'Shocking' levels of democratic backsliding across Europe - ex-Justice Commissioner Jourová - video Dailymotion

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Outgoing Vice President of the European Commission Věra Jourová told The Europe Conversation its “shocking” how some EU countries are replicating illiberal laws of others.

Transcript

00:00For 10 years, Vera Jarová has been a European Commissioner with her portfolios covering

00:12justice, rule of law, gender equality.

00:15For the Europe Conversation, she tells me why she's worried about the state of European

00:19societies and how democratic elections aren't producing democratic governments.

00:27Vera Jarová, you're leaving after 10 years in Brussels, Vice President of the European

00:35Commission and Commissioner for Values and Transparency in your last portfolio, Justice,

00:41Consumer Affairs and Gender Equality.

00:44Thank you for having me here.

00:45It's been an incredible 10 years here in Brussels.

00:49One of the things you've said before, not so long ago, was that authoritarianism is

00:53on the rise and the slippage of democratic values within Europe and across the world

00:59is strong.

01:00What did you mean by that?

01:03I'm not a politologist, but I'm a practitioner, let's say, and I see when the correlation

01:09between increased level of uncertainty and anxiety in the society, the people who want

01:15somebody strong to take care of their destiny, and that's why they are more and more willing

01:22to elect the leaders who seem to be strong enough to take care, which means that there

01:30might be leaders who are strong enough and they respect the checks and balances and there

01:35might be leaders who simply find democratic system as a nuisance and they are switching

01:42off one safeguard after another.

01:45And I also say that democratic elections do not guarantee 100% that they will produce

01:51democrats.

01:52What countries in the European Union are you most concerned about with this regard?

01:58Technically speaking, of course, it's a long-term issue with Hungary because we switched on

02:03even the procedure under the so-called Article 7, because that is a definition of systemic

02:09breach of the rule of law, which means many safeguards have been switched off.

02:15So we have blocked some money to Hungary.

02:19I'm never happy when we are blocking the money, which I see that ordinary people, the

02:24citizens need to have for better education or health system or roads and so on.

02:30So it's Hungary, it used to be Poland under the previous government, which started very

02:38difficult to understand reform of justice.

02:42And we have half of the member states where we see issues in the media sphere.

02:47Italy and so on.

02:49For instance, yes, where we see the pressures from the side of politics on especially the

02:57public service media.

02:59So what do you mean by that?

03:00I mean that the public service media, which are so important in democratic system, especially

03:07in the era of disinformation, public service media should be the media where people can

03:14find trustworthy fact-checked information, evidence-based truth.

03:22And if this evidence-based truth is becoming uncomfortable for the politicians, they are

03:28either decreasing the budget or nominating people willing to listen to political instructions

03:39to the management and to the boards.

03:41This is what I mean.

03:42And this is what we addressed in the Media Freedom Act, which will come into force next

03:46year, because we really believe that the public service media deserve a stronger protection.

03:53Let's look at rule of law issues.

03:56We've seen the anti-LGBT laws in Hungary under the guise of child protection, but most people

04:03would say that this is actually much more sort of an attack on LGBT rights.

04:07We see an unprecedented case, the European Court of Justice, with 16 countries.

04:11The Commission has parliament taking Hungary there.

04:15But what has happened is that there's similar laws in other countries taking place now,

04:20in Romania, Slovakia, and potentially in Italy.

04:23And we have the sovereignty law or the Sovereignty Protection Office in Hungary, which allows

04:28the government to go after groups like Transparency International, a world-renowned organization

04:33there to investigate corruption.

04:37So this has really exacerbated over the past 10 years.

04:40Why has the Commission and the EU not been able to defend basic principles, values, and

04:46laws of the European Union?

04:48What is shocking me, how effective it is, because you mentioned other states.

04:56Whenever there are first signals that in some other member state these Hungarian laws will

05:06inspire them, I always engage in a very early dialogue with them and asking them, could

05:14you please stop this or alter the drafts of the laws so that they are compliant with the EU law.

05:21This is exactly what I did in Bratislava when I spoke to Mr. Pfitzer, because they wanted

05:27to adopt a law similar to the Hungarian law on the NGOs.

05:33And I told him, look, we already had to react in the case of Hungary and be sure we will

05:38have to do the same.

05:40And did he listen to that?

05:41Yes.

05:42I mean, have they satisfactorily amended the laws?

05:44Because this law is essentially like the one in Georgia, the one where people have been

05:49protesting where the EU has essentially suspended Georgia's accession process.

05:55And here you have a country within the EU doing likewise.

05:59Indeed.

06:00What is a set circumstance of that?

06:04Is that this is the pattern or example of Russian law?

06:09But speaking of checks and balances and international law, we have a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin

06:15Netanyahu, the former defense minister of Israel, and Mohammad Def, military leader

06:21of Hamas.

06:22But Viktor Orban has said that he's going to invite Netanyahu to Budapest.

06:28What is your reaction to that?

06:30Because Netanyahu is wanted by the ICC, Hungary is an EU member state and obviously a member

06:36of the ICC.

06:37A minute ago, I spoke about responsible politics and responsible politicians.

06:45Responsible politicians are aware of their international commitments.

06:51Hungary is the signatory, is the party to the International Court of Justice or criminal

06:58court to be precise.

07:00So there is a rule and it's based in the international law that the parties have to respect the decisions

07:09of the court.

07:11So it's a bounding decision of the International Criminal Court to everyone who is the signatory,

07:17including Hungary.

07:19Around the issue of media freedom is, of course, and some of the areas that you've covered

07:24is, of course, disinformation, regulation of the social media companies.

07:27You've actually had an interaction and confrontation yourself brought on by Elon Musk in the past

07:32around regulation.

07:35Now that he is part of the White House, does that make the EU's ability to deal with this,

07:41whether it's harm on the Internet, disinformation, which impacts democracy, much more difficult?

07:48How they organize work in the White House, it's purely the decision of President Trump

07:54and American administration.

07:57In Europe, we care about European things and European information space and security of

08:02Europeans.

08:04And when we see that the digital platforms are without any effort to stop it, distributing

08:11crime, such as hate speech or terrorist content, extremist content, child pornography, we

08:21have to act.

08:22And we have now the law, which is called Digital Services Act, which imposes clear obligations

08:29on all the platforms to comply with that law and to guarantee that it is not a system for

08:38broad and massive distribution of criminal content.

08:42And we've seen really a terrible rise in violence against women over the Internet.

08:47We've seen statistics all across Europe.

08:51We see the EU directive regarding domestic violence, but the essence of the position

08:58of rape was omitted because some member states, the Netherlands, Germany, France, didn't want

09:03to consent to this description of rape.

09:08Can you tell me why is it so difficult to deal with this issue of domestic violence

09:13and violence against women?

09:16Maybe one general remark expressing my feeling.

09:21There are stronger and stronger forces in the society which are dreaming about the 19th

09:26century system, when the women have secondary role.

09:32And I heard it from some current politicians, even in the European Parliament, that the

09:38best system was when the women just stayed in the kitchen, in bed and in the church.

09:43Who says this in the European Parliament?

09:45I will not name.

09:47MEPs?

09:48Yes.

09:49Yes.

09:50From certain member states or certain groups?

09:52They are, of course, always from certain groups, certain member states, but I am rather surprised

09:57that I hear it from the people who I recognized as, I don't want to say progressivists, but

10:06reasonable modern politicians.

10:09Men, all of them?

10:10All men.

10:11And even these men show the lack of self-confidence.

10:14I think that they simply don't like the competition, that suddenly they have strong women as competitors

10:20and it takes more effort to keep high positions in such competition.

10:27But on your question, violence against women in Europe is a shameful story, a horrible

10:35story.

10:36The statistical figures show that every third woman has experienced something like that,

10:42even some physical violence, including rape.

10:45We did not manage to harmonize the definition of rape, you are right.

10:50It was a bad moment for me because it was the reason why I proposed the directive to

10:56have very serious, solid definition of rape and increased penalties for that.

11:05But why is it that countries, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, were just dead against

11:11this?

11:12You know what, there was a discussion about whether yes means yes or no means no, this

11:16elementary discussion, whether there should be explicit consent for the sexual activities.

11:29Because we saw in France the case of Giselle Pellicot, whose husband drugged her and over

11:3550 men went on trial.

11:37I think that it was an uneasy thing for politicians from several member states to sell this back

11:45home.

11:46Okay, well Vera Girova, Vice President or former Vice President of the European Commission,

11:51thank you very much for joining us on the Europe Conversation.

11:53Thank you very much for your interest, have a good day.

'Shocking' levels of democratic backsliding across Europe - ex-Justice Commissioner Jourová

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