EU Scream
Politics podcast from Brussels
EU Scream
Ep.130: Live Behind the News on Disinfo, Deportations, Corruption
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Straight talk on what's behind the news, recorded live at the Full Circle in Brussels.
Estelle Nilsson-Julien, a reporter with Euronews, describes the killings of two very different young men, Quentin Deranque and Henry Nowak. The tragedies unleashed torrents of disinformation that put more lives at risk. Both are now held up as martyrs by the far-right. Estelle also profiles the travel influencer sanctioned by the EU but who still peddles Russian propaganda on Elon Musk's X social media platform.
Natasha Mellersh, a journalist with Deutsche Welle, digs into Europe's escalating push to deport migrants. Far-right legislators chanted "send them back" after approving the plans, which raise fresh questions about the EU's commitment to human rights. Natasha also describes how countries like France are criminalizing people who help migrants even as the Spanish government appears to be charting a different course, by giving migrants the right to remain.
Simon Van Dorpe from Follow the Money describes how Dutch bank ING appeared to turn a blind eye to suspected money laundering by a former EU justice commissioner. Simon also describes why the push by EU conservatives to centralize power is raising concerns about cronyism and corruption. As for the New European Bauhaus — Ursula von der Leyen's pet project to make the built environment greener — Simon says it's fallen far short of expectations.
Welcome everyone. We're at the Full Circle Club in Brussels. It's a ferociously hot day because of the heat dump, 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 Cantor. 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 uh 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 Julien. Estelle reports on disinformation for Euronews. Welcome, Estelle. We have Natasha Mellers. Natasha is from Deutsche Vela, 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.
SPEAKER_10Exactly. So I have been looking at two politically charged cases, one of which had racial overtones. And these are the cases of Quentin Duranc, a 23-year-old far-right activist who was killed in the city of Lyon.
SPEAKER_00He was involved with a far-right militant group called Audace. They're rallying called young white join your clan.
SPEAKER_01The 23-year-old nationalist activist was at a demonstration in Lyon when he was attacked by a group of suspected far-left protesters.
SPEAKER_10And 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. He was just on his way home from a night out.
SPEAKER_02Unknown to officers, the teenager on the ground, Henry Novak, had been stabbed by the man claiming to be the victim. You've been stabbed? Whereabouts? And fuel has been poured on the fire. Mr. Musk says that this is basically evidence of two-tier policing. Do you agree with that?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't. Elon Musk really, I think he should stay out.
SPEAKER_10And these are interesting cases because I spent 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 Rank, 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.
SPEAKER_04And 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?
SPEAKER_10Yeah, precisely. And we're seeing influences from different uh 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.
SPEAKER_04In the case, I think, of Canton de Renque, they even came up with the wrong image of Quanton de Renq. And they and these far right social media outlets were portraying him in a kind of heroic AI art generated way.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, so we saw AI-generated images of Quentin de Hanc uh being shared, even I believe, by some media outlets, and we also saw local politicians um being put on posters uh who were not Quentin de Rang, but there was a local French politician who was um found himself on a memorial battle banner for Quentin de Hanc because people got confused and thought that that was Quentin de Rang. So yes, misinformation was everywhere.
SPEAKER_03Uh Simon. It's interesting the speed at which these events develop, right? Uh and and I'm not sure our you know rules and and um how social media are being regulated are well equipped to to deal with the speed uh because a lot of damage is done in just a couple of days' time or it's very, very fast how it how it circulates.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, 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.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, 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 gonna tell us about people, you could call them sort of good Samaritans, and yet they're being turned into criminals. They're they're helping migrants, but they're being turned into criminals.
SPEAKER_11So I'm talking about um people who are criminalized, who are helping migrants, and they might be helping them across borders. So these are often activists, uh 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 cross 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 it's kind of terrifying because these people are often really helping someone who's in 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 in from Spain into the French region. These taxi drivers were convicted both for uh one year each, just for helping people in a very normal way and sort of the course of their work.
SPEAKER_04So and they they were convicted under Spanish law? Um under French law. 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 gonna put off people from helping.
SPEAKER_11Well, 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 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, can it go up to 60 days? You have your ship detained, they're fined. And these organizations are often funded by donations and um by individual donations. So it's become really, really difficult. Um I don't think people are necessarily put off, but they're definitely prevented from really carrying out their um their work.
SPEAKER_03Maybe 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 goal?
SPEAKER_11Um I think it depends. So often anti-smuggling legislation is used, it's misused. Sometimes also organizations, um humanitarian organizations, are accused of being criminal organizations or volunteers are accused of being part of a criminal organization. And sometimes it's just administration, you know, sometimes it's minor things like um you're being fined or because you left your car in a forest in Poland when you were helping uh migrants, and and that was an illegal parking spot. I I think it's more misapplication of laws. And also smuggling legislation is is kind of being um is evolving, um, and that's often being misused, I would say.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, 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. You could even use European uh rules to do that if they if this goes forward.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, so especially migrants who are accused of um 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 uh at that moment, or they might be steering it because they had a reduction in their fare, but they're often migrants themselves, they're 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.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so uh 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?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so um you must be speaking about uh Didier Reyners, the Belgian um uh longtime minister actually in Belgium for 20 years.
SPEAKER_04The forever minister.
SPEAKER_03Well, for for at least 20 years he was the foreign affairs and finance minister. And um in 2019 he joined uh the European Commission as uh the justice commissioner. Now, at the time when he joined the European Commission, there were 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 uh corruption, but then it was kind of hard to nail it down, there was no uh smoking gun evidence. And then, you know, a couple of years later in 2024, we got wind of this uh money laundering uh investigation, which concerned a long period of time. Uh so from 2001 to 2024, uh 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 uh with cash money at a fuel station uh 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, uh, but there is now a very strong suspicion on Didier Renders that the origin of this uh cash money was illegal, and it's partly for him to prove that uh it wasn't.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and you kind of broke this story.
SPEAKER_03Yes, we broke it together with Wiswag. I mean, it was on the day of the raids, um, so we haven't brought this story and then justice acted on it. Justice was was working on this and we we heard about that. Uh, but indeed we were the first to report.
SPEAKER_04And so the thing that always strikes me about this story is that it was using Raiders 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.
SPEAKER_03What like who uses the lottery, or is it well, as a finance minister, he was also responsible for the lottery. So maybe that you know contributed to his advanced knowledge about the system. But uh no, joking aside, it's not very common technique. I mean, money laundering, usually real estate art. There is also actually uh 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 I 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 uh very far on the right, and that was Didier Renders and his wife, because he he would have also used her.
SPEAKER_04Are you talking about the dots showing the volume of tickets purchased?
SPEAKER_03Yes, the the volume of cash used uh to below to play.
SPEAKER_04Right. So those dots kind of were so far out of whack with the they they far exceeded anybody else's purchase.
SPEAKER_03That's why actually the lottery doesn't have to signal these transactions. So there are a number of on under the money laundering laws, there are a number of professions which like notaries or other banks uh which have to signal to the financial intelligence unit, but the lottery doesn't have to, but they nonetheless detected it, and and it was quite clear to them.
SPEAKER_04Uh and if I may, just on that question of the banks, uh there are, and I think the term of art is uh help me here, it's persons of politically exposed uh people, yeah. PEPs, politically exposed people, and banks are meant to keep a special eye on them. And in the case of Didier Reinders, 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 uh has been punished.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so until 2017, Reynolds was depositing uh cash money on his ING count for a total of 836,000 uh euros. Apparently, he was confronted uh with that in 2017-2018 by ING, but they never did what they had to do, which is to report that to judicial authorities, and therefore they were investigated criminally. So, this is what happened at the 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 uh this was not an admission of guilt, but they also said ING today is not the ING of then.
SPEAKER_04So 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 the headline of one of your reports on this was pretty tantalizing. It was about the influencer and the bishop.
SPEAKER_10Yes, 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 um 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, um, its beautiful landscapes, nature, but she also inserts uh some Kremlin talking points. For instance, uh, she shared a tweet saying that soon all of Ukraine would be uh like Crimea. And this is stuff that you don't necessarily realize at first when you see her nicely edited social media um 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 um Meta removed her on Instagram and YouTube, but she is still on X.
SPEAKER_04Very interesting.
SPEAKER_10So did Meta remove uh Jost after these sanctions or prior to removed her before the sanctions uh in 2025, but she is still active on X.
SPEAKER_06Well, my friends, you may congratulate me because I have been sanctioned by the European Union. The day has come. Not like I was planning a trip there any time soon. All I have to say is sorry, not sorry. And yet Europe has the audacity to claim that they have freedom of speech. Girl, where? Oh, and of course they had to mention the fact that I work for Russia Today, RT.
SPEAKER_10So yeah, it raises some questions because uh platform, in a sense, has been uh 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 I saw her listed among them. So her content ill is still accessible.
SPEAKER_04Right, very interesting. Any quick thoughts on the influencers and how they are becoming part of our sort of disinformation sphere?
SPEAKER_03Uh the school my daughter, there was this song Sigma Boy, which was very uh popular at certain points. It was uh I don't know if you spotted that, but uh then it turned out that in this video clip you also had all kind of messaging uh 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.
SPEAKER_04Uh Wow. In what language were they singing?
SPEAKER_03In Russian, but the Sigma boy was quite recognizable. I don't know why it became such a global hit, but um, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I think one thing to point out here about these sanctions, these these sanctions on on Russia is that with this was the 21st package of sanctions, and it it all sounds, you know, when you think about it, 20 for 21 packages of sanctions since 2022. It sort of raises the question, you know, 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, you know, they're incremental by design. They're there to sort of be ratcheted up every few months. And now that uh Victor 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 they started it in February, so you know what do we know about how well it's it's working?
SPEAKER_10Yes, so the French uh government decided to launch a social media account, which you might have heard of, called French Response. So the idea is that they trolled 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 traditional diplomacy in its fight against disinformation. So it's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_04This 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.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, I would say also in general, when people are prone to believe in conspiracy theories, disinformation, you 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.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, 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 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 that's probably my one of my concerns about that. Any other thoughts?
SPEAKER_11Um so I'm I'm interested to know if there are sort of any counter movements which are maybe more organic or citizen-led, um, which are trying to counter disinformation um or work in that way.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, I mean, I suppose there's uh in from the media perspective, fact-checking cells are becoming the norm. Um, 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 gonna spend all day replying uh to lies and potential abuse. Um, so I would say, yeah, that there's different approaches, but yeah, this is the the strongest one I've seen and from a government.
SPEAKER_11And and is there any sort of scope for sort of best practices or something like that to be introduced or on a citizen level or I don't know, like 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. Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, I mean I think the main thing, I mean, it's rather generic, but not getting your own like an over-reliance on those platforms fuels the disinformation. And as um James said, like the issue of uh Europe has been stepping away in some senses, there's been a movement against X and giving it too much attention um 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 it there is fact-checking, um have a higher chance of being safer spaces for verified information.
SPEAKER_03I I have a question also. How how far are we from eggs being banned in Europe given the toxicity of the platform?
SPEAKER_10That I couldn't give you a clear answer on. Maybe you can, James.
SPEAKER_04Well, I 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.
SPEAKER_13I I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter, excuse me, it's insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn't going to be pro-free speech. I think we can do both, but we've got to say American power comes with certain strings attached.
SPEAKER_04So even though you can say, okay, that's just, you know, 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 the 17th of 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.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, that's right. They um 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 um host people who have had their asylum claims rejected. This also includes people who might have families, so it can 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 for 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 Um Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency.
SPEAKER_04The 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.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, so this is called the extraordinary regularization process, and it means that undocumented migrants and documented 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 sort of go on a path of regularization and potentially after some years sort of permanent residency. So the the application deadline is the end of June. There have been 900,000 applications.
SPEAKER_04After an initial estimate that 500,000 would apply.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, 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. Um and now that's calmed down a bit as people have become more familiar with the process, as uh the administration has um been able to sort of work through that. Um, 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.
SPEAKER_04What 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, you know, 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 they've got lives in in Spain.
SPEAKER_11I 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.
SPEAKER_04A little bit different in the sense that a lot of migrants in northern Europe don't have the same kinship that a lot of a lot of people in Spain might have with people in Latin America, partly because of language.
SPEAKER_11It's important not to exaggerate the sort of kinship you might have. I mean, they're still from another continent and 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 regularisation 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 uh 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 um past regularizations have also been carried out by center-right governments.
SPEAKER_04I mean they make 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.
SPEAKER_11I I wouldn't hold my breath with that because I I would I would be concerned because there are there is a huge, huge campaign and huge backlash actually in Spain from the far right. So that 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, so that could really benefit from the people coming and working. But there's also they've come up, they've come out of a recession recently, and that was often credited to migration. So there's 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 it is a real problem there too.
SPEAKER_04So let's get to one of our last chapters. Uh Simon, let's go into the belly of the EU beast, so to speak, the 13th floor of the so-called Berle Mont 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.
SPEAKER_03So uh this is actually something that predates Ursula von der Leyen. For instance, in 2004, the EU enlarged from uh 15 to 25 member states, and that becomes difficult to manage, right? Uh 25 commissioners around the table. Juan Manuel Barroso is uh uh Portuguese um Commission president, and he did a first centralization through the Secretary General. So he he made this central uh part of the European Commission, which is directly under his control, more powerful in order to you know increase um 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, uh Martin Selmayr. 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 Ursula von der Leyen, this this um 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 in uh 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 uh I think being in power for 20 years has made the EPP a little, how I say, drunk on power. Um, what you do when you're a commission president or when you have uh 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 um institutions, bodies, agencies in the EU. They put some people there who used to work in cabinets, are being uh 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 uh very far.
SPEAKER_04And that changes the character of the European project because it's it's it's it becomes less collegial and more like a sort of tribal endeavor on the part of these conservatives, this European People's Party.
SPEAKER_03I think it's suffice to look at what's going on in the US right now, where people are not chosen for it's it's not the most competent people bottom-up who are getting the promotions, but it's friends of the president, right? Uh and if the political affiliation becomes too important when it gets to giving people promotions, it's very risky for you know covering things up. You have to return the favor if you've got a job from from someone.
SPEAKER_04So um, 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 uh 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 uh what in some cases are neo-fascists could be empowering that form of uh 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.
SPEAKER_03Like 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 uh, you know, 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 uh certain parties which are on the rise. The problem is the voters, if there's some big corruption scandal with the EPP, for instance, the voters cannot really 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.
SPEAKER_04That'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, uh, 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. Uh, 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?
SPEAKER_03Yes, a very different story, but uh a lighter uh topic. So the original uh 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 you had parties, where you had a lot of creativity, and it actually until today had a very strong um influence on things like design and architecture, in in even iPhones or IKEA uh furniture are partly attributed to that influence. But so uh 100 years later in 2019, the centennial of of the the Bauhaus in Germany that was a big thing, and uh Ursla von deren then got the idea to start a new European Bauhaus, uh a new project that was the Green Deal uh around that time. A lot of buildings would need renovation by 2050. I believe there's some objective of uh carbon uh neutrality. So uh Ursla von deren in her first speech, uh the state of the European Union said uh 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 new European Bauhaus should be, they tried to guess what did Ursla von der Gyen mean, like a team of officials at the European Commission, and they came up with the the beautiful sustainable and together. Those were the three key words. And Ursga von der Gyen also wanted it to be a grassroots movement.
SPEAKER_08And we need to give out a systemic change its own aesthetics to match the 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 happened.
SPEAKER_03Now, if we fast forward to today, I first of all it's kind of weird for a European Commission president to start a grassroot movement. Um, but um but it's also uh yeah it evolved actually into a classical subsidy program. The New European Biohause is actually a team of officials uh at the European Commission who give out subsidies because you don't really have this sort of movement, right? Uh the the art movement didn't uh start. So that was a bit the the conclusion of uh of the investigation or the study we did.
SPEAKER_04Great, 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 to you.
SPEAKER_12Hi, uh, 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 uh 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.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, um, I would say a few things in terms of um how to deal with 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 Duranc, 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 I want to know now the case is 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, ten 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 um polarisation on, I mean, yeah, what your your question relates to polarisation, I would say. I think it's important to, as you say, not totally give up on these platforms, but at the same time, um, you say that you're still on X, for instance. Um, 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 you know 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 is can be a personal decision because it can be very tiring and exhausting as well.
SPEAKER_04Simon, you you two are new media, and follow the money is a new media investigative outlet. You represent a ray of hope in that sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Follow the Money started in the Netherlands like 15 years ago and first struggled a bit with business model, but then went into subscriptions, um, which really worked super well in the Netherlands. They're long stories. I think uh, you know, people don't always have time uh 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 uh 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 believing their own truths, but now we we really stop posting there since like 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 Stelle has noticed that, is 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 20-second fragment of you know violence, and it shocks you, you know. You you look at it and you're like, Well, so it this is really something at the propaganda form that is extremely dangerous and and fueling uh hatred. Uh so I mean for me that that should be illegal.
SPEAKER_04Is that the follow-the-money policy that the publication, the outlet, does not post to X anymore?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we stopped uh posting on X.
SPEAKER_04On rays of hope, 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.
SPEAKER_03Maybe just a ray of hope, uh James, but uh 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 uh quickly. I'm not sure it's always great for the environment with the data centers and such, but I think it's gonna spark a big era of innovation in the media, and and we're see we're gonna see a lot of good things coming out of that.
SPEAKER_04And you're not using it for writing, right? You're using it for research.
SPEAKER_03I mean, and I'm also using it for writing, but what I would do is for instance, I write a text and I ask, you know, artificial intelligence, give me your first edit just showing like what is what could be improved in this story, and it's actually surprisingly good. Uh but of course you have to double check everything because it can suddenly fantasize or button.
SPEAKER_04And what is the editorial policy of Follow the Money on what you're doing?
SPEAKER_03No, that's something we often discuss uh between each other. What are the dangers and and how are we gonna use this? It's it's a kind of a bottom-up innovation. Everybody's in this corner experimenting a bit, so we we have a pro subscription to some of these models, and and it's it's helpful there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I mean, the other thing I was gonna 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 uh 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 uh of a certain age, uh young people, are just simply not, you know, going to websites anymore. And I think that we ignore that at our peril.
SPEAKER_09Yes, please. Thanks. Hi, I'm uh Dushan Gaj. I'm also a fellow journalist, uh EU correspondent. Uh back to the migration story. I was interested in your thoughts about those return hubs. Um 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 lead on that and who will make it happen? How do you see that? Also, this uh solidarity mechanism uh called flexible solidarity mechanism, where some countries who don't want to take uh relocated uh migrants or uh asylum seekers would have to pay. Is that realistic that countries will pay what uh they are supposed to pay uh per migrant, I don't know, 20,000 euros or something? Thanks.
SPEAKER_11So 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, 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 a ECJ European Court of Justice 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 uh 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 constitution and our human rights.
SPEAKER_04One 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 the that you you thought you knew actually has this very nativist and and almost sort of it can adopt these very sort of violent ways of talking about other human beings. So I I found that moment quite chilling.
SPEAKER_11And and I also want to say um it's quite scary or it's quite concerning that Germany's so interested in these hubs as well, and also sort of looking at the far right voting with the center right, because in Germany it's a real taboo to work with the far right. It's a huge taboo, and Merz will always, you know, try to pretend that he's he's very opposed to that. And in in Germany it's it's 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 it's gonna be very scary.
SPEAKER_04Feel free to to come back to the mic if if you have uh if you have some thoughts on that, particularly as a journalist.
SPEAKER_09There are many open questions about this. The sense of my question was also since there is this possibility of constructing those uh deportation centers, who is supposed to take initiative on that? Will will it be a coalition of willing member states who will co uh construct such uh uh centers in uh third countries? And uh 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 uh give money and some people are talking about getting the EU to pay for these detention centers.
SPEAKER_11Um so 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 the regulation was really saying can they do that or not? Um now they say yes, you can do that. And so the individual states that want to, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, um uh just some of them, if they want to do that, they now have a bit of a green light. Whereas France and Spain, um, if they don't want to do that, they can they can not. But it's it's a little bit scary that it's even a possibility within that uh framework.
SPEAKER_04So okay, great. Now um any other questions for our panelists? Yes.
SPEAKER_07Luis Hill just so it could be just be like a one-line answer. So I see that you all research very difficult topics on which you somehow have to take sides, and you're based in Brussels. It's just to know, like, what's the thing that most motivates you in this work? And thank you very much for doing the work.
SPEAKER_10Oh, um 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. This the quest for truth and a profound interest in human beings.
SPEAKER_11Covering migration, 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.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, corruption is not much more positive, but no, I think uh 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. Uh indeed when you start when you cover corruption for a couple of years, it it doesn't get better of yeah, of double standards. And I think Europe sometimes is is a bit there. I mean, I was in the 20 kilometers 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 uh institutions.
SPEAKER_04I 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 uh 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 it's 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 experiences 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 e screen, do please visit BrusselsTimes.com and look for the podcast. Thanks for listening.