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- [00:07]
A
Welcome, everyone. We're at the Full Circle Club in Brussels. It's a ferociously hot day because of the heat dome, but also because of climate change. I don't think we should forget that. So big up to everyone who made it out here. Well done. Give yourselves a round of applause. I'm James Kanter. I'm the host of the EU Scream podcast and this is one of our EU Scream live shows. So you're very, very welcome. And we have a few different formats and this one takes a look behind the news. Now, let me introduce right away our journalist panelists. They are people who really know what they're talking about. They have specialisms and they understand various aspects of Brussels in a way that I think you'll find very impressive. Immediately to my right, Estelle Nilsson. Julian Estelle reports on disinformation for Euronews. Welcome, Estelle. We have Natasha Mellersh. Natasha is from Deutsche Welle and she has a specialty reporting on migration issues. Welcome, Natasha. And we have Simon Van Dorp from the investigative outlet Follow the Money. And Simon is very specialized in corruption cases. Welcome, Simon. Now, the format is pretty straightforward. Each panelist briefly lays out a story. It'll be based on something that's been in the news. And then we comment, we do a couple of rounds and then we open it up to you, the audience. Now, Estelle, I want to start with you. You want to look at some of the aftershocks from a couple of killings in Europe. One was in Lyon, France in February, another in Southampton, England late last year, and how these events have been leveraged by extreme political forces, especially on social media. Take it away.
- [02:15]
B
Exactly. So I have been looking at two politically charged cases, one of which had racial overtones. And these are the of Corton de Ranc, a 23 year old FAR right activist who was killed in the city of Lyon.
- [02:29]
A
He was involved with a far right
- [02:30]
C
militant group called ODAS.
- [02:32]
A
Their rallying call, Young White, join your clan. The 23 year old nationalist activist was at a demonstration in Lyon when he
- [02:42]
B
was attacked by a group of suspected far left protesters.
- [02:46]
D
And the far right is rallying its
- [02:48]
E
troops around this new martyr.
- [02:52]
B
And Henry Novak, a student who was killed in Southampton in December. His case became very politically charged because he was killed by a Sikh. And this was seized upon the identity of the killer was seized upon by the far right.
- [03:08]
C
He was just on his way home from a night out.
- [03:10]
D
Unknown to officers, the teenager on the ground, Henry Novak, had been stabbed by the man claiming to be the victim.
- [03:18]
A
You've Been stabbed. Whereabouts?
- [03:21]
D
Don't think you have, mate.
- [03:24]
C
And fuel has been poured on the fire.
- [03:26]
D
Mr. Musk says that this is basically evidence of two tier policing. Do you agree with that?
- [03:32]
A
No, I don't.
- [03:33]
E
Elon Musk, really, I think he should stay out.
- [03:39]
B
And these are interesting cases because I spend a lot of time on social media looking at disinformation and what I found is that in both cases, suspects, people involved in the case were misidentified online, leading innocent people to be wrongly accused of. In the case of Henry Novak, police officers who came to the crime scene were misidentified. So they received a huge torrent of hate online. And this sent a number of police officers into hiding in the uk. And in the case of Quentin de Ranc, suspects were also misidentified, leading to a huge torrent of abuse. And so I think it's interesting because we're seeing people who think they're detectives online meddling in criminal cases.
- [04:21]
A
And so again, these generated a huge amount of sort of political heat and dust. And in a way, these violent incidents became political symbols right away because of social media. That's sort of what's going on, right?
- [04:37]
B
Yeah, precisely. And we're seeing influences from different spheres, especially the far right, pick up on these cases. You can also see in the cases of misidentified suspects the very real impact of what goes online and how it translates into the real world. For instance, sending people into hiding.
- [04:56]
A
In the case, I think, of Quentin Deronc, they even came up with the wrong image of Quentin Deranc and these far right social media outlets were portraying him in a kind of heroic AI art generated way.
- [05:11]
B
Yeah. So we saw AI generated images of Quentin Durandc being shared, even, I believe, by some media outlets. And we also saw local politicians being put on posters who were not Cantin Durant, but there was a local French politician who found himself on a memorial banner for Contain Durant because people got confused and thought that that was Contante Duroc. So yes, misinformation was everywhere.
- [05:36]
D
Simon, it's interesting the speed at which these events develop. Right. And I'm not sure our rules and how social media are being regulated are well equipped to deal with the speed because a lot of damage is done in just a couple of days time.
- [05:56]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's very, very fast how it circulates.
- [06:00]
B
Yeah. And it begs the question of the Digital Services Act. Platforms have a responsibility to mitigate disinformation on their platforms. And we know it's not working.
- [06:10]
A
Yeah. So we're talking there about the Digital Services act, which is a bit of EU legislation, which is not really being used in an effective way to get rid of these inflammatory parts of what goes on online. And the reason they're not doing that is because the Americans have said if you do that, that is a violation of freedom of speech. And unfortunately, the Europeans seem to be, if you like, capitulating a little bit to that narrative, because they could be doing more to get rid of this kind of content on X in particular. So, Natasha, I want to move on to you. You're going to tell us about people, you could call them sort of Good Samaritans, and yet they're being turned into criminals. They're helping migrants, but they're being turned into criminals.
- [07:02]
C
So I'm talking about people who are criminalized, who are helping migrants, and they might be helping them across borders. So these are often activists, humanitarian workers. It might just also be a taxi driver, and it can happen also to migrants themselves. So these are people that are prosecuted in certain European countries. So last year we saw 110 prosecutions against people who helped people in distress, usually helped vulnerable people, maybe crossed borders in a mountain region, maybe rescued them at sea, maybe they were steering a boat in an emergency situation. This is happening a lot in France, in Italy, in Greece. And it's kind of terrifying because these people are often really helping someone who's in need and then they're facing charges. And there's also. There have been two prosecutions that ended up in convictions in Spain. So two taxi drivers, for example, they took people across the border in a very normal way. So they picked up people, they took them in a taxi, and then they did cross from Spain into the French region. These taxi drivers were convicted both for one year each, just for helping people in a very normal way and sort of the course of their work.
- [08:19]
A
And they were convicted under Spanish law.
- [08:22]
C
Under French law.
- [08:23]
A
Under French law, yeah. Right. So, I mean, behind these laws is the idea that these different countries want to put a chilling effect on people aiding migrants by bringing these criminal cases. They're trying to dissuade people from doing this work of, let's say, giving somebody water who's lost in the mountains, a migrant, or somebody who is even about to drown at sea. And I just wonder whether you think that that's going to be put off people from helping.
- [08:54]
C
Well, I don't think it necessarily puts people off, but I definitely think it obstructs their work. A lot of people volunteer and they risk their lives Actually to help people in distress. And it really obstructs that. So in the case of Italy, it's become very difficult to carry out sea rescues because the Italian government has made it very difficult. It's made it very inefficient. And they often might have their ships detained for several days. You know, it can go up to 60 days. You have your ship detained, they're fined. And these organizations are often funded by donations and by individual donations. So it's become really, really difficult. So I don't think people are necessarily put off, but they're definitely prevented from really carrying out their work.
- [09:39]
D
Maybe just a question for what are the specific charges brought against these people? And do you know for how long those have been in the Gaul?
- [09:47]
C
I think it depends. So often anti smuggling legislation is used. It's misused sometimes. Also organizations, humanitarian organizations are accused of being criminal organization or volunteers are accused of being part of a criminal organization. And sometimes it's just administrative. You know, sometimes it's minor things like you're being fined because you left your car in a forest in Poland when you were helping migrants and that was an illegal parking spot or something.
- [10:14]
D
There were existing laws that they used to charge people. It's not that they sort of invented new laws to specifically criminalize this.
- [10:23]
C
I think it's more misapplication of laws. And also smuggling legislation is kind of being. Is evolving and that's often being misused. I would say.
- [10:33]
A
Yeah, there might be some legislation updated, perhaps even this year on the European level that would make this kind of criminalization of aid to migrants. And you could even use European rules to do that if this goes forward.
- [10:50]
C
Yeah. So especially migrants who are accused of smuggling, people smuggling, there's often, on a boat, there's often a migrant who might be steering the boat, and they might be steering the boat because either the person who is steering it is unable to do it at that moment, or they might be steering it because they had a reduction in their fare. But often migrants themselves are often not part of a smuggling gang. They're often also miners, so they can be prosecuted. And a lot of them have also been detained for lengthy periods for being people smugglers. So definitely. Yeah.
- [11:22]
A
Okay. So Simon, what you've got to share is this ongoing story about somebody extremely prominent in Belgium and Europe. The criminal element here, or the supposed criminal element, the alleged criminal element, is that he was apparently engaged in money laundering. Who are we talking about here and where does this case stand?
- [11:48]
D
Yes. So you must be speaking about Didier Reynrics. The Belgian longtime minister, actually in Belgium for 20 years.
- [11:57]
A
The Forever Minister.
- [11:59]
D
Well, for at least 20 years, he was the foreign affairs and finance Minister. And in 2019, he joined the European Commission as the Justice Commissioner. Now, at the time when he joined the European Commission, I was working at Politico at the time, and we got, like, some tips in the Belgian media. There were a lot of allegations, suspicions of corruption, but then it was kind of hard to nail it down. There was no smoking gun evidence. And then a couple of Years later, in 2024, we got wind of this money laundering investigation, which concerned a long period of time. So from 2001 to 2024, he would have laundered money for more than 1 million euros in cash that he first deposited on the bank account. And then through lottery tickets, he would have laundered. So you can buy these e tickets with cash money at a fuel station, where he did that. Then the proceeds go to his private bank account and they are considered of a legal origin. Now, it's still all to be proven, but there is now a very strong suspicion on D Day renders that the origin of this cash money was illegal. And it's partly for him to prove that it wasn't.
- [13:21]
A
Okay, and you kind of broke this story.
- [13:25]
D
Yes, we broke it together with Sward. I mean, it was on the day of the raids. So we haven't brought this story. And then justice acted on it. Justice was working on this, and we heard about that, but indeed, we were the first to report.
- [13:40]
A
And so the thing that always strikes me about this story is that it was using reindeers, was supposedly using the lottery to launder money. And I just wonder if that's a common occurrence or in your reporting, whether you ascertained whether that's something that every nation that runs a lottery should kind of have a look at their former finance minister to see if they're also using it for money laundering. Who uses the lottery or is it?
- [14:11]
D
Well, as a finance minister, he was also responsible for the lottery, so maybe that contributed to his advanced knowledge about the system. But no, joking aside, it's not very common technique. I mean, money laundering, usually real estate art. There is also actually a part of this case that would be about money laundering through works of art, but there's not so much known about that yet. But it's actually the Belgian National Lottery, which alerted the prosecutor's office. So they really saw these very unusual transactions. They even. They went quite far when they published a report and they showed a chart which had all the players of this E ticket system on the left down, and then two dots very far on the right. And that was DT Rendrichs and his wife, because he would have also used her.
- [15:04]
A
So you're talking about the dots showing the volume of tickets purchased.
- [15:09]
D
Yes, the volume of cash used to play.
- [15:13]
A
Right. So those dots kind of were so far out of whack with the. Because they far exceeded anybody else's purchase.
- [15:21]
D
That's why actually the lottery doesn't have to signal these transactions. So they're not under the money laundering laws. There are a number of professions which, like notaries or other banks, which have to signal to the Financial Intelligence Unit. But the lottery doesn't have to, but they nonetheless detected it, and it was quite clear to them.
- [15:44]
A
And if I may just on that question of the banks, there are, and I think the term of art is.
- [15:50]
D
Help me here, it's persons of politically exposed people.
- [15:54]
A
Yeah, Pepsi. Politically exposed people. And banks are meant to keep a special eye on them. And in the case of Didier Reynders, it looks like the ING bank didn't keep a particularly close eye on him because ING bank has now paid a big fine or has been punished.
- [16:13]
D
Yes. So until 2017, Rennes was depositing cash money on his ING account for a total of €836,000. Apparently he was confronted with that in 2017, 2018, by ING, but they never did what they had to do, which is to report that to judiciary authorities and therefore they were investigated criminally. So this is what happened. 5th of May, there was an announcement of a settlement between ING and the prosecutors and ING paid 1.6 million euros. In their statements they said that this was not an admission of guilt. But they also said ING today is not the ING of then.
- [17:01]
A
So let's go more directly to some stories from the EU machine itself. Now, Estelle, you wanted to talk about sanctions on Russia. These are the sanctions the EU imposes on Russia for the full scale invasion of Ukraine and its ongoing war of aggression. And the latest sanctions are the 21st such package. The 21st since February 2022. The headline of one of your reports on this was pretty tantalizing. It was about the influencer and the bishop.
- [17:35]
B
Yes. So Russian disinformation, actors, propagandists come in many shapes and sizes. So travel influencers and bishops and PR specialists are, believe it or not, among them. So, yeah, I looked at the individuals who are sanctioned for carrying out hybrid foreign interference and manipulation operations on behalf of Russia. So that basically means that they're involved in Russia's hybrid war on Europe and the West. And one of these people was a woman called Alexandra Jost, who is a very eloquent travel influencer who describes herself as Russian American. And she shares travel content about Russia. It's beautiful landscapes, nature. But she also inserts some Kremlin talking points. For instance, she shared a tweet saying that soon all of Ukraine would be like Crimea. And this is stuff that you don't necessarily realize at first when you see her nicely edited social media videos. So I think it's interesting to look at the different ways in which propaganda is infiltrating Western social media spheres. Just to note, she's been meta removed her on Instagram and YouTube, but she is still on X.
- [18:45]
A
Very interesting. So did Mette remove Jost after these sanctions or prior to?
- [18:50]
B
She removed her before the sanctions in 2025, but she is still active on X.
- [18:57]
C
Well, my friends, you may congratulate me because I have been sanctioned by the European Union.
- [19:01]
B
The day has come.
- [19:03]
C
Not like I was planning a trip there anytime soon. All I have to say is sorry, not sorry. And yet Europe has the audacity to claim that they have freedom of security. Speech girl. Where? Oh, and of course they had to mention the fact that I work for Russia today.
- [19:19]
F
Rt.
- [19:21]
B
So, yeah, it raises some questions because her platform in a sense has been kind of amplified by these sanctions because I'd never heard of her, but I thought, right, I want to go and see what she's doing, because I saw her listed among them, so her content is still accessible.
- [19:35]
A
Right, Very interesting. Any quick thoughts on the influencers and how they are becoming part of our sort of disinformation sphere?
- [19:45]
D
The school, my daughter there was this song, Sigma Boy, which was very popular at certain points. I don't know if you spotted that, but then it turned out that in this video clip you also had all kind of messaging. Pro Russia war. Very popular song, pretty standard. Two young girls who sang it and it was going viral. But then the video clip was full of pro Kremlin messaging.
- [20:22]
A
Wow. In what language were they singing in?
- [20:24]
D
Russian. But the Sigma Boy was quite recognizable. I don't know why it became such a global hit. But yeah, I think one thing to
- [20:32]
A
point out here about these sanctions, these, these sanctions on Russia is that this was the 21st package of sanctions. And it all sounds, when you think about it, 21 packages of sanctions since 2022. It sort of raises the question, are these effective and are they constantly playing sort of catch up? Why couldn't they have been more forceful from the beginning. But when you talk to the EU about this, they will say, well, they're incremental by design. They're there to sort of be ratcheted up every few months. And now that Viktor Orban is no longer in the European Council, there is hope that the sanctions can be brought to bear more rapidly in the future. But we'll see about that. Estelle, staying with you in what's a sort of related story, actually, since disinformation is the issue, you've been reporting on this awful content online that the French government has been tackling, and it's the kind of content, again, that we see amplified on X, which is Elon Musk's social media platform. What is France doing? How is this campaign going? They started it in February. So, you know, what do we know about how well, it's. It's working.
- [21:47]
B
Yes. So the French government decided to launch a social media account, which you might have heard of, called French Response. So the idea is that they troll the trolls, so they take to X and they will reply to Russian bots, Russian accounts. It's not just Russia propaganda in general. And they've kind of brushed aside the traditional codes of diplomacy and are using memes, snappy language to try and respond. So France is trying to break away from. Yeah, Traditional diplomacy in its fight against disinformation. So it's quite interesting, when we think
- [22:22]
A
about governments doing things about problems in our media sphere or problems in society, you think about formal steps being taken. You know, there'll be a strongly worded letter and then they will perhaps drag you through the courts if they, if they have prosecutors who are willing to do it. This French Response thing is a little bit different because this is the government itself going online and getting involved in these melees directly with merchants of disinformation who are, say, on X. So it's a really very different way of approaching things. And one aspect of this is that you tend to repeat some of the lies when you go in and rebut them. But there are other concerns as well.
- [23:08]
B
Yeah. I would say also in general, when people are prone to believe in conspiracy theories, disinformation, it begs the question, why would they trust an account run by the government where the government is debunking false claims and it can further fuel distrust in institutions because people feel the government is now saying, this is right, this is wrong, but there is no easy solution because you can also just let the lies run loose. And just to your point about going to the courts, in this era of mass bots, how do you take a bot to court? It's difficult. So you have to find other solutions.
- [23:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I, I certainly have mixed feelings about people, you know, using X and so to see a government get so involved on that platform, it sort of focuses attention back on X rather than moving towards creating alternatives. But for people to participate in social media, if a strategy is dependent on Musk's own platform, then you are sort of giving business to that platform. So that's probably one of my concerns about that. Any other thoughts?
- [24:18]
C
So I'm interested to know if there's any counter movements which are maybe more organic or citizen led which are trying to counter disinformation or work in that way.
- [24:31]
B
Yeah, I mean I suppose there's in from the media perspective, fact checking cells are becoming the norm and there are people who take it upon themselves to troll the trolls and reply to them. But that also involves, has quite a strong emotional toll if you're going to spend all day replying to lies and potential abuse. So I would say yeah, there's different approaches that yeah, this is the strongest one I've seen from a government.
- [25:00]
C
And is there any sort of scope for best practices or something like that to be introduced sort of on a citizen level? I don't know because it just seems that it's a bit of a wild west and we can't control it and we're feeding these platforms.
- [25:15]
B
So yeah, yeah, I mean I think the main thing, I mean it's rather generic but not getting your like an over reliance on those platforms fuels the disinformation and as James said, like the issue of Europe has been stepping away in some senses there's been a movement against X and giving it too much attention gives airing time to these bots. So yeah, it's also about choosing your platforms and platforms where there are, where there is regulation, where there is fact checking have a higher chance of being safer spaces for verified information.
- [25:52]
D
I have a question also. How far are we from eggs being banned in Europe given the toxicity of the platform?
- [26:00]
B
That I couldn't give you a clear answer. Or maybe you can, James.
- [26:04]
A
Well, I don't have chapter and verse on that, but I think we're far away from that. Long story short, Elon Musk is a trillionaire and he has the ear of the American government. And J.D. vance, even before he was vice president, right he was still in campaign mode. He said if Europe uses the Digital Services act to punish Elon Musk, then the Americans will no longer fund NATO.
- [26:32]
D
I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter.
- [26:39]
B
Excuse me.
- [26:40]
D
It's insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn't gonna be pro free speech. I think we can do both, but we've gotta say American power comes with certain strings attached.
- [26:52]
A
So even though you can say, okay, that's just a sort of empty threat in a way. This is the level of the debate about whether Europe can essentially do content moderation. And the Americans say any form of content moderation is a violation of freedom of speech. And instead of engaging with what the law actually says, the Europeans have more or less stepped away from that part of the Digital Services act, and they're just not using it. Natasha, back to the EU machine, but this time to the European Parliament. The Parliament approved the euphemistically named return hubs on 17 June. This is a policy to deport irregular migrants from Europe to places where they may have no prior connection. This was a very troubling moment because let me say from the get go that it was unthinkable just a few short years ago that the EU would be doing something like this.
- [27:58]
C
Yeah, that's right. They passed the returns regulation in June. And again, this is a really depressing story in terms of potential human rights abuses. Return hubs are essentially facilities that are outside of Europe, that are going to be built outside of Europe and they will host people who have had their asylum claims rejected. This also includes people who might have families, so it can include children. We don't really know where these hubs will be. They're looking at Libya, Ethiopia and Rwanda. And it's quite scary because we don't know what conditions people will be in. And also sort of lack of oversight. When you're outside of the eu, how will the EU courts, how will EU member states be responsible for people who are actually in these facilities? And another thing that's very scary about it is that people will be there sort of indefinite periods, potentially with very little checks and balances in terms of their conditions. But one thing that's been a bit scary as well is that sort of fundamental Rights Agency, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency has said that EU member states And Frontex, the EU's border agency, will be responsible for people who are there for their whole time there. But how that's actually enforced is really unclear. We're outsourcing asylum policy. We're outsourcing the sort of indefinite detention of people. And it feels very ice like as well, talking here about the American Immigration
- [29:29]
A
Customs Enforcement Agency, the European Union, of course, not all the member states, France is very hesitant about this, but the vast majority now seem on board with this idea of deporting the unwanted that they have brought to Brussels. The Taliban from Afghanistan, this unrecognized group that runs Afghanistan again and that has an atrocious human rights record. The Taliban were here for a day. And the idea is that if the European Union has better relations with the Taliban, then Afghan irregular migrants can be sent back there more easily. This is the point that we have reached will actually stay with you, Natasha, because there's what appears to be a different trend entirely in Spain. They have a fair number of irregular migrants and undocumented people, but the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, they aren't trying to remove them. Just the opposite.
- [30:38]
C
Yeah. So this is called the extraordinary regularization process. And it means that undocumented migrants, undocumented people can apply for a one year temporary work permit, which will then allow them to renew that. If it's approved, they can renew that and then they can go on a path of regularization and potentially after some years, so permanent residency. So the application deadline is the end of June. There have been 900,000 applications.
- [31:09]
A
After an initial estimate that 500,000 would.
- [31:12]
C
Yeah, so the initial estimate was much, much lower. But I have to say that it's likely that the people that will actually be regularized will be a similar number, sort of something between 750,000 or 500,000, because a lot of people have also applied twice in a sort of panic to not be part of that process. A lot of people have applied twice or maybe more than twice. So there was a huge rush at the beginning, which was very chaotic. And now that's calmed down a bit as people have become more familiar with the process as the administration has been able to sort of work through that. So right now, the people who have been approved for processing, who've actually whether applications have gone through, which are being processed to potentially allow them to have this permit, is only 350,000. So we'll see what the numbers are.
- [32:03]
A
What is interesting at the EU level about what Spain has done in the past with these mass regularizations and again in the case of this most recent one, is that it absolutely freaked out Germany. They immediately said there was a lot of pearl clutching and anger that was expressed by the leadership there. And yet, at least in my own reporting about this, there is very little evidence to show that somebody who has settled in Spain and is working in Spain and has regularized in Spain, is just chomping at the bit to get to Bremen. No, they've got lives in Spain.
- [32:45]
C
I think it's really important to note that the people that are eligible for this process have been people that had to be in Spain for a number of months. So they had to be a minimum of five months. But from my own reporting, a lot of the people have been there for several years and they have been working in the sort of informal economy that whole time. I think it's really important to note as well that this particular regularization is particularly affecting women and female domestic workers. A lot of people are also people from Latin America. So I think also the image is a little different.
- [33:18]
A
A little bit different in the sense that a lot of migrants in northern Europe don't have the same kinship that a lot of people in Spain might have with people in Latin America. Partly because of language.
- [33:29]
C
It's important not to exaggerate the kinship you might have. I mean, they're still from another continent, there's still migrants, and they're often still treated that way. But I do think it's really important to note that these are people that might be working in your home, looking after your children and have been doing that for several years, rather than the image that maybe the far right would portray. It's quite interesting in Spain as well that Covid was really pivotal for this particular regularization because Covid changed the kind of image of who essential workers are. And a lot of essential workers are migrants as well. And a lot of essential workers were women. So I think people working in the fields, people who were healthcare workers, people who are domestic workers, tend to also be women in Spain. And I think that changed the narrative. And through that narrative they were able to get quite broad support. And there was rather broad support in Spain. So the far right is now very against this regularization process. But actually from the center right initially there was a lot of support. And past regularizations have also been carried out by centre right governments.
- [34:38]
A
I mean, they make economic sense. And not only that, it does seem like the gamble by Sanchez paid off politically in the sense that this is not really super emboldened the far right.
- [34:51]
C
I wouldn't hold my breath with that because I would be concerned because there is huge, huge campaign and a huge backlash actually in Spain from the far right. So that is a big problem. And there have been challenges in the courts. They haven't been successful in stopping the regularization process. But it's a huge issue. One of the things in Spain is that there's a labor shortage, like in many European countries that could really benefit from people coming and working. But there's also they've come out of a recession recently and that was often credited to migration. So there's some positive narratives. But I think the far right in Spain is gaining ground and they are using campaigns like this, they're using measures like this to really gain more support. So it is a real problem there too.
- [35:38]
A
So let's get to one of our last chapters, Simon. Let's go into the belly of the EU beast, so to speak. The 13th floor of the so called Berlaymont Building. That's where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has her office. Now there's a lot going on with von der Leyen. That's her style, but there is criticism of her management style and she just keeps centralizing. Now she's strengthening her own Secretariat General as well. Simon this is actually kind of a story, more about her political family.
- [36:19]
D
So this is actually something that predates Ursula van de Gijn. For instance, in 2004, the EU enlarged from 15 to 25 member states and that becomes difficult to manage. Right. 25 commissioners around the table. Juan Manuel Barroso is Portuguese Commission president and he did a first centralization through the Secretary General. So he made this central part of the European Commission, which is directly under his control, more powerful in order to increase the efficiency and coherence of the legislation, etc. So this is something that started a while ago. Jean Claude Juncker was the successor of Barroso with his right hand man, Martin Selmeyer. They, for instance, they put the spokesperson service of the European Commission directly under the control of the President. It's also an important step. And under Lisa von Rijn this has increased. She had this sort of system of overlapping competences of commissioners, which created some conflicts in which she could then intervene to take the final decision. But now she also wants a stronger say in foreign affairs. But what's interesting is that they're all from the European People's Party, which is the strongest party in the European Parliament. But I think being in power for 20 years has made the EPP a little bit, how I say, drunk on power. What you do when you're a commissioned president or when you have these key functions inside big bodies. So it's not only the European Commission, but also, for instance, the European Court of Auditors, heavily politicized and other institutions, bodies, agencies in the eu, they put some people there who used to work in cabinets are being dropped into the administration, not only the highest level, but also increasingly at lower levels. The European Parliament may be one of the worst examples where this politicization really went very far.
- [38:31]
A
And that changes the character of the European project because it becomes less collegial and more like a sort of tribal endeavor on the part of these conservatives, this European People's Party.
- [38:45]
D
I think it suffice to look at what's going on in the US Right now where people are not chosen for. It's not the most competent people bottom up who are getting the promotions, but it's friends of the president. And if the political affiliation becomes too important when it gets to giving people promotions, it's very risky for covering things up. You have to return the favor if you got a job from someone.
- [39:11]
A
So, yeah, and the other part of this that strikes me is that in the European Parliament, the conservatives are teaming up more and more with the far right in order to get their agenda through the Parliament. And that is being done in the name of efficiency. You know, let's get this law onto the books, and so let's just do this practical alliance with the far right. The problem with that is that they don't really like to talk about how that could be making the far right even more powerful. And they don't like to have a conversation about the idea that teaming up with what in some cases are neo fascists could be empowering that form of and normalizing that form of ideology within the European project. I mean, these are very serious matters. And it's something that the European People's Party, the epp, does not like to talk about.
- [40:08]
D
Like, if you're in the middle of the bed, we sometimes say in Belgium, it's like you have someone to the left or you have someone to the right, and you can choose who to turn to. The problem with European political system specifically, is that the elections are often not really changing things. So the EPP always stays in power, because even if in one country they go down a bit, in the other country they go up. And they're also quite smart in attracting certain parties which are on the rise. The problem is the voters. If there is some big corruption scandal with the epp, for instance, the voters are not really going to punish them because they're not really concerned with European politics. They vote for their national parties, they think about national issues when they go to the ballot box, even for European elections. So they kind of always stay in power.
- [40:58]
A
That's right. I mean, some of these uncomfortable alliances, you could call them strange Bedfellows within the European Parliament. A lot of people back in the member states who originally vote for these people. There's not a sufficient interest in European politics, as done in Brussels or in Strasbourg, to turn the voters off from that kind of behavior. And teaming up with a very distasteful political party remains very visible to those of us who are in Brussels and are observers of the European project. But it remains largely hidden, or it can be hidden from voters back home. Staying with you though, and staying with you on Ursula von der Leyen, to some degree, you can update us on this initiative called the New European Bauhaus. What is or what was this new European Bauhaus? What's the state of play and what does it tell us about Ursula von der Leyen?
- [41:53]
D
Yes, very different story, but lighter topic. So the original Bauhaus, as you may know, was shortly after the First World War, from 1919 to 1933 in Weimar in Germany, where you had artisans, artists coming together in this building, where he had parties, where you had a lot of creativity. And it actually until today had a very strong influence on things like design in architecture, in even iPhones or Ikea. Furniture are partly attributed to that influence. But so 100 years later, in 2019, the centennial of the Bauhaus in Germany, that was a big thing. And the GIJN then got the idea to start a new European Bauhaus, a new project that was the green deal around that time. A lot of buildings would need renovation by 2050. I believe there's some objective of carbon neutrality. So in her first speech, the State of the European Union said, we need to give our systemic change its own distinct aesthetics, to match sustainability with style. That was a bit the idea behind the Bauhaus. They defined what the European Bauhaus should be. They tried to guess what did Urska von der mean? Like a team of, of officials at the European Commission. And they came up with the beautiful, sustainable and together those were the three keywords. And ultzgraph von de Gijn also wanted it to be a grassroots movement.
- [43:33]
F
And we need to give our systemic
- [43:35]
B
change its own distinct aesthetics to match style with sustainability. And this is why we will set up a new European Bauhaus, a co creation space where architects, artists, students, engineers, designers work together to make that happen.
- [44:02]
D
Now if we fast forward to today, first of all, it's kind of weird for a European Commission president to start a grassroots movement, but. But it's also, yeah, it evolved actually into a classical subsidy program. The New European Bauhaus is actually a team of officials at the European Commission who give out subsidies because you don't really have this sort of movement. Right. The art movement didn't start, so that was a bit the conclusion of the investigation or the study we did.
- [44:41]
A
Great. Thank you so much to the three of you for laying out those stories. Now can I have a show of hands for some ideas for follow up? Fantastic. And if you want to introduce yourself, that's very welcome too.
- [44:54]
F
Hi, I'm Sandra Malone and really the four of you are fascinating. So I really want to thank you for everything you've brought to us today. And thanks. Full circle. What is some advice you have about how to read the news and who are the rays of hope? The second one is relating to propaganda with a giant P. Opposite realities. Just a word on that. And last but not least, you mentioned X. And for me, the only reason for which I would engage, and in fact I do engage on X and other ones, is to not break down mechanisms through which we can dialogue with people who think in diametrically opposed ways to ours. So just wondering if you have any thoughts about that as well.
- [45:52]
B
Yeah, I would say a few things in terms of how to deal the craziness of the news cycle. What I see also and what I've learned from covering disinformation is follow the story through in the first, you know, complex stories like the, the cases I mentioned of Henry Novak and Quentin Durant, they're fast moving stories and in the initial days, hours, you will see a lot of misinformation. So hold out and don't just jump on the story when it's hot, but force yourself to go back to it and think, hey, what happened in that story? I want to know now. The case has finished or the investigation is finished where we've got with it. And that's something that I try and do when I also think of stories to cover six months on, 10 months on, a year on. Where is this? And that's a way to kind of remove yourself from the media frenzy. And then with polarization on, I mean, yeah, what your question relates to polarization, I would say I, I think it's important to, as you say, not totally give up on these platforms, but at the same time you say that you're still on X, for instance. I would be curious how much you actually manage to dialogue with these people and how fruitful that dialogue is. Because if it's shouting back at each other but not finding consensus, I wonder how effective it is. But I also agree with this idea that we're pushing ourselves into echo chambers and that can be dangerous. So yeah, looking at it, being aware of what's there is one thing, but whether you want to engage in a war of words and shouting can be a personal decision because it can be very tiring and exhausting as well.
- [47:34]
A
Simon, you too are new media and Follow the Money is a new media investigative outlet. You represent a ray of hope in that sense.
- [47:43]
D
Yeah. Fogarto Money started in the Netherlands like 15 years ago and first struggled a bit with business model, but then went into subscriptions which really worked super well in the Netherlands. They're long stories. I think people don't always have time to read the stories. Quite some people support us without necessarily reading, but that also helps. It's quite amazing how we also get all the time to investigate things. That's really helpful. But yeah, no, I just wanted to make one comment on X originally. I was also. Okay, we need to stay there, sort of engage. It's dangerous if everybody is in their own bubble and leaving their own truths. But now we really stopped posting there since Elon Musk is just getting crazier and crazier and we're just helping his business. I mean, I still go there to look what's going on and it's getting uglier and uglier. And one particular thing, and I'm sure has noticed that, is these videos that far right politicians are constantly sharing of migrants doing violent things without any context. So you have no idea what happened. It's just like this 22nd fragment of violence and it shocks you. You look at it and you're like, so this is really something propaganda form that is extremely dangerous and fueling hatred. So I mean, for me that should be illegal.
- [49:12]
A
Is that the follow the money policy that the publication, the outlet does not post to X anymore?
- [49:18]
D
Yeah, we stopped posting on X on Rays of Hope.
- [49:23]
A
I think it's a tough one. A lot of traditional media started to have problems at that point when the Internet came along. It's just getting so much worse in a sense because artificial intelligence is now providing answers really very rapidly in a very digestible form. In the past you might find a blue link when you did a search, but now you get this summary from AI.
- [49:47]
D
Maybe just a ray of hope, James, but for me, artificial intelligence is really helping me do my work and I'm getting so much more efficient. I'm like finding stuff much more quickly. I'm not sure it's always great for the environment with the data centers and such, but I think it's going to spark a big era of innovation in the media and we're going to see a lot of good things coming out of that.
- [50:12]
A
And you're not using it for writing, right? You're using it for research.
- [50:17]
D
I mean, I'm also using it for writing. But what I would do is, for instance, I write texts and I ask artificial intelligence give me a first edit just showing what could be improved in this story. And it's actually surprisingly good. But of course you have to double check everything because it can suddenly fantasize.
- [50:39]
A
And what is the editorial policy of follow the money on what you're doing?
- [50:44]
D
No, that's something we often discuss between each other. What are the dangers and how are we going to use this? It's a kind of a bottom up innovation. Everybody's in this corner experimenting a bit. So we have a pro subscription to some of these models and it's helpful.
- [51:00]
A
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I mean, the other thing I was going to say about Rays of Hope and perhaps this is a little bit counterintuitive, like what Simon was saying about using AI. I think that the influencer phenomenon is one that we can usefully think about in terms of maybe helping influencers be more journalistic and helping journalists transition to being more influencers. How does that happen? Is that something that philanthropy needs to be part of? Is that something that traditional media needs to be more open to? But it's quite clear that the vast majority of people of a certain age, young people, are just simply not, you know, going to websites anymore. And I think that we ignore that at our peril. Yes, please.
- [51:49]
E
Thanks. Hi, I'm Dushan Gaj. I'm also a fellow journalist, EU correspondent. Back to the migration story, I was interested in your thoughts about those return hubs. Will this actually happen in your view? Because there is an ambiguity about how this will proceed. Some member states are reluctant. So who is actually in your lead on that and who will make it happen? How do you see that? Also this solidarity mechanism called flexible solidarity mechanism, where some countries who don't want to take relocated migrants or asylum seekers would have to pay. Is that realistic? That countries will pay what they are supposed to pay per migrant? I don't know, €20,000 or something. Thanks.
- [52:44]
C
So I can't predict the future, but I'm very concerned that both of these things will be possible. Both the sort of paying to refuse to take migrants and sending people to places like Rwanda, Libya, which have terrible human rights records. What I'm hoping for is that there will be enough Legal challenges that sort of looking at the UK and also Israel, who tried to send people to Rwanda and failed because they just couldn't get it through the courts. They spent a lot of money and they weren't able to do it. So I am hoping that there will be enough rule of law in the European bloc to get the courts to prevent this. But I am really concerned, especially because there was the ECJ European Court of Justice for ruling recently that said that the Albanian model of sending people to hubs in Albania could be legal under certain conditions. I think it's a moment where we can actually become active and challenge all of these policies in the courts. I mean, it's quite scary because there's overwhelming support in the parliament. So I think that already says something. I know that France and Spain are much more critical and I think it's a huge concern also for our own rights. So sort of making this possible for migrants to be deported into indefinite detention in a country that's got terrible record on torture. I think we should really be concerned about what that says about us, what that says about the EU and about our own standards and looking at our, you know, constitution and our human rights.
- [54:26]
A
One thing I would add to that about the return hubs is that when the law passed, the far right bloc inside the European Parliament started chanting, send them back, Send them back. It was a very chilling moment. And I tend to think that people, when they look back, perhaps at this moment, what it represents, the place that you thought you knew, actually has this very nativist and almost sort of. It can adopt these very sort of violent ways of talking about other human beings. So I found that moment quite chilling.
- [55:12]
C
And I also want to say it's quite scary or it's quite concerning that Germany's so, so interested in these hubs as well. And also sort of looking at the far right voting with the centre right, because in Germany it's a real taboo to work with the far right. It's a huge taboo. And Merz will always try to pretend that he's very opposed to that. And in Germany it's something that was absolutely unthinkable. And so I think this is a really scary turning point. If people don't act and sort of say, hey, what's this doing with us? What's this doing with our home? Then I think it's going to be very scary.
- [55:52]
A
Feel free to come back to the mic if you have some thoughts on that. Particularly as a journalist, there are many
- [56:01]
E
open questions about this. The sense of. My question was Also, since there is this possibility of constructing those deportation centers, who is supposed to take initiative on that? Will it be a coalition of willing members states who will construct such centers in third countries? And what happens if some countries don't want to pay because they don't want to take people, but they don't want to give money?
- [56:30]
A
Some people are talking about getting the EU to pay for these detention centres.
- [56:37]
C
So it's individual. So the member states will make those agreements. They will have those agreements with the third country as a sort of bilateral agreement. So it'll be individual countries. Quite a lot of EU countries are interested, but they will have to make those agreements themselves. The regulation was really saying, can they do that or not? Now they say, yes, you can do that. And so the individual states that want to, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, just some of them, if they want to do that, they now have a bit of a green light. Whereas France and Spain, if they don't want to do that, they cannot. But it's a little bit scary that it's even a possibility within that framework.
- [57:22]
A
Okay, great. Now, any other questions for our panelists?
- [57:26]
B
Yes, Louise Hilder.
- [57:29]
C
So it could be just be like a one line answer.
- [57:32]
B
So I see that you all research
- [57:33]
C
very difficult topics on which you somehow have to take sides and you're based in Brussels is just to know, like,
- [57:41]
B
what's the thing that most motivates you in this work? And thank you very much for doing the work. Oh, what motivates me, I mean, getting to the bottom of the truth and people. Because every story, even if it's political, dry, political story, it will impact people at the end of the day. And I think that's why many people also are journalists. The quest for truth and a profound interest in human beings, covering migration.
- [58:09]
C
It's a little mix of sort of fear and anger and frustration, I would say, and just sort of feeling like it's just a complete abyss and I don't quite know how to stop it. But I feel like we sort of see the bad things before they happen.
- [58:25]
D
Corruption is not much more positive. But no, I think it's really about also exposing lies, holding power to account. Especially when you see sometimes the EU being like, you know, very moral position towards other countries or I do see certain tendencies. Indeed, when you start, when you cover corruption for a couple of years, it doesn't get better of double standards. And I think Europe sometimes is a bit there. I mean, I was in 20km of Brussels running and I saw all the EU people, they were running with a big democracy shirt. I mean, yes, to a certain extent, but we should remain critical toward our own institutions.
- [59:14]
A
I suppose my answer to that is that there is a concerted attempt to dismantle the European project and turn it into something that it was never meant to be, anti democratic deportations of people, far too much power to monopolies and to concentrated wealth. It certainly had its problems at its origins. It was far too connected with perhaps replacing the old colonial system that had kept Europe very wealthy for a long time. But it had ideals and it had ideals that it wanted to stick by. And I think that seeing those being cast away is something that I try to navigate and negotiate in my reporting. Thank you all very much for being here on this incredibly warm day. It's been wonderful to have such a large audience and I just want to thank our panel. We've had great insights on disinformation, on migration and on corruption and what is going on with the von der Leyen Commission. So big round of applause for our panelists. Okay, thanks, I think. Drinks. That's it for this episode. EU Scream is nonprofit journalism and is produced in association with the Brussels Times. It's your feedback and support that helps us delve into this new, darker era in our politics, into how the EU should be responding, and into the thoughts and experience of people who really know what they're talking about. Small donations to large ones, that's all incredibly appreciated. It also helps when we get a five star rating at Spotify or a review at Apple. Podcasts and passing on episodes to family, colleagues and friends. That's yet another great way to show support. For more details and for more EU Scream, do please visit Brusselstimes.com and look for the podcast. Thanks for listening.