European Union

As citizens across the EU vote for the future of Europe this week, the European Cancer Patient Coalition urges all to recognise our collective responsibility to ensure the next European Parliament addresses the challenges faced by those affected by cancer.

The Council adopted a regulation which improves ten EU environmental legislative acts by simplifying reporting obligations.

The EU is adopting new rules for placing fertilising products on the EU market.

The Council adopted new rules which ban certain single-use plastic items and aim to reduce plastic pollution and marine litter.

The Council adopted decisions adapting the composition of the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee from 2020.

Written by Mitja Brus with Elena Maggi,

Koen van Zon, Understanding the European Parliament’s History

On 8 May, the eve of the anniversary of the Schumann Declaration, the European Parliamentary Research Service animated the Library reading room with a fascinating conversation between Koen van Zon, presenting his doctoral research findings on the Parliament of the 1950s and 1960s for Radboud University Nijmegen, and Martin Westlake, currently Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and the London School of Economics.

After a warm welcome, EPRS Director General, Anthony Teasdale, introduced the lecture’s core question: whether there is a resilient European Parliament ‘DNA’ – that is, an ensemble of behavioural inclinations intrinsic to the nature of this institution since its first inception.

According to Van Zon, the European Coal and Steel Community’s (ECSC) Common Assembly, which later became the European Economic Community’s Common Assembly, already displayed three resilient behavioural attitudes that were instrumental to the development of Parliament’s history. Van Zon decodes this ‘DNA’ as based on three principles he calls:

1. ‘Claim to speak on behalf of the people’;
2. ‘Call yourself a parliament, and act like one’;
3. ‘Don’t try to change the rules, change the costumes instead’.

Rather than undertaking an historical analysis of the Parliament’s life story, Van Zon took a more diachronic approach. Indeed, when retracing the main determinant events in the Parliament’s history, the author underlined how these three behavioural attitudes were already and simultaneously at work in the process of becoming a European Parliament. In particular the customary strategy (i.e. ‘don’t try to change the rules, change the costumes instead’), came to constitute the Parliament’s modus operandi in its ambition to obtain the attributes of any other liberal democratic parliament: direct elections, budgetary and legislative power.

Van Zon noted that, since its very inception in 1952, the Common Assembly was already ‘claiming to speak on behalf of the people’. When asked by Adenauer to draft a ‘constitution’ laying the foundations of a political community, there was no clear legal foundation for the Common Assembly to function as ‘constitutive assembly’. However, it was exactly by a customary strategy, in their interpretation of the treaty base, that the Members, most of whom were experienced constitutionalists, could act to realise a more ambitious mandate.

The first meeting, in 1958, of the newly formed Joint Assembly of the three European Communities, is another example of the Members’ ambition to ‘change the rules by changing the costumes’. Indeed, their first approved resolution was to rename the Common Assembly as the ‘European Parliamentary Assembly’, that is, in Van Zon’s words, ‘to call themselves a Parliament’. Furthermore, regardless of the Council’s non-recognition of this very symbolic name, the Members continued to operate under the name of ‘European Parliamentary Assembly’ until the name was formally recognised in the 1987 Single European Act.

The first direct election in 1979 has long been interpreted as a ‘turning point’, marking an irreversible shift in the life of the institution. However, as Van Zon and Professor Westlake argued, this event was simply the accomplishment of a long process. Direct elections can therefore be seen as an extraordinary event in the process of the Parliament’s efforts ‘to start acting’ as a transnational, rather than an international, assembly. They are the result of almost 30 years of Members’ contribution to setting the European agenda, claiming to ‘speak on behalf of the people’, and renaming their assembly the European Parliament. Van Zon outlined that these direct elections represented an impetus for Parliament to become a stronger, cohesive, efficient and legitimate body.

Van Zon underlined that his analysis dispels the myth of a powerless and fragile institution, preparing itself for an incumbent electoral disaster. Van Zon noted that, in his opinion, if Parliament’s powers may have seemed rather opaque to the public in the past, the Spitzenkandidaten procedure is one way in which the lines of Parliament’s accountability are becoming more evident. Indeed, Van Zon indicated the extent to which the lead candidate procedure demonstrates the last example of Parliament’s ‘DNA’ behavioural attitudes at work:

1. ‘Claim to speak on behalf of the people’ – ‘respect the outcome of the election’;
2. ‘Call yourself a parliament and act like one’ – ‘Parliaments are involved in the formation of governments’;
3. ‘Don’t try to change the rules, change the costumes instead’ – ‘interpret the Lisbon Treaty instead of changing it’.

Professor Westlake and Koen Van Zon’s lecture made a strong case for the existence of a Parliamentary ‘DNA’ that, since its very inception and well before direct elections, has provided proof of unprecedented resilience. If today radical or eurosceptic parties are no longer excluded from Parliament (as was the case in the past), their presence will not ‘bring the house down’. On the contrary, Van Zon argued that the Parliament is and always has been strong enough to uphold the democratic promise to welcome dissent at the very heart of democracy. This will strengthen, rather than damage, such a ‘genetically resilient’ institution.

Click to view slideshow.

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Written by Shara Monteleone,

© SimpLine / Fotolia

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica case in 2018, revealing alleged misuse of personal data for political advertising, demonstrated how the underlying values of the European data protection rules are essential for democracy. The EU has recently adopted a series of additional initiatives to support free and fair elections, reflected not least in European Parliament (EP) debates and resolutions.

Personal data and data analytics

Every day, most of us use digital devices, searching or posting online, and produce considerable amounts of data, capable of revealing, with the help of algorithms and data analytics, information about how we think and feel. It is said that ‘we are data‘, as the digital profiles so created can be used to predict our behaviour and personalise the services accessed. Data protection rules are in place to reduce the risks of improper use, of which the user is often unaware. When the purpose of the personal and behavioural data collected is to filter the content users can see, to influence their opinions or even to target them as voters, the issue at stake is nothing less than the democratic system itself.

The right to data protection is recognised for everyone in Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), binding as EU primary law since the Lisbon Treaty, and in Article 16 TFEU. Data must be processed fairly and for specified purposes, based on the subject’s consent or other legitimate grounds laid down by law. Compliance with the rules is subject to control by an independent authority. Building on its 1995 predecessor and on the jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice, the GDPR is fully applicable since 2018, with the aim of strengthening rights and fostering trust in the digital age. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica case

In 2018, newspapers reported that a UK-based political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), had improperly obtained data on 87 million Facebook (FB) users (including 2.7 million Europeans), without their consent. Data collection was initially made via a third-party application that 270 000 FB users were invited to install (voluntarily) for research purposes. Data of friends of friends, collected exponentially, were passed to CA, which used that data to target online voters/users with personalised political ads, allegedly seeking to manipulate their behaviour in the 2016 UK and US polls. Afterwards, FB announced it had made changes to restrict app developers’ access to data, and CA shut down in 2018. However, the connections between unlawful data processing and disinformation/manipulation of data revealed have raised criticism in Europe.

Initial reactions. EU institutions recognised the relevance of data protection, and promised to leverage the provisions of the GDPR. A heated debate took place in the European Parliament plenary in April 2018. Members called for a strong European position, stressing the role of data protection as a line of defence against election manipulation: Members expressed concerns regarding the risks that the democratic process may suffer if data are used to manipulate political opinion or voting choices. While the European data protection authorities established a Social Media Working Group, the European Data Protection Supervisor issued an Opinion on online manipulation, stressing that the scandal is a symptom of a predominant business model, and that relying on the goodwill of tech companies is not enough. For some experts the big change would be around enforcement of the data protection rules: Europe would need to ‘show its teeth’ in imposing compliance (e.g. on limitations to automated profiling). Investigations and sanctions at national level have also been undertaken. The European Parliament: A long tradition of supporting data protection

As part of its varied powers, also widely exercised in the data protection field, the EP has been active in investigating the scandal of Facebook/CA – which are companies certified under the EU-US data transfer deal, the Privacy Shield. The EP adopted a resolution in July 2018 on the (in)adequate protection afforded by the Shield to guarantee European users’ rights, and called on the European Commission to suspend the agreement. Moreover, a series of hearings were organised to assess the impact of the Facebook/CA case, and FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg was invited to meet EP Members, although the answers provided were unsatisfactory.

An EP resolution, adopted in October 2018 on the use of FB users’ data by CA, urges Member States to engage with online platforms to increase awareness and transparency regarding elections.

Micro-targeting, disinformation campaigns and data surveillance

While micro-targeting for political campaigns may simply be seen as commercial advertising, it may threaten democracy, public debate and voters’ choices substantially when the related practices rely on the collection and manipulation of users’ data (big data analytics) to anticipate and influence their political opinions and election results (computational propaganda). While GDPR is considered a strong instrument to ensure digital technologies are consistent with democratic values, it may not be sufficient alone.

A social media post says a lot about us. As we live in what has been defined as a black box society, our behaviours, preferences and the related data become (through clicks) (freely) available to large, commercial technology companies (also defined as ‘surveillance capitalists‘ due to the market concentration created), creating a vulnerability in both our digital and real lives. Such companies could develop methods capable not only of automating and translating every activity into data, but also capturing the surplus of personal data, to make users uncover data that they would otherwise not provide, and to transfer this knowledge into power. For these reasons, privacy and competition laws must be considered as intertwined. A behaviour, or a decision, can be manipulated in a certain way for commercial aims, but also for political outcomes, often without the users’ awareness or choice. Such concerns may rise, given the increased availability to some of these companies of surveillance tolls (traditionally used by intelligence services). EU Voice

The European Parliament has consistently investigated such disinformation and unlawful data processing and urged a strong and coordinated European response. The measures adopted at the EU level in 2018 include: the Commission’s communication on ‘Tackling online disinformation‘, supporting a European approach; the creation of an independent European network of fact-checkers; the Code of Practice on Disinformation, signed by several online platforms: a self-regulatory tool, which should improve transparency on the origin of the news, on how it is sponsored and targeted, and should also help with concrete actions in view of the elections. As a result, Facebook recently launched transparency rules.

While elections remain primarily a Member State responsibility, a package on free and fair European elections was adopted to protect the electoral process from disinformation campaigns based on the misuse of voters’ data, including: financial sanctions (signed in March 2019) for European political parties in case of deliberate infringement of data protection rules to influence EU elections (i.e. taking advantage of unlawful data processing); a recommendation for Member States to cooperate in securing the European elections; and guidance on the application of data protection law in the electoral context.

Artificial intelligence, data protection and elections

Given their popularity, all European political parties currently use online social media for electoral campaigning. However, the lawfulness of some parties’ data collection and use remains questionable.

Technological possibilities may enhance or undermine political decision-making. As there is a strong relationship between digital technology, democracy and polarisation of public discourse (a user is exposed to a one-sided set of information), its design impacts participation, debate and democracy.

It is clearer than ever that, while privacy and data protection are essential for other rights and freedoms (of thought, of choice, of movement), the use of new, often-opaque, automated decision-making practices, relying on algorithms, requires higher transparency, as well as joint accountability on the part of different actors, and ethical considerations. The European Data Protection Supervisor (working with other EU bodies to ensure that data are used responsibly and that voter rights are respected), stressed that data protection is a prerequisite for fair and democratic elections, and called for regulators (electoral, media, data protection authorities) to make a joint effort to protect election integrity.

Read this ‘At a glance’ on ‘Artificial intelligence, data protection and elections‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Conclusions of the 51st meeting of the EEA Council.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Romania’s former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who has left the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) and formed his own ProRomania party, cannot be trusted as he changes his mind every week, a high-ranking EU socialist told EURACTIV.com.  

The US has eased a measure banning trade with Huawei without government approval. The eased restrictions will initially be valid for 90 days. In reaction to the ban Google had stopped delivering Android updates for smartphones produced by the Chinese company. What will be the repercussions for consumers and the US economy?