Today, Wednesday, Alberto Núñez Feijóo faces the first vote in Congress. It is foreseeable that the leader of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) will not achieve the necessary majority to become Spain’s new Prime Minister: Feijóo has only 172 votes on his side, with an absolute majority of 176. The second vote, in which more yes votes than no votes are sufficient, will then take place on Friday. Feijóo is likely to clear this hurdle.
In his speech Tuesday, Feijóo referred to the amnesty that his Socialist adversary Pedro Sánchez, the caretaker head of government, is negotiating with Carles Puigdemont in exchange for the support of the separatist parties Junts and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. “Puigdemont has offered us the same as Pedro Sánchez, but I don’t want to pay that price to be Prime Minister“, Feijóo said.
A good two months after the early parliamentary elections in Spain, the country that currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU is thus likely to continue to have only a caretaker government. If, as expected, Feijóo does not win a majority, King Felipe VI is likely to give the Socialist Sánchez a chance. According to the constitution, the latter only has until Nov. 27 to prevent new elections.
An “important milestone” are the reports of the large network platforms, emphasized Commission Vice President Věra Jourová yesterday. The reports are indeed a novelty: For the first time, providers such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitch and Co. had prepared their own reports on their actions against disinformation.
In 2022, companies had committed to providing information on their approach to disinformation campaigns, assisting users and third parties with identification and fact-checking, and providing transparency on actions taken. Providers must now report every six months – provided they continue to comply with the regime. X opted out of the Code of Practice in May following its purchase by Elon Musk.
Delivering the reports Tuesday, Commissioner Jourová said: “Most providers will cooperate, but you can’t rely solely on their data when it comes to the quality of the information. Independent researchers also need access to the data.” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton echoed the same sentiment, saying that the quality of the data provided varies depending on the platform.
Many operators use the opportunity to explain in the reports how intensively they are taking action against disinformation. Meta, for example, states that four to five percent of its global monthly active users are fake – in the first two quarters, it took action against around one billion accounts, almost 99 percent of which it had identified itself. In contrast, TikTok, for example, estimates that only 1.1 percent of accounts are fake. In the EU, 5.86 million accounts were identified and removed within the first two quarters. LinkedIn operator Microsoft reports 6.7 million fake profiles in EU member states. Here, too, the operator has prevented almost all of them itself from the outset.
The platforms also say they are well on the way to combating deception through the use of algorithmic systems. Google, Microsoft and TikTok, for example, have either adapted their terms of use, introduced verification mechanisms or mark AI-generated content, for example by adding markers to the metadata. In special cases, they try to prevent their further use.
But as important as the debate is, the political spotlight is currently on the upcoming elections. In particular, Commission Vice President Věra Jourová is worried about the election in Slovakia: propaganda could fall on fertile ground there. The Commission Vice President had already been concerned about this in recent months, especially with regard to the actual processing capabilities of the platform operators.
Language skills, for example, had been lacking: six months ago, Facebook had only one fact checker with Slovak language skills, Jourová said. The operators are now reporting significant growth in this area, even in the less frequently spoken EU languages. However, the EU Commission does not have an effective checking competence for this under the disinformation code; it has to live with the operators’ statements in many places.
In the foreseeable future, however, the code is to become relevant in a much broader context: the code of practice is to become a Code of Conduct. And thus part of the regulated self-regulation under the framework regime of the Digital Services Act (DSA). This is because disinformation is one of the systemic risks there, which the particularly large providers must actively address. Their measures can also be reviewed by independent auditors under the DSA, EU Commission officials expect. It is not known whether X would then rejoin.
Until then, however, the Commission intends to make further improvements to the report – and other EU legislative processes such as the Media Freedom Act could also have repercussions here, for example when it comes to political advertisements. However, the reports in the current version of the code of practice provide initial insights into what is actually happening.
Meanwhile, just how complicated the regulatory web has become can also be seen at the EU Commission itself: On the same day that the reports on the Code against Disinformation were received, the platform operators also had to report their deletion and blocking reasons to the Commission for the first time under DSA. According to the data reported, the reasons for blocking did not include disinformation even once.
Dusty old government propaganda is a thing of the past – China’s leadership is pouring resources into self-marketing. And it has set itself the goal of controlling public discourse outside the country and improving its own image. After all, China’s image has significantly declined in the last few years. In a survey of 24 countries, including many in Europe, an average of 67 percent of people stated that they had a rather negative image of China.
However, Europe and the EU member states are strategically important for China – as economic partners and as a counterweight to the United States. A bad image in these countries is detrimental to China.
But China also influences the debate to position its own political and economic model as an alternative and to attack established concepts of democracy and human rights. Since 2020, China has increasingly attempted to portray its system as superior.
The Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin (Merics) has now presented a study in which the authors examine how the People’s Republic attempts to steer the global discourse in its favor. The study is available to Table.Media in advance.
They observed a clear change in the past few years. “In the first five years under Xi, control was mainly directed inwards, rooms for discourse were severely restricted,” says Katja Drinhausen, one of the study’s authors.
During this phase, the leadership mainly ensured that no information from the outside reached China that was deemed harmful by the leadership. By now, attention is focused more on the outside world. “Taking one’s own view of things and framing outwards is a new component to be considered in Xi Jinping’s second term.”
The study found:
The researchers feel that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain independent information about China. Attempts are made to prevent undesirable expressions of opinion through numerous methods, including laws such as the Hong Kong National Security Act. They are intended to exert pressure on interest groups. Chinese living overseas who express opinions on critical issues are pressured.
The contact of foreign scientists and journalists with interlocutors in China is considerably hindered, for example, by requiring complicated official approval procedures for interviews in advance. The fact that journalist visas are issued more selectively and that travel restrictions apply to some regions, such as Xinjiang, also prevents exchanges.
The study reports an increase in Internet access restrictions: The National Statistics Office, for example, has recently gained attention by taking data on topics such as youth unemployment figures offline. “As systematically and extensively as this has been happening in recent years, it’s a very new development,” says Drinhausen. “It determines what we know about China and can independently conclude.”
Furthermore, foreigners are not able to express themselves freely to the Chinese public. While Chinese actors have access to the information space overseas, European actors have hardly any opportunity to participate in Chinese public discourse. This also hurts Europe’s image. Undesirable views are slandered as fake news.
The researchers believe that Europe is currently not as much in China’s focus as the USA, Canada and Australia. These countries are much more affected by misinformation campaigns and attempts to influence elections.
Nevertheless, the Merics experts recommend that EU countries prepare for China to step up its interference even further. They suggest Europeans should network better and take joint action:
Since this asymmetric availability of information is a structural problem, policymakers should demand China to be more open.
When Robert Fico was handed his certificate of dismissal as Prime Minister by then Slovak head of state Andrej Kiska in March 2018, the dismissed man couldn’t help but remark: “Don’t worry, Mr. President, I’m not leaving for good.”
The scene took place shortly after the violent death of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. The two young people were literally executed in their house, which they had just renovated for themselves. On behalf of people whose mafia-like collaboration with the highest government circles Kuciak had researched and reported on. Despite several convictions by a special court, observers still have questions.
For the journalist Kuciak, it was clear that there were dubious connections that reached as far as the office of the then-prime minister and lawyer Robert Fico. Fico’s resignation two weeks after Kuciak’s murder therefore seemed to many to be the only way to clean up Slovak society, in which oligarchs were pulling the strings under the protection of bribed security organs.
Civil society breathed a sigh of relief when environmental lawyer Zuzana Čaputová won the presidential election as a political sideline. And in the parliamentary elections, Fico and his Smer party comrades were defeated by a bourgeois alliance. Despite some debate, Smer still belongs to the Socialist International. A return of Fico to power in the EU and NATO country then seemed completely out of the question.
The fact that five years later, after Saturday’s parliamentary election, there could be a comeback has several reasons. First, there was the inability of the top politicians of the bourgeois “anti-Fico coalition” to get along with each other. They became bogged down in personal animosities.
Only President Čaputová managed to turn the tide again and again. But her powers were fading. She will not run for a second term. Internationally respected and honored, she failed because of domestic political conditions. Most recently, she had to appoint a government of experts because nothing worked among the parties. The bourgeois camp remained united on only one point: support for Putin’s invaded neighbors in Ukraine.
The second reason for Fico’s probable comeback: his abilities as a political stalwart of Slovakia. He has demonstrated this ability throughout his life. His ambition to “always be the best,” as classmates describe Fico, who was born in 1964 in humble circumstances, is outstanding.
While studying law in Bratislava in the 1980s, he was considered a reliable “communist reserve cadre”. He married the daughter of a well-known communist judge and joined the state party. After German unity in 1989, he made a career for himself in the newly founded Party of the Democratic Left (SDL). In the 1998 elections, he received the most preferential votes of any SDL candidate. But the SDL had the smell of a successor party to the Communists.
Thus Fico decided to found his own party, Smer, which he defined as “social democratic”. From the beginning, there was speculation that influential big businessmen were pulling the strings. The former head of the influential financial group Penta, Jaroslav Haščák, called them “shareholders of Smer”.
Fico won the elections three times with Smer, combined pragmatism and populism, was once a fan of the EU and later condemned it. Critics say that Fico is always flying the flag according to what the population wants to hear. This also seems to be the case in a current case: With his threat to no longer support Ukraine as prime minister, he is on the same wavelength as the majority of Slovaks. This does not surprise observers. After all, says Fico himself, he has found a new role model: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. By Hans-Jörg Schmidt
April 4, 2017 is a memorable day in European history. On that day, the Hungarian Parliament passed the “Lex CEU” – a law intended to banish the Central European University from Hungary. Since the fall of the Soviet regime, until that day, we in Europe could live in the illusion that academic freedom was such a strong norm that governments would never directly violate it.
Of course, there had been minor violations of this right before, but no European government had dared to attack this norm so openly. The European Commission did not act. The only institution that protected the freedom of scientific research at that time was the European Court of Justice: it declared the Lex CEU illegal at the European level. However, in order to do so, the European Court had to classify the CEU as a company and invoke WTO rules. This case showed that Europe was not yet equipped – we lacked the legal means to protect such a fundamental value.
When Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, wrote in his memoirs in 1976: “Without people, nothing is possible; without institutions, nothing is permanent”, he meant that while the norms of our society are created by the efforts of citizens, they must also be consolidated in institutions. This, of course, also applies to the freedom of scientific research.
As the CEU case shows, we need to enshrine this freedom more firmly in law if we are to maintain it as the norm in Europe. Currently, significant violations of the freedom of scientific research can be observed worldwide.
If, for example, different views are opposed to each other in the gender debate, this certainly offers extensive potential for discussion. However, to summarily cancel the lecture of a doctoral student due to massive public protests and to not even take up and endure the discourse, as happened in 2020 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, crosses a line. The same applies to the Polish government’s demand to ban gender studies from universities.
There is also cause for great concern when the Hungarian government suspends the management of 21 of the country’s universities and transfers it to foundations in order to exert more influence on the universities. Or if recent legislative changes weaken the protection of academic freedom. This is the conclusion of an independent monitoring report commissioned by the STOA panel on the state of academic freedom in EU member states, published at the end of March 2023.
The weak reaction of the EU Commission in the past to these sometimes massive structural violations shows that the EU needs a legal basis for academic freedom. However, the EU cannot legislate on education. That is why I proposed in Parliament to launch a European law to protect the freedom of scientific research. This is an initiative that – as many discussions have shown – also has broad support in the European and German science sectors.
This regulation is primarily intended to be an instrument for the European courts to create and, of course, enforce legal standards throughout the EU. This, in turn, starts first with the national courts. Since the EU Commission is obliged to protect the European treaties, it could also bring actions against member states if they violate the freedom of scientific research. An effective means for the EU Commission to enforce these standards could be to deny EU funding to countries that violate them.
What will happen next? After I initiated my report, all the political groups supported the idea. Once Parliament has made its decision, the Commission will be called upon. We have high expectations of the Commission’s response, since Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised before Parliament when she was elected that she would respond to such an own-initiative report with a legislative proposal.
Let me conclude with another quote from Jean Monnet: “I have always believed that Europe is built by crises and that it will be the sum of their solutions.” The freedom of scientific research in Europe is under pressure as never since the Treaty of Rome. Let’s find a solution that makes Europe stronger and delivers on the promise of our European project.
Thierry Breton knows how to play with social media. Last year, during his visit to the Tesla factory in Austin, Texas, the Industry Commissioner took Elon Musk by surprise: In front of a running cell phone camera, he elicited a commitment to the EU rules for digital platforms from the flabbergasted entrepreneur and owner of Twitter – excuse me: X.
Yesterday, Tuesday, it was Tim Cook’s turn: Breton took the Apple CEO to his personal exhibition of old charging cables, for which he has reserved a separate compartment on the relic shelf in his office. “This is my museum”, he says in the short film, showing off the discarded cables. Unlike Musk, Cook keeps his composure and, with his hands buried in his pockets, doesn’t let himself be coaxed into saying anything approving.
Of course, the Apple boss immediately saw through the message his host wanted to send: “Thanks to the EU regulation on standardized chargers, cable clutter is a thing of the past”, Breton then announced publicly. Because of the new requirements, the company had little choice but to install a USB-C port in its new iPhone 15 for the first time – and thus reluctantly abandon its own Lightning charger technology.
Breton doesn’t want to stop there and wants to extract further concessions from his visitor: “Whether it’s an electronic wallet, browser or app store, consumers who use an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services from a range of providers”, he demanded. The Commissioner wants to achieve this with the help of the Digital Markets Act, which is intended to force large gatekeeper corporations to compete more.
Cook’s visit to Brussels was to discuss the company’s implementation plan for the DMA. The CEO does not want to open up the closed Apple world any further than absolutely necessary. Breton, however, doesn’t want to let him get away with it. If necessary, even with the help of another cell phone video. Till Hoppe
Today, Wednesday, Alberto Núñez Feijóo faces the first vote in Congress. It is foreseeable that the leader of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) will not achieve the necessary majority to become Spain’s new Prime Minister: Feijóo has only 172 votes on his side, with an absolute majority of 176. The second vote, in which more yes votes than no votes are sufficient, will then take place on Friday. Feijóo is likely to clear this hurdle.
In his speech Tuesday, Feijóo referred to the amnesty that his Socialist adversary Pedro Sánchez, the caretaker head of government, is negotiating with Carles Puigdemont in exchange for the support of the separatist parties Junts and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. “Puigdemont has offered us the same as Pedro Sánchez, but I don’t want to pay that price to be Prime Minister“, Feijóo said.
A good two months after the early parliamentary elections in Spain, the country that currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU is thus likely to continue to have only a caretaker government. If, as expected, Feijóo does not win a majority, King Felipe VI is likely to give the Socialist Sánchez a chance. According to the constitution, the latter only has until Nov. 27 to prevent new elections.
An “important milestone” are the reports of the large network platforms, emphasized Commission Vice President Věra Jourová yesterday. The reports are indeed a novelty: For the first time, providers such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, Twitch and Co. had prepared their own reports on their actions against disinformation.
In 2022, companies had committed to providing information on their approach to disinformation campaigns, assisting users and third parties with identification and fact-checking, and providing transparency on actions taken. Providers must now report every six months – provided they continue to comply with the regime. X opted out of the Code of Practice in May following its purchase by Elon Musk.
Delivering the reports Tuesday, Commissioner Jourová said: “Most providers will cooperate, but you can’t rely solely on their data when it comes to the quality of the information. Independent researchers also need access to the data.” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton echoed the same sentiment, saying that the quality of the data provided varies depending on the platform.
Many operators use the opportunity to explain in the reports how intensively they are taking action against disinformation. Meta, for example, states that four to five percent of its global monthly active users are fake – in the first two quarters, it took action against around one billion accounts, almost 99 percent of which it had identified itself. In contrast, TikTok, for example, estimates that only 1.1 percent of accounts are fake. In the EU, 5.86 million accounts were identified and removed within the first two quarters. LinkedIn operator Microsoft reports 6.7 million fake profiles in EU member states. Here, too, the operator has prevented almost all of them itself from the outset.
The platforms also say they are well on the way to combating deception through the use of algorithmic systems. Google, Microsoft and TikTok, for example, have either adapted their terms of use, introduced verification mechanisms or mark AI-generated content, for example by adding markers to the metadata. In special cases, they try to prevent their further use.
But as important as the debate is, the political spotlight is currently on the upcoming elections. In particular, Commission Vice President Věra Jourová is worried about the election in Slovakia: propaganda could fall on fertile ground there. The Commission Vice President had already been concerned about this in recent months, especially with regard to the actual processing capabilities of the platform operators.
Language skills, for example, had been lacking: six months ago, Facebook had only one fact checker with Slovak language skills, Jourová said. The operators are now reporting significant growth in this area, even in the less frequently spoken EU languages. However, the EU Commission does not have an effective checking competence for this under the disinformation code; it has to live with the operators’ statements in many places.
In the foreseeable future, however, the code is to become relevant in a much broader context: the code of practice is to become a Code of Conduct. And thus part of the regulated self-regulation under the framework regime of the Digital Services Act (DSA). This is because disinformation is one of the systemic risks there, which the particularly large providers must actively address. Their measures can also be reviewed by independent auditors under the DSA, EU Commission officials expect. It is not known whether X would then rejoin.
Until then, however, the Commission intends to make further improvements to the report – and other EU legislative processes such as the Media Freedom Act could also have repercussions here, for example when it comes to political advertisements. However, the reports in the current version of the code of practice provide initial insights into what is actually happening.
Meanwhile, just how complicated the regulatory web has become can also be seen at the EU Commission itself: On the same day that the reports on the Code against Disinformation were received, the platform operators also had to report their deletion and blocking reasons to the Commission for the first time under DSA. According to the data reported, the reasons for blocking did not include disinformation even once.
Dusty old government propaganda is a thing of the past – China’s leadership is pouring resources into self-marketing. And it has set itself the goal of controlling public discourse outside the country and improving its own image. After all, China’s image has significantly declined in the last few years. In a survey of 24 countries, including many in Europe, an average of 67 percent of people stated that they had a rather negative image of China.
However, Europe and the EU member states are strategically important for China – as economic partners and as a counterweight to the United States. A bad image in these countries is detrimental to China.
But China also influences the debate to position its own political and economic model as an alternative and to attack established concepts of democracy and human rights. Since 2020, China has increasingly attempted to portray its system as superior.
The Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin (Merics) has now presented a study in which the authors examine how the People’s Republic attempts to steer the global discourse in its favor. The study is available to Table.Media in advance.
They observed a clear change in the past few years. “In the first five years under Xi, control was mainly directed inwards, rooms for discourse were severely restricted,” says Katja Drinhausen, one of the study’s authors.
During this phase, the leadership mainly ensured that no information from the outside reached China that was deemed harmful by the leadership. By now, attention is focused more on the outside world. “Taking one’s own view of things and framing outwards is a new component to be considered in Xi Jinping’s second term.”
The study found:
The researchers feel that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain independent information about China. Attempts are made to prevent undesirable expressions of opinion through numerous methods, including laws such as the Hong Kong National Security Act. They are intended to exert pressure on interest groups. Chinese living overseas who express opinions on critical issues are pressured.
The contact of foreign scientists and journalists with interlocutors in China is considerably hindered, for example, by requiring complicated official approval procedures for interviews in advance. The fact that journalist visas are issued more selectively and that travel restrictions apply to some regions, such as Xinjiang, also prevents exchanges.
The study reports an increase in Internet access restrictions: The National Statistics Office, for example, has recently gained attention by taking data on topics such as youth unemployment figures offline. “As systematically and extensively as this has been happening in recent years, it’s a very new development,” says Drinhausen. “It determines what we know about China and can independently conclude.”
Furthermore, foreigners are not able to express themselves freely to the Chinese public. While Chinese actors have access to the information space overseas, European actors have hardly any opportunity to participate in Chinese public discourse. This also hurts Europe’s image. Undesirable views are slandered as fake news.
The researchers believe that Europe is currently not as much in China’s focus as the USA, Canada and Australia. These countries are much more affected by misinformation campaigns and attempts to influence elections.
Nevertheless, the Merics experts recommend that EU countries prepare for China to step up its interference even further. They suggest Europeans should network better and take joint action:
Since this asymmetric availability of information is a structural problem, policymakers should demand China to be more open.
When Robert Fico was handed his certificate of dismissal as Prime Minister by then Slovak head of state Andrej Kiska in March 2018, the dismissed man couldn’t help but remark: “Don’t worry, Mr. President, I’m not leaving for good.”
The scene took place shortly after the violent death of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. The two young people were literally executed in their house, which they had just renovated for themselves. On behalf of people whose mafia-like collaboration with the highest government circles Kuciak had researched and reported on. Despite several convictions by a special court, observers still have questions.
For the journalist Kuciak, it was clear that there were dubious connections that reached as far as the office of the then-prime minister and lawyer Robert Fico. Fico’s resignation two weeks after Kuciak’s murder therefore seemed to many to be the only way to clean up Slovak society, in which oligarchs were pulling the strings under the protection of bribed security organs.
Civil society breathed a sigh of relief when environmental lawyer Zuzana Čaputová won the presidential election as a political sideline. And in the parliamentary elections, Fico and his Smer party comrades were defeated by a bourgeois alliance. Despite some debate, Smer still belongs to the Socialist International. A return of Fico to power in the EU and NATO country then seemed completely out of the question.
The fact that five years later, after Saturday’s parliamentary election, there could be a comeback has several reasons. First, there was the inability of the top politicians of the bourgeois “anti-Fico coalition” to get along with each other. They became bogged down in personal animosities.
Only President Čaputová managed to turn the tide again and again. But her powers were fading. She will not run for a second term. Internationally respected and honored, she failed because of domestic political conditions. Most recently, she had to appoint a government of experts because nothing worked among the parties. The bourgeois camp remained united on only one point: support for Putin’s invaded neighbors in Ukraine.
The second reason for Fico’s probable comeback: his abilities as a political stalwart of Slovakia. He has demonstrated this ability throughout his life. His ambition to “always be the best,” as classmates describe Fico, who was born in 1964 in humble circumstances, is outstanding.
While studying law in Bratislava in the 1980s, he was considered a reliable “communist reserve cadre”. He married the daughter of a well-known communist judge and joined the state party. After German unity in 1989, he made a career for himself in the newly founded Party of the Democratic Left (SDL). In the 1998 elections, he received the most preferential votes of any SDL candidate. But the SDL had the smell of a successor party to the Communists.
Thus Fico decided to found his own party, Smer, which he defined as “social democratic”. From the beginning, there was speculation that influential big businessmen were pulling the strings. The former head of the influential financial group Penta, Jaroslav Haščák, called them “shareholders of Smer”.
Fico won the elections three times with Smer, combined pragmatism and populism, was once a fan of the EU and later condemned it. Critics say that Fico is always flying the flag according to what the population wants to hear. This also seems to be the case in a current case: With his threat to no longer support Ukraine as prime minister, he is on the same wavelength as the majority of Slovaks. This does not surprise observers. After all, says Fico himself, he has found a new role model: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. By Hans-Jörg Schmidt
April 4, 2017 is a memorable day in European history. On that day, the Hungarian Parliament passed the “Lex CEU” – a law intended to banish the Central European University from Hungary. Since the fall of the Soviet regime, until that day, we in Europe could live in the illusion that academic freedom was such a strong norm that governments would never directly violate it.
Of course, there had been minor violations of this right before, but no European government had dared to attack this norm so openly. The European Commission did not act. The only institution that protected the freedom of scientific research at that time was the European Court of Justice: it declared the Lex CEU illegal at the European level. However, in order to do so, the European Court had to classify the CEU as a company and invoke WTO rules. This case showed that Europe was not yet equipped – we lacked the legal means to protect such a fundamental value.
When Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, wrote in his memoirs in 1976: “Without people, nothing is possible; without institutions, nothing is permanent”, he meant that while the norms of our society are created by the efforts of citizens, they must also be consolidated in institutions. This, of course, also applies to the freedom of scientific research.
As the CEU case shows, we need to enshrine this freedom more firmly in law if we are to maintain it as the norm in Europe. Currently, significant violations of the freedom of scientific research can be observed worldwide.
If, for example, different views are opposed to each other in the gender debate, this certainly offers extensive potential for discussion. However, to summarily cancel the lecture of a doctoral student due to massive public protests and to not even take up and endure the discourse, as happened in 2020 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, crosses a line. The same applies to the Polish government’s demand to ban gender studies from universities.
There is also cause for great concern when the Hungarian government suspends the management of 21 of the country’s universities and transfers it to foundations in order to exert more influence on the universities. Or if recent legislative changes weaken the protection of academic freedom. This is the conclusion of an independent monitoring report commissioned by the STOA panel on the state of academic freedom in EU member states, published at the end of March 2023.
The weak reaction of the EU Commission in the past to these sometimes massive structural violations shows that the EU needs a legal basis for academic freedom. However, the EU cannot legislate on education. That is why I proposed in Parliament to launch a European law to protect the freedom of scientific research. This is an initiative that – as many discussions have shown – also has broad support in the European and German science sectors.
This regulation is primarily intended to be an instrument for the European courts to create and, of course, enforce legal standards throughout the EU. This, in turn, starts first with the national courts. Since the EU Commission is obliged to protect the European treaties, it could also bring actions against member states if they violate the freedom of scientific research. An effective means for the EU Commission to enforce these standards could be to deny EU funding to countries that violate them.
What will happen next? After I initiated my report, all the political groups supported the idea. Once Parliament has made its decision, the Commission will be called upon. We have high expectations of the Commission’s response, since Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised before Parliament when she was elected that she would respond to such an own-initiative report with a legislative proposal.
Let me conclude with another quote from Jean Monnet: “I have always believed that Europe is built by crises and that it will be the sum of their solutions.” The freedom of scientific research in Europe is under pressure as never since the Treaty of Rome. Let’s find a solution that makes Europe stronger and delivers on the promise of our European project.
Thierry Breton knows how to play with social media. Last year, during his visit to the Tesla factory in Austin, Texas, the Industry Commissioner took Elon Musk by surprise: In front of a running cell phone camera, he elicited a commitment to the EU rules for digital platforms from the flabbergasted entrepreneur and owner of Twitter – excuse me: X.
Yesterday, Tuesday, it was Tim Cook’s turn: Breton took the Apple CEO to his personal exhibition of old charging cables, for which he has reserved a separate compartment on the relic shelf in his office. “This is my museum”, he says in the short film, showing off the discarded cables. Unlike Musk, Cook keeps his composure and, with his hands buried in his pockets, doesn’t let himself be coaxed into saying anything approving.
Of course, the Apple boss immediately saw through the message his host wanted to send: “Thanks to the EU regulation on standardized chargers, cable clutter is a thing of the past”, Breton then announced publicly. Because of the new requirements, the company had little choice but to install a USB-C port in its new iPhone 15 for the first time – and thus reluctantly abandon its own Lightning charger technology.
Breton doesn’t want to stop there and wants to extract further concessions from his visitor: “Whether it’s an electronic wallet, browser or app store, consumers who use an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services from a range of providers”, he demanded. The Commissioner wants to achieve this with the help of the Digital Markets Act, which is intended to force large gatekeeper corporations to compete more.
Cook’s visit to Brussels was to discuss the company’s implementation plan for the DMA. The CEO does not want to open up the closed Apple world any further than absolutely necessary. Breton, however, doesn’t want to let him get away with it. If necessary, even with the help of another cell phone video. Till Hoppe
