Debate: Democratic scrutiny of social media and the protection of fundamental rights
Date: WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2021
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

First, what I heard from the vast majority of you is: it’s time to get to work. If we are not ambitious to become the rule-makers we will continue to be the rule-takers, the rules which have been created in Silicon Valley and which are imposed on our territory in the EU. So it’s time to get to work with a sense of urgency and I very much count on the European Parliament and your approach to adopt the legislation which the Commission proposed soon enough. Also because we see a lot of impatience on the side of some Member States who want to go their own way. They want to have their own rules for the Internet and I think that it was quite clear also from this debate that we want to have a pan-European smart solution without any fragmentation by Member States.  The second main message which I got is that we are searching and working on the ideologically-neutral solution that the rules we are going to adopt should not be left or right, and that we will seek the solution which will protect the freedom of speech as the primary principle. So these are the main messages I took from this very important debate.  Coming back to the rule-makers, what we are doing is the continuation of the effort of the EU to be the rule-maker with global effect. We already managed to do that with the GDPR where we said that individual people must have the right to have their identity, their privacy, under control. And now we are coming with a set of, I hope, consistent rules which are also consistent with the GDPR and its philosophy. We are coming with the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, the European Democracy Action Plan, and by all that we want to prove that the EU has a very healthy instinct when it comes to the risks which we see on the Internet and which can cause big harm to our societies.  What I heard from many of you was that the digital big tech grabbed too much power and too little responsibility. I would add I agree with that. The platforms captured a lot of public space. I sometimes say that they privatised the public space, and this is a public space without any public scrutiny whatsoever. So this is also our task: to demand more transparency and more accountability, because what’s happening online is heavily influencing real life.  I think it was Mr Tudorache who said that there is no difference between online and offline, that it’s one world. I tend to agree with that. On the other hand, it’s quite easy to blame the Internet and platforms for all our troubles. I think that we should really take a lesson from what happened in the US at the beginning of January. The platforms for the transmitters of the messages of the former President Trump who was inciting violence, whipping up the crowd who then invaded the Capitol, and there were victims, there were dead people. So I think this is also a very strong goal on all of us who have influence on public opinion and on the reaction of our society to be more responsible and to be aware that social media can be a weapon, a dangerous weapon in our hands.  I am not calling for self-censoring for politicians. I am calling for more responsibility and awareness of the consequences when we use these social platforms and social media. I would like to recommend that you read Madeleine Albright’s book  Let me react to several comments regarding disinformation in the time of COVID. I’m sure you know that the Commission has an agreement with big tech to do more against disinformation. So it’s not true that they have just started now, and I appreciate the recent announcement of Facebook that they want to do more against disinformation relating to vaccination. The agreement is simple. I wanted them to enable more space for information from authorities, from health authorities, from those who are responsible for communication and for providing the people with trustworthy and evidence-based information. For the health sector I think that is a very clear message: if you do not occupy the space it will be occupied by disinformation. The Ministers of Health are aware of that and they do their best. I have to praise them for everything they are doing in this very difficult moment and crisis, and they are doing their best to occupy the space with reliable information. The thing is that the people have to trust the information provided by the health authorities.  The fight against disinformation also contains what we offer or what we propose. It contains fact-checking. Honourable Members, let me do this now. I have to react to Mr Haider who said that the EU has not invested anything into the development and production of vaccination. This is fake news, and I think that if something like that is said, it’s also our obligation to come with the facts and deny that. I also want to react because we speak here about the freedom of speech. I want to react to those who were mentioning the situation in Poland. I think we all have seen the black screens. The black screens are quite telling. I think they are screaming. Today it’s a question of protest of the media in Poland, expressed in a black screen. Tomorrow black screens might become a sad everyday reality. We also need to protect the freedom of speech by supporting independent media, not by suppressing them with additional financial burdens.  This doesn’t apply only to Poland. We have recommended many times to the Member States that they should support also financially media who are also the frontrunners in the COVID crisis, media which were already before the COVID crisis under big financial distress because the business model has changed brutally. The money from advertisers is being shifted to the online sphere which we keep speaking about today, and so we need to guarantee that the media can do their job because they have a very important role in our democratic societies.  So coming back to the law which we are now analysing. I have to say that we always advise the Member States to support media, as I said, but coming to the law, we are aware of the draft law and we need to look into it in more detail. We expect Member States to ensure that their fiscal or other policies will not affect the commitment to ensuring a free independent and diverse media ecosystem. I have to add that about the legislative process, which is ongoing in Poland, that it is important to consult such legislation also with the media sector, and I understand from the recent information from Poland that this is foreseen.  I am sorry, I probably was longer than I wanted to be, but I really wanted to react to many of your very important opinions, which I had to take.