Speaker: Katarina BARLEY (Germany — Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands)
Political group: Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament
Date: 2023-02-15
Debate: The erosion of the rule of law in Greece: the wiretapping scandal and media freedom (topical debate)

  Katarina Barley,  on behalf of the S&D Group. – Mr President, the situation of the rule of law in Greece has been deteriorating in recent times, and I found the report by the Commissioner really alarming. I mean, her having to remind a government to secure physical safety of journalists. This should really silence any critics about the critics, you know. And the most obvious issue you see it is media freedom. In the 2022 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Greece marked the 108th country. And of course, the last country in Europe. And the most disturbing event probably was the murder of the investigative journalist Giorgos Karaivaz in April 2021. In almost two years, that has been close to no progress in the investigations. And in the last months, it turned out that at least 13 Greek journalists have been targeted by the spyware Predator. One of them covered the introduction of laws by the Mitsotakis government, impeding the prosecution of money laundering and other financial wrongdoing. 
Now you have to know that Predator and Pegasus are not just spyware. It is as if someone had your mobile phone in their hands. They can manipulate everything you do on your phone. They can listen to everything you do. They can switch on the camera whenever they want to. This is a very serious breach of privacy rights. And within the Pegasus inquiry committee, we were shocked to learn about the large scale of political use of this spyware in Greece, besides the use against investigative journalists. Also the opposition leader Nikos Androulakis, Member of this parliament, and other politicians were spied upon. 
And all of this, the use of this wide-ranging spying software without ex ante judicial authorisation, ex post oversight and meaningful legal remedy is a clear breach of our union's fundamental rights. But it is not this alone. Moreover, we discovered close ties between the government and the company Intelexa that is selling this spy software Predator. It is a script that could be written in any textbook on corruption. Until last summer, the nephew of the Prime Minister, Mitsotakis, was his secretary-general/head of cabinet in his office. He was responsible for government contacts with the national intelligence service. Moreover, two friends of this nephew, Bitzios and Lavranos, happened to be key figures in the supply for communications surveillance material and both benefited from lucrative government contracts. The nephew had to resign, as well as the director of the intelligence service. 
Now, elections have been called in Greece. This makes it even more urgent to end the illegal spying on journalists, as well as on opposition politicians or politicians in general. Greece is the birthplace of democracy. The current situation is a disgrace for this beautiful country. This mess needs to be cleaned up and it needs to be cleaned up now.