we have not found the wise stones.
I think we did not succeed if it hadn't been for for parties like the European Union and good allies other elsewhere in the world. So I don't have the really good answer other than really dialogue helps standing on your ground and insisting on the fact that international law is there for a reason and it has made us prosper throughout the years.
Sarah Sheil
Great. Thank you very much, Naja Nathanaelsen, for that response. I'm going to ask now our two speakers in the room to come in, make some concluding remarks and if you wish, of course, respond to any of the interventions from the floor. So perhaps Sven Simon, over to you first.
Sven Simon
Yes, I absolutely agree with what just was said. Dialogue, I think, is the term we proceed and I very much agree with what our colleague from Poland said, that others in the world would envy us when they would see, if they could see us. I mean, theoretical it is possible, I guess it's all webstreamed, but the way we negotiate, we discuss in Europe, I think, is a role model for the world. And that is also true to the most difficult topics which were addressed by our colleagues from Ireland. I think we have different historical experiences and political traditions in Ireland, for example, compared to Germany.
But what we share and what is our common goal is that we are the strong force, also all parliaments in the European Union and the European Parliament at the forefront, that we, as David McAllister said, want to defend the international rules-based legal order.
And we can be proud as Europeans that the International Criminal Court decided to have its annual meeting not in the United States, but that the Netherlands is a safe haven and the European Union is a safe haven for international institutions. I think this is a very strong moment for our European unity. And here we fight together in all parliaments, and this is the consensus, and this we must push through in the end, being a role model for the world for our multilateral rules-based legal order and for international institutions like the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Graziano Delrio
Grazie. Mi pare che anche gli interventi della platea dicano che c'è bisogno di un'Europa più forte politicamente come politica estera e politica di difesa, perché solo così possiamo pensare di pesare nello scacchiere internazionale, incluse nelle crisi che sono state denunciate. L'Europa è molto chiara nel dire che ci vogliono due popoli, due stati, ma risulta piuttosto ininfluente rispetto alle dinamiche del conflitto. E quindi questo significa semplicemente che abbiamo bisogno di fare un salto di qualità. Quel salto di qualità che auspicava anche l'onorevole McAllister prima, cioè abbiamo bisogno di dotarci di una politica estera e di difesa che sia più efficace e più comune, perché da soli non si riescono ad affrontare le sfide globali.
Con gli imperi in campo, questa cosa è impossibile.
L'Europa non può ridursi a essere uno spazio semplicemente economico, deve diventare uno spazio politico. Ieri abbiamo dedicato un palazzo qui di fianco al Parlamento a David Sassoli, che durante la crisi del Covid, presidente del Parlamento europeo, decise di tenere aperto il Parlamento europeo proprio per dimostrare la forza delle istituzioni europee, il non arrendersi di fronte alle difficoltà, il provare a cercare soluzioni di fronte alle crisi. Bene, siamo di fronte a una grande crisi. Una grande crisi richiede un salto di qualità e di cooperazione e di unità, io credo. E questo sarebbe il modo migliore per rispondere anche a tutte le crisi che in giro per il mondo, alle violenze, al Sudan, a quello che succede in Iran e così via, a quello che succede in Palestina.
Sarebbe il modo migliore per continuare a essere per quei popoli una speranza seria, concreta e di fiducia nel metodo democratico. Grazie.
Jim Maher
Grazie mille, thank you very much. Thank you also to our other panelists in this session, to Sven Simon, vielen Dank. Online, Tanja Nathanaelsson, thank you very much also. Welcome to the chamber also now to the Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann, Verona Murphy.
We wrap up the session here. I think it's very clear to Sarah and me that the message is Europe can have a stronger voice on the world stage when parliamentarians play a role, a bigger role, and do so together on the European level, the European Parliament, and of course the national parliaments of our member states. Thank you all for your active participation. I'd now like to welcome on stage for the next segment Vice-President of the European Parliament Katarina Barley. She is responsible for relations with national parliaments here at the European Parliament and also Commissioner Michael McGrath, who is responsible for democracy, justice, the rule of law, and consumer protection.
Thank you very much. Go raibh maith agat.
Katarina Barley
Yes, so good afternoon, dear colleagues from the national parliaments and the European Parliament, representatives of civil society, youth organizations, whatever organizations you are here from, universities, distinguished guests all together.
We're opening a new topic now, which is a very important one that is very dear to my heart and I know to our commissioner too, which is the European Democracy Shield. When we discussed it last year, it had just only been presented and now the conversation of course is different than last year. It's not about what it should include, it is how it is being translated into practice and whether it is making our democracies more resilient. And this is particularly fitting after two days in which our forum has looked at elections, civil society, parliamentary oversight and parliamentary diplomacy just now. All four themes ultimately come back to the same question.
How can our democratic institutions remain open, trusted and effective while responding to threats that are evolving increasingly quickly? To take stock of the progress made over the past year and to look at what comes next, it is a great pleasure to welcome back to the EU Parliamentary Democracy Forum Michael McGrath, European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection. Welcome.
So, Commissioner, when we met here at this forum last year, the European Democracy Shield, as I said, had only just been presented, and now we are nearly one year on. So where do you see the most significant progress in turning the shield from strategy to concrete action, and looking ahead, what are the key milestones still to come, particularly in light of the recommendations adopted by the European Parliament earlier this month?
Michael McGrath
Well, first of all, thank you very much, Vice-President, for being here and thank you for hosting this session. And I'd like to extend my own personal welcome to all of our guests who I know are coming to the end of two days of this Parliamentary Democracy Forum. I hope you have really enjoyed the experience and have made good friends and good connections, because really the strength of our democracy, I think, is in fundamentally the relationships that we develop and making sure that all parts of our system and the people at different levels of our system work together and are fully connected. Thank you for the question.
Yes, it was last November that we adopted the European Democracy Shield and we have made very good progress since on the different implementations. We focus on a number of key areas, the information environment being a crucial one because we're conscious that for ordinary citizens navigating the online very complex information environment today is really difficult, even trying to tell the difference between what's real and what's not real is not without challenge. But also working with member states on the key question of free and fair elections and making sure that there is a good environment around them in member states for independent and plural media, for civil society whom I know are represented well here today to do their work without any restriction. That's an important part of our democracy as well. But in relation to the action points and the recommendations, the key recommendation that we have advanced on is the setting up of the Center for Democratic Resilience, which is now up and running since February of this year.
We have all the member states of the European Union participating voluntarily in the work of the center and really it is acting as a hub.
It is to join the dots between a lot of good work that's happening at member state level, but also across the EU institutions, whether it be the External Action Service with their rapid alert system, or you take Viginum in France, an excellent center of activity designed to strengthen the resilience of democracy. So in the coming weeks, we'll be coming forward with further actions, including looking at the role of AI in electoral processes, but also bringing forward a recommendation on an issue that I know is directly relevant to many of you, which is about safety in politics. Because we know for women in particular, for people from minority backgrounds and people involved in local politics, who, you know, by their very nature, want to and have to have a lot of direct contact with the people, and that is the essence of democracy, but it can also result in a vulnerability and an exposure to those that wish to cause harm. So we look forward to bringing that forward as well. And very briefly on the European Parliament's report, can I thank the chair, Nathalie Loiseau, the rapporteur, Thomas Tobé, all of the shadows and all of those involved in preparing that report.
We warmly welcome it. I think broadly speaking, it's looking for more ambition, and I like that. There are limits to what we can do because of the allocation of competences, and when it comes to the work of the center, I know you have called, for example, for it to be based on binding law and for it to have a dedicated budget.
There will certainly be an opportunity on the budgetary side in the context of the multiannual financial framework over the weeks and months ahead. But what I would say finally, Vice-President, is that we now have a solid base to build on. And I'm not saying that the Democracy Shield is a finishing point. To me it really is only a starting point, and it will be what we make of it. It is up to us to set the limitations.
Katarina Barley
Thank you so much, Commissioner, and a lot of the points you touched upon have been discussed during these two days also in this house. And well, you are here with a lot of national and European parliamentarians who are not only beneficiaries of democratic resilience measures, but they are also central democratic actors, of course, with scrutiny, legislative and representative responsibilities. So you already mentioned what the European Parliament is, has been doing, but how do you see the European Parliament and national parliaments contributing concretely to the implementation of the shield?
Michael McGrath
Well, I think both the European Parliament and the national parliaments have a really crucial role.
Since becoming a commissioner in late 2024, I have visited all 27 member states and many of the enlargement countries too. And I will be in Albania, for example, next week. And tomorrow, I will be in Luxembourg appearing before their national parliament to discuss rule of law, which is also a fundamental building block of any healthy democratic society, that we have independent justice systems, independent judges, that everybody is equal in the eyes of the law. So I think direct engagement with parliaments around the European Union and beyond is a crucial part of the work that I do. But I'm not going to tell MEPs or tell members of national parliaments what to do in order to strengthen democracy in your parliament or in your member state, because you you are living and breathing democracy every day.
You are the best exponents of it. You are ambassadors for democracy in your own community and in your member state. But what I can say is that we are available to help. And the European Commission wants to make sure that national parliaments and the European Parliament is fully supported in the work that you are doing to strengthen democracy within your member state or your institution. And really my overall message is that we should not take it for granted.
We are so privileged to live in open democratic societies. It's not that long ago that colleagues of all of ours, including colleagues of mine that I sat with this morning around the table when we had a meeting of the European Commission, a number of those colleagues grew up and spent part of their adult lives in societies that were not democratic, societies that were behind the Iron Curtain. So for me it's about making sure that the foundational pillars of our democracy are protected and that we continue to engage directly with citizens at every opportunity because fundamentally they are the first line of defense against the threats that we do face to our democracy in the European Union.
Katarina Barley
Well, yes, that leads me to the last question actually that I would like to pose, which is that of course a democracy shield sounds or can sound a bit institutional and technical, and democratic resilience is actually built in communities, schools, local media, civil society organizations and everyday public debate.
So how does the Commission make sure that the shield is felt beyond Brussels and national parliaments and reaches citizens and grassroots actors at regional and local level?
Michael McGrath
Well, it has to, is the first point I would make. And I've always said we're not going to save democracy from Brussels or even from the capitals of the member states. It has to make its way down to every community within the member states of the European Union. And that means engagement has to happen well beyond any democratic parliament. It has to happen in our schools, in our community centers, in our sports clubs, through our media, through our local media, local radio, local newspapers.
Before I became an EU Commissioner, I had the great honor of serving in Irish politics for about 25 years, eight at a local level and over 17 at a national level. I'm delighted to see the Ceann Comhairle, the chair of the Irish parliament here, a number of members of the Dáil and of the Seanad here from Ireland today as well. But in Ireland, and it's similar to many other parts of Europe, the politicians are very, very close to the people who elected them. And if you're not very close and if you're not working for them and representing them, then you won't last very long in politics. So I think it is about just remaining very connected to the people in your local community, listening to them.
They have to feel that democracy is working for them. They have to feel that the European institutions, that the government in the member state, that the local council is listening to their needs and is doing its best to respond.
And nobody will ever agree on everything, and it won't be possible to make as much progress on different policy issues as we would like from time to time, but people need to feel that connection. And I think it's a very dangerous trend when a disconnect sets in between the ordinary person and those of us who are really privileged to either represent them or to serve them as policymakers, in my case in the European Commission. So I'm available to assist all of the member states to make sure that we do bring the message right down to communities, to where people live, where they work, where they're rearing their families, where they're spending their leisure time, so that the importance of democracy is felt in every corner of the European Union.
Katarina Barley
Thank you very much, Commissioner, also for your dedication to the subject of democracy and everything you're doing in this field. We really appreciate that. And I would now open the discussion to the audience and bring in the parliamentarians and any other participants. If you want to speak, please raise your hands. I already see a few, and I think they're being taken note.
Please try to keep the intervention to one minute because I already see lots and lots of hands.
We have almost half an hour, but yeah, I think the first one I saw, I don't see the numbers actually, is 151 maybe. Thank you.
Speaker 25
Grazie. Grazie, Commissario Magrath. Noi, io personalmente sono molto d'accordo e anzi la ringrazio per la sua battaglia sullo scudo democratico. Penso, visto che siamo all'indomani di elezioni politiche importanti in tanti paesi europei, che sia necessario fare un passo ulteriore. Lo dicevo anche ieri: le raccomandazioni sono importanti, ma noi abbiamo bisogno di un atto giuridicamente vincolante e obbligatorio.
Raccogliere le buone pratiche degli Stati membri sono importanti, ma noi abbiamo bisogno di un manuale europeo perché i cittadini sappiano distinguere tra propaganda e ingerenze straniere. Noi abbiamo il dovere di difendere l'integrità dei processi elettorali e il libero convincimento degli elettori. Quindi quello che le chiedo è di aiutare anche gli Stati nazionali che non si sono dotati ancora di strumenti perché dalle prossime elezioni nazionali dipende anche il futuro dell'Europa. E se noi non avremo uno scudo democratico che protegge i processi elettorali in tutti i paesi, basterà che un solo Stato sia vulnerabile per bloccare il processo decisionale europeo.
Thank you so much.
Katarina Barley
We will collect some if that's okay with you. I'd like to not only... yes, I know, but I'd like to not only have all the men in the front. So I will continue with 63, please.
Erin McGreehan
Go raibh maith agat, Commissioner McGrath, it's great to see you in Brussels. And when we're talking about the rule of law and we're talking about the trust in our democracy and trust in our systems and the trust in us as parliamentarians. I think that goes to the base level of what any forum we should be discussing about. How do we enact trust, how do we secure that? And it is, it goes to how we govern and govern and control our social media.
It is eliminating negative algorithms. It is going after the money in where money is being spent on misinformation and disinformation to empower our citizens to discern between misinformation and disinformation. If we don't empower our citizens to trust us, we are on a losing battle. Go raibh maith agat.
Adela Militaru
That's me, Adela Militaru from the Roma for Democracy Foundation. We've spoken over the past two days, Commissioner, about the partnership, the genuine partnership between civil society and citizens groups and decision makers. And since I am one of the representatives of civil society, I wanted to know your take on what has been the reason to delay the stakeholders platform that is supposed to serve together with the center in improving decisions and bringing these voices. And another suggestion, if I may, to break or to bring the message, as you said, closer to people in every community.
The Roma community is Europe's largest ethnic minority, counting about 12 million people, out of which 6 million are European citizens. And the language, the Romani language, is spoken by more than 4 million people, but the Roma language is not part of the languages of the official languages of the Shield infrastructure. And I think that is something that is telling on how do we bridge between what is said and what is intended. I really believe you have genuine intentions and what actually makes it across as practice. Thank you.
Speaker 55
Queria começar por cumprimentar o senhor Comissário e gostava de lhe dirigir uma questão muito concreta sobre o Escudo Democrático. De facto, eu acredito que o Escudo Democrático é fundamental para proteger os nossos valores, os valores das democracias plenas.
No entanto, sabemos também que há pontos de vista divergentes, nomeadamente de movimentos e forças político-partidárias e até de organizações da sociedade civil que entendem que o escudo democrático é de alguma forma restritivo em relação a algumas liberdades individuais. E é sobre essa matéria, sobre essa problemática que eu gostava de ouvir o Comissário, dando nota, naturalmente, de que me parece que, no essencial, o escudo democrático é dos avanços mais relevantes que a União Europeia fez ao longo dos últimos anos e queria por isso encorajar a continuar esse caminho. Muito obrigado.
Thank you so much. And I hope I read this correctly that this is a 346, 346. Yes. It is either a 346 or a 396. One of those two.
Can you tell me what it is?
Nine.
Carolyn Johnson
Thank you. Yes, it's a nine. Thank you so much. My name is Carolyn Johnson. I work for the European Partnership for Democracy.
Thank you, Commissioner and Vice-President. We would really, as the European Partnership for Democracy, we have followed the Shield from the very early beginning and we would really like to congratulate you on this collaborative spirit that you've had so far with the Shield itself, with the Center as well.
And we would really urge you also to keep this collaborative spirit now that you're moving into beyond the initial process and into the specific deliverables. And Commissioner, you were mentioning the role of local media and I wanted to follow up on this to ask, do you have any updates on the Media Resilience Program? It was highlighted during last year's State of the Union speech and we would be interested in how this is coming along. Thank you.
Katarina Barley
Thank you. That's a lot of questions. I think I will give the Commissioner the opportunity to answer.
Michael McGrath
Yes, thank you all very much, colleagues. Some excellent questions there. First of all, in terms of the legal framework and the laws that we have in the European Union and at a national level, we are fully committed at EU level to enforcing the laws that we have, including those applying to the digital world. And as you know, in recent years, the co-legislators working with the Commission have agreed on some very important laws, including the Digital Services Act, the AI Act, the Political Advertising Regulation, the European Media Freedom Act. We have an Audiovisual Media Services Directive.
All of these are critically important and they impose obligations on different actors and stakeholders within the media environment that we have been discussing here so far today. And a number of actions have already been taken by the Commission in the context of those obligations that the big tech platforms within the scope of the DSA have, including in the area of protection of minors, election integrity, the sale of illegal and unsafe products on certain marketplaces and certain platforms, and all of that work will continue. So the Democracy Shield is really to complement the hard law that we have in the European Union. It's not to replace it in and of itself. It is a non-statutory initiative, but I think in many ways that gives us more flexibility because we can adapt as we go along.
We can introduce new elements or we can amend measures that we have already adopted. And I think that gives us quite a lean way forward of dealing with this. The issue of trust has been raised and I think we all accept it is the essential oxygen that any democracy depends on.
And where trust is damaged, the trust of citizens in democracy or in the institutions that serve them, then democracy itself is damaged. And this brings us to one of the threats that we face. And it is the threat of foreign information manipulation and disinformation that some of you have already mentioned. And the European Parliament's report was very strong on this issue and it pointed the finger correctly at where it needs to be pointed about where much of this foreign interference and disinformation is coming from. And we should be under no illusions.
The goal of those who are behind those efforts is to undermine the European Union, is to undermine our democracy and ultimately to bring about an end to our Union. So we should be under no doubts about the scale of the challenge that we face and the fact that there are actors out there, malign actors, who fundamentally want to damage and bring about an end to the European Union. I want to assure you all that the partnership that we have adopted so far and the collaborative approach with civil society will continue. I'm working with my team now in the Commission to finalize our approach in relation to the stakeholders' platform that we have pledged would be set up under the Democracy Shield.
I expect to have it up and running quite shortly. In relation to languages and the issues raised concerning the Roma community, first of all to underline the importance of every ethnic group, every every minority in the European Union being fully respected, having their human rights and their fundamental rights as EU citizens upheld. That is a core part of our EU values, of what we stand for and what we represent. But we also have to make sure that that is reflected in our policies. So we have sought to adopt as inclusive an approach as possible in relation to the Democracy Shield and now the work that we are doing in setting up the stakeholders platform.
When it comes to the recognition of languages, it is first and foremost a matter for the Council to recognize languages at an EU level, but I'm more than happy to engage offline and to take up the issue further. On the Democracy Shield, I want to just assure everybody that it will protect our fundamental rights. Because yes, we get accused in this chamber and elsewhere that what we are about is exercising control from Brussels and about restricting free speech and engaging in censorship. And nothing could be further from the truth.
The core essence of the Democracy Shield actually is to protect those rights that every EU citizen has. It's a matter for every person to decide who they wish to vote for at a local level, national or European level, and who they want to have representing them and who they want to have in their governments. But we will stand behind their right to have free and fair elections where they can exercise their democratic rights without interference. And that is fundamentally what I see as our goal. In relation to the Media Resilience Program, so we have said that that is a bridge as such between the Democracy Shield and the introduction of the new MFF, which will hopefully be agreed shortly and can kick in from the 1st of January 2028.
But I'm working with my colleagues in the Commission and with the other services to make sure that we can sustain funding for the media sector between now and the beginning of 2028 through the Media Resilience Program and then as part of the wider Agora EU program that you know we have proposed where we are combining the old SURF+ with the Creative Europe and culture. So culture, media and values will all be under one very large program. And I know we have excellent support from the European Parliament to make sure we get a very good budget for Agora EU in the next MFF.
Katarina Barley
We have far more questions than we have time, so I already apologize for all of those I can't call. I would now continue with 189, please.
Malika Sorel
Monsieur le Commissaire, bonjour. La meilleure façon de défendre la démocratie, c'est d'être compétent, efficace et comme vous l'avez très bien dit, Monsieur McGrath, que les citoyens sentent ainsi que les politiques sont à leurs côtés et défendent leurs droits. Et nous le savons, c'est ici que le bât blesse pour beaucoup de nos concitoyens, le compte n'y est pas et cela explique aujourd'hui les menaces qui pèsent sur notre démocratie. Hier, une personne ici a beaucoup parlé et vous avez également, Monsieur le Commissaire, prononcé ce mot, le mot le plus important, c'est celui de la confiance. Et donc comment la restaurer ?
Pour ma part, je dois vous le dire, je ne crois pas vraiment, j'espère que l'avenir me démentira, au fait que la création d'un nouveau centre du bouclier de la démocratie va solutionner nos problèmes. C'est encore créer une structure avec de l'argent alors que l'un des problèmes auxquels nous sommes confrontés, c'est que la plupart de nos concitoyens considèrent que l'Union européenne n'est pas lisible.
Ils ne comprennent pas ce qui se passe, comment les décisions sont prises. Nous devons être plus transparents et donc pour ma part, il faudrait plutôt alléger les structures et non pas en créer d'autres. Dernier point Monsieur le Commissaire, d'abord je dois le dire aux personnes qui sont ici, nous avons d'excellents rapports et nous apprécions énormément le Commissaire McGrath, je veux vraiment le saluer. Je voudrais vous faire une proposition Monsieur le Commissaire et vous y réfléchirez tranquillement. Les plateformes ne voudront pas coopérer avec nous parce qu'elles tirent leur argent de leur business et leur business est sur la haine et fondé également sur notre désinformation.
Est-ce que vous seriez prêt à réfléchir à la levée de l'anonymat sur les plateformes ? Ça nous permettrait de juguler un peu le nombre de messages, donc les messages de haine mais également de désinformation et de lutter également contre la prolifération des bots. Je vous remercie Monsieur McGrath.
Merci beaucoup. S'il vous plaît collègues, please colleagues, would you would you please try to be concise so that we can take as many contributions as possible.
Number 64 please.
Speaker 37
Aghra mhaith agat. Commissioner McGrath, I wouldn't have always agreed with you, but I have around the idea of the localism of politics. I know many of us have been dealing with the likes of water outages and housing issues when we're here, and that's the reality. And we want to protect that connection with the people, but it is under threat. Now, what I haven't stated, and I am going to state here, is the European Union on some level still has great potential to actually deliver in what is a crazy world.
I'm sure the people of Greenland were glad that it existed. I'm sure the people of Ukraine have been glad of the European Union. I have already spoken about the failure to deal with the genocide in Israel, and we just have to do better on behalf of the Palestinians and others. But I will talk about the European Union and its huge credibility and the work it did in the Irish peace process. Now, I would like to facilitate, it would to facilitate Irish unity, but see at the minute, the peace process is under danger.
We have seen what have been the disgraceful acts of trying to force an Orange march with the huge hatred and oppression it has led to in that particular area of the Garvaghy Road. And what we need to ensure is that any engagement that would be from the European Commission and the European Union, and I know many MEPs, including when it was arranged by Kathleen Funchion and Lynn Boylan, have written to the Secretary of State of the North that literally and the only answer that there can be and the only engagement the British government is there can be no march down.
We have gone too far for this to upset things for a community that's gone through too much. But what one thing I did notice, and I do apologize at the minute, very quickly. With the online commentary, what I have noticed, now this is in relation to my own party, but I've seen it against many progressive forces around Europe and the world, is suddenly the bot farms. Suddenly you see the negative attacking us on the basis of what they see as our migration policy, which it isn't, but it's literally it is about that. And what we need to do, it's not only regulation, but it is about chasing the money.
Go raibh maith agat.
Vous m'entendez ?
Albert Koffi Kokouye
OK. Je m'appelle Albert Koffi Kokouye, je suis stagiaire et membre de l'association Auxilium Mutum en France. Nous avons parlé d'État de droit, nous avons également parlé du fait que la société civile soit entendue. J'ai une question spécifique concernant les régimes d'urgence.
Et Monsieur le Commissaire, sur la base de l'article 78 paragraphe 3, on autorise quand même la Commission à prendre une décision dans les situations d'urgence sécuritaire sans pour autant consulter de manière pratique le Parlement. Il s'agit d'une consultation non contraignante. Donc si on prend le cas du régime biélorusse, l'attaque à la frontière, l'instrumentalisation de la migration avait pour objectif de déstabiliser les démocraties européennes orientales. Et ce qui en est suivi, le Parlement n'a pas été consulté en bonne et due forme et la Lituanie, par exemple, a violé les droits humains. Donc à l'avenir, comment pensez-vous pouvoir mettre ce mécanisme-là qui permet au Parlement de se prononcer et de ne pas avoir également et ensuite des violations des droits de l'homme, de l'état de droit au sein même des États qui sont touchés par l'instrumentalisation de la migration ?
Merci.
Ildikó Éva Szopov
I would love to say my thank you to Mr. Commissioner to his visit, recent visit to Hungary and obviously there has been great developments regarding the restoration of rule of law, most importantly, most recently the Commission's proposal of lifting the 2022 protective measures. I really appreciate the discussion we are having here and the one comment I would love to make and maybe hear your views under the democracy shield is how would you, if it was possible, how would you enhance the actual role and cooperation and initiation, initiative measures on the side of the national parliaments. The reason why I'm saying because we so much relate to the localization of democracy, to what extent voters can relate to democracy and I truly believe that national parliaments do have this privilege that voters of a certain country can relate to the work what national parliaments are doing and via a second layer they would be able to better relate to the European layers if there is more cooperation. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Khalil Zerargui
Khalil Zerargui, président de l'ONG Election Expert basée à Paris.
Au moment où on parle de construire une résilience démocratique en Europe et on mobilise les moyens, nous constatons, Monsieur le Commissaire, une diminution des projets d'appui démocratique dans les pays tiers, à la fois pour les organisations de la société civile, mais aussi pour les missions d'observation électorale en Afrique, en Asie et en Amérique latine. Cette diminution, bien sûr, affecte la confiance de ces peuples dans la démocratie et le soutien à la démocratisation de ces pays. Tout au long de cette décennie, cette tendance de diminution a été constatée depuis trois ans et ça continue en 2027, affectant bien sûr le pouvoir d'influence de l'Union européenne sur les processus de démocratisation dans le monde et la confiance aussi de ces peuples partenaires dans l'Union européenne. Donc ma question est simple : quelles sont les raisons de ce choix politique et quel impact aura cela sur le soft power de l'Union européenne dans le monde ? Merci.
Merci beaucoup et je crois qu'on va oser encore un. Sorry, we're gonna try one more if you're concise, please, 306.
Speaker 63
Thank you, I'm gonna speak in Portuguese. Eu venho de Portugal, sou eleito pelos Açores, círculo eleitoral dos Açores, e trago ao senhor comissário um problema que tem a ver com as regiões ultraperiféricas e as regiões mais afastadas e remotas. Na sua qualidade de defesa do consumidor, defender o consumidor é também uma matéria de cidadania europeia, é uma matéria de democracia, é uma matéria fundamental de pertença ao projeto europeu.
E trago-lhe um problema que se agrava e que é fundamental também o senhor comissário, enquanto responsável da proteção dos consumidores, dar uma palavra e ter uma resolução, porque a democracia política está para as pessoas também para resolver os seus problemas. Sempre que um cidadão dos Açores introduz o código postal dos Açores numa plataforma em linha, muitas vezes lhe é recusada a compra. Isto é contra os princípios da União Europeia, é contra a legislação nacional portuguesa, mas nós sentimos que não está a ser feito o que tem que ser feito para que nas compras online das regiões ultraperiféricas e também remotas não haja um geoblock que afaste o cidadão europeu que vive nestas regiões de um sentimento de pertença a um projeto comum europeu onde a circulação de bens e de pessoas é um dos valores fundamentais e de fundação. Muito obrigado.
Michael McGrath
Thank you very much for all those really excellent questions as well.
And again, the issue of trust has come up on a number of occasions. What I would say in relation to the new Center for Democratic Resilience is that it really shouldn't be seen as another layer because its whole purpose is to coordinate the work that is already being done, but to make sure that the different parts of the system in the EU institutions and across the member states are fully joined up and are working together and that we build capacity throughout the European Union and also that we associate the candidate countries in the work of the center at the earliest possible date as well. So I would point to the work we're doing with the media, the work on civil society, the fact that we have launched a network of fact-checkers. The reality is for many people now, accessing reliable information is a real challenge and I think that is a threat to our democracy. We have to make sure that there is access to facts and to reliable information for people to then make up their own mind, whatever their decision is in terms of a policy or who to vote for is entirely a matter for themselves, but people have a right to have access to the information that they need.
In relation to the tech platforms, we already have very strong powers under the DSA. We have now proposed the EU Kids Act, as you know, governing the access to social media, or as President von der Leyen puts it, the access of social media to our children. And we look forward to the discussion with the member states and the members of the European Parliament in the months ahead on that. It will be accompanied by age verification, and we already have developed technically the EU age verification app, which is already being rolled out on a pilot basis by a certain number of member states. In addition, we will have the Digital Fairness Act coming forward in the coming weeks, because it isn't only children that are subject to dark patterns and addictive design and to tricks that companies may seek to play on them.
So the DFA will also play an important role there. But the question of eliminating anonymity online, it's not one that I have direct responsibility for. It is under the system of tech regulation led by EVP Vestager and the DSA. But happy to discuss that issue offline as well. Thank you for highlighting the issue of EU solidarity for Greenland, for Ukraine.
Solidarity, I think, really sets us apart in terms of our approach to international issues, to multilateralism, and we need to continue. And in relation to the peace process in Northern Ireland, it is so important that all of the stakeholders continue to engage in efforts to build reconciliation. The European Union can be very proud of the role that it has played in the Irish peace process. The United States similarly, and of course the British government and the Irish government and the parties in Northern Ireland. And we all want to see the peace process become even more embedded, reconciliation to develop further.
I hope that in the next MFF there will be a new PEACE PLUS programme so that we can continue to invest in the border regions and in Northern Ireland so as to further deepen those reconciliation efforts. The question of migration, we know it is being weaponised without question. And what I would say in relation to the European Parliament and the Commission is that we have a very good working relationship. We do have a framework agreement governing the relationship. I know my colleague Commissioner Šefčovič works very hard with the European Parliament to iron out any difficulties that arise, to make sure that we understand each other's requirements and that we support each other where we can in our work.
On the role of national parliaments, I would point to the work of citizens' panels that exist in a number of Member States, including my home country of Ireland, as being really successful and groundbreaking in the approach to citizens' panels. We now have on an EU-wide basis a citizens' panel on democratic resilience. They met in September, they'll meet again in October and in November, and we expect to hear from them before the end of the year with a set of recommendations which we will consider very carefully. On the question of funding for projects in third countries, you know, the EU is very much leading the way globally in its efforts in areas of humanitarian aid, but also around the promotion of democracy, upholding values and upholding human rights. But we know we need to do more, particularly at a time when the US has been taking a step back in so many of these different areas.
And that was an important topic of discussion at the UN General Assembly last week. But through the work we are doing on international partnerships and in other ways, I can assure you we are fully committed to continuing to face out to the world, to being inclusive in our approach and to working with partners all over the world.
On the question very finally, Chair, of the outermost regions, as you know, we did adopt a strategy recently at the European Commission on the outermost regions. And we have to make sure as a Commission that EU law applies throughout the European Union, wherever that may be, whether it be in the Azores or in Tallinn or in Rome, that EU law has to apply horizontally across the jurisdiction of the European Union and subject to EU law, that it is one European Union. And I will certainly pay particular attention to this in the context of consumer protection. And I mentioned the DFA already, but alongside the Digital Fairness Act, we will now be bringing forward a major overhaul of the consumer protection enforcement framework, so that for the first time, the European Commission will have the powers to directly investigate and enforce certain breaches of consumer law around the European Union. And I will consider the specific issue that has been raised in the context of that.
So thank you once again, Vice-President, and thank you all so much for your questions. I know we could be here all day because there's so much interest, which is a really healthy sign of our democracy. So thank you all very much.
Katarina Barley
Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, so much for your dedication again, and all of you, the whole audience, for your excellent contributions and questions and for your knowledge and experiences that you shared with us. Thank you for all the participation throughout these two days.
It was really magnificent. Commissioner, will you please stay with us on stage and I would like to welcome back to the stage Verona Murphy, President and representative for the Council Presidency for Ireland. Thank you for your contributions that were so precious these two days and for the excellent Council Presidency of Ireland. Thank you very much. And I don't know, I don't know if I can already announce that the President is also coming.
Good. So we have reached the final part of our program.
It's now for the closure, my great pleasure to welcome on stage the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who will deliver the closing remarks on this second EU Parliamentary Democracy Forum. Please.
Roberta Metsola
Good afternoon everyone, thank you so much, Katerina, for all these past two days. Really nice to see you all, dear colleagues, dear Commissioner, dear parliamentarians, dear friends. Congratulations on reaching the end of these two very intensive and action-packed days. When this forum was created last year, the idea was to provide a space where national and European parliaments could come together and where we could hold productive conversations on how we can deepen and protect our democracy. We used to have quite a lot of individual meetings, so committee to committee, from national parliaments to the European Parliament, but we identified the need for everybody to come together in a room such as this and exchange with your representatives in this house, but also for us to hear from you.
And for this, I really would like to thank our Director General, Agnieszka Lepola, and her team in the recently created Directorate General for Parliamentary Democracy Partnerships, which has really proved to us how you can make a success from this kind of event. Right now, dear friends and colleagues, these discussions could not feel more relevant. Increasingly, we are seeing polarization and even extremism within our Union, while Russia's hybrid war attempts to sow fear and weaken our systems coming in from the outside. Dear, there was Sviatlana here, is she still here? No, Sviatlana's not here anymore, but I met her yesterday, and what I told her is that she more than anyone would understand exactly what it means to stand up to tyranny and fight for freedom, putting the lessons discussed here into practice.
And we were really honored to have her with us and with our commitment that this house continues to stand with her and all the colleagues in their fight for a free and democratic Belarus. All this makes the insights shared and the conclusions reached over these two days all the more valuable, because democratic resilience cannot be achieved from Brussels alone.
Cannot be achieved from just this hemicycle. It needs strong institutions and close connections at every level across our society. And you all have a crucial role to today. So looking around me today and seeing the record participation in this year's forum, I know we are moving in the right direction. In this room right now, so we have members of this house alongside national parliamentarians, but we also have experts.
We have policymakers, civil society representatives, institutional partners, and young people. And each one of your voice matters. Every experience you have shared, every idea you have sparked, every connection you have made plays a part in strengthening our union. By being here today, you're also helping, as I said in the beginning, to strengthen the vital bridge between national parliaments and our European Parliament. This is something we need to work on together and do much more of.
And here I really thank Katarina, who is Vice-President of this house, together with Esteban González Pons, responsible for national parliament. How important it is to connect people to Europe and meet them where they are.
And our parliaments, and we see this when we visit but also you in your daily work, can achieve so much more when we work together. In this year's forum, we were extremely lucky also to hear from some incredible friends of this House. We happen to have two Irish on the stage. That's a coincidence, but a very nice one, because besides Commissioner McGrath, who really works well with all of us in this House, we have Ceann Comhairle Verona Murphy, whom we had the pleasure to be welcomed by together with all the political groups a few months ago in Dublin as we started working for the Irish Presidency. But also today, Verona, you and I continued our conversation as Ireland chairs the Presidency and guides us forward in what will be an incredibly challenging few months ahead.
So now, as we wrap up this event, the next step must be to turn the many discussions from the last two days into action.
And what I ask of us all is to put this dialogue really into practice in our parliaments, in our constituencies, when we visit workplaces and when we go from one community to another. The one thing we hear from everywhere is, yeah, is Brussels too far, our parliaments, politicians too far away from the decisions that apply to us, what is our role in them? And it is our responsibility to be accountable and to answer that question with clarity, with honesty as to where we can do better. And I believe we can always do better in order whenever we go before our constituents and present ourselves for election or re-election, we really prove to them how we've delivered concretely and tangibly. So this parliament will keep the conversation open.
We will keep pushing for a stronger, fairer and more democratic Europe. And please know to all of you that the doors of this house will always be open for whatever meetings, hearings, anything you'd like to participate in because truly our democracy works best when we work together. So we have much to do. We hope to see you all in future meetings and thank you very much for being here.
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