Debate: The European Elections
Date: MONDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2023
Speaker: Paolo Gentiloni
Language: EN

Democracy is about our individual right to be heard, but democracy is also our collective responsibility. Every new generation is responsible to keep our democracy healthy, make it more representative, inclusive, to protect it from internal and external threats, and to guarantee checks and balances on power.  The Commission launched what we call the ‘new push for European democracy’. Our objectives, in that sense, could not be better aligned with Parliament’s: to strengthen European democracy at the next election, to promote citizen participation and enfranchisement, and to promote institutional resilience. A focus has been on empowering citizens to participate and engage on elections.  Tomorrow on the college agenda, as part of the ‘Defence of democracy package’, there is a recommendation on resilient and inclusive election processes. A particular focus will be on promoting the participation of all groups and addressing their specific needs.  This recommendation is intended to support Member States’ and political parties’ preparedness to foster trust in our elections. It will also support the effective exercise of electoral rights, the European dimension of the elections to the European Parliament to promote election integrity and fair campaigning, election observation, as well as address cyber risks, hybrid threats and protection of the information environment around the election.  We will also be promoting voluntary commitments from political parties to implement a high standard of transparency and respect for fundamental rights and inclusion in the conduct of the elections. Reaching out to citizens is key. We do so by directly addressing citizens, for example, through EU-wide ‘get out to vote’ campaigns, by providing common EU channels for informing citizens where and how to register and vote, and spreading best practices, for instance, for citizens with a disability.  The Commission has just announced a guide of good electoral practices for persons with disabilities and a compendium on e-voting and ICT practices in electoral processes. We also co-organised with Parliament recently a tabletop exercise on cybersecurity in elections. We are dedicated to facilitating a dialogue at all institutional levels.  The European Cooperation Network on Elections, or our recent high-level event on elections, helped bring together Member States with competence in electoral matters to exchange best practices. Within this network, the Commission established the ‘joint mechanism for electoral resilience’ initiative, supporting Member States as a capacity-building tool to facilitate the exchange of expertise in areas such as disinformation, cybersecurity and online forensics.  Framed by the Commission’s European Democracy Action Plan, the report on the 2019 European elections and our European citizenship report, we have issued a number of proposals to strengthen the European dimension and resilience of our democracy. This includes the regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, which, thanks to the work of the co-legislature, can become law already ahead of the elections.  We have proposed to recast the directives which provide detailed arrangements for mobile EU citizens to exercise their rights to vote in European and local elections in their Member States of residence. I am very encouraged that the Council put these files back on the agenda, and I understand that discussions are making progress.  I would also name our proposal on the statute and funding of European political parties and foundations, the Media Freedom Act, and our work to protect journalists from strategic lawsuits aimed at silencing critical voices, as well as the Digital Service Act.  One important common thread with this measure has been transparency. Citizens deserve to know where the information that they get comes from and who pays for it. Finally, linked to this, we are finalising our ‘Defence of democracy package’ with the goal to bring covert foreign influence to light. The college will put it forward tomorrow and it will be presented in this hemicycle shortly after.