Opening Plenary 2026 – Democracy: Stifled or Revived by Digital Disruption of the Public Sphere?

No, rather, our opening speakers have set the scene. The time has come for our first exchange session with some of our experts. Now, we’re going to run the same scenario as we did this morning. And if you weren’t with us, I’m going to briefly run through it. As I said, you are very welcome and invited and strongly invited to ask questions from the room at the end of the session. Our colleague who’s here will be moderating questions online. So you send your question. You can either send your question in writing online or request the floor. And you will be intervening live on screen and on mic in the room as if you were with us.

So that will be the opportunity at the end of our discussion. But what do our experts think? That in terms of democracy, is democracy stifled by digital disruption of the public sphere or is it, on the contrary, revived? to discuss this essential background, please, or background question, please welcome our speakers. I’d like to welcome Caroline Lindekamp. She’s Director for Fact -Checking at Corrective. Caroline. And Corrective conducts investigations into mis – and dis -information anywhere but here. And joining her is Claudia Luciani. She’s Director of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities at the Council of Europe. Welcome, Claudia. And joining us as well is Felix Hlatky. He’s Executive Director of Mastodon, the decentralized social media.

Good afternoon, Felix. Unfortunately, please do take a seat. Unfortunately, Camino Rojo, who was supposed to join us this afternoon, cannot because he is sick. We wish him a speedy recovery, of course, and sorry he cannot be with us. So welcome to you all, and I’d like to open this session with some input from our young participants. As you know, the last couple of days, the long weekend, was dedicated to youth digs, so that’s the youth dialogue. And as a backdrop to our panel discussion, I’d like to share some of the key outcomes of their exchanges, so that you can also comment on the outcomes during your intervention. So youth dig participants answered a series of questions and the general results.

This is really a very rough series of takeaways. We will have a session later on this afternoon which will go more into detail. But just… A rough series of takeaways. So it seems that our young participants think that European democracies are generally struggling to keep pace. with the current technological challenges. They mostly adapt, yes, but important challenges remain for those democracies. Our young participants also often see tech industries as mostly profit -driven, and they see them as a threat to democracy because of the huge influence they have and the way they spread mis – or dis -information. In terms of challenges and opportunities for policymakers, civil society, and industries, while they highlight that there are many opportunities for cooperation on projects and for a more global approach to issues of general interest, they also highlight the need to regulate the tech industry to avoid abuses.

They also highlight the need to regulate the tech industry to avoid abuses. They believe generally that there is a strong need for more literacy and education, in particular in relation to AI, and a growing need for fact -checking. finally they see civil society as a very useful relay for raising awareness of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead so i’ll be happy to hear your comments on on these key outcomes during our discussion since our topic is directly linked to their input but how do you think we should or we can safeguard the integrity and the functioning of the european digital public sphere how do we safeguard democracy in particular the question and i’ll turn to you first Claudia because you have an extensive experience uh in in that particular topic and uh you have brought on worked on many uh topics related to democracy,so how do you see european democracies and and the digital public sphere generally fairing in the face of rapid technological advancements?

Thank you. First of all, good afternoon, everybody. It is a true pleasure to be here and to hear the comments, starting with the comments from the young participants who are spot on, I must say. It is also a double pleasure to be here because Eurodig is indeed the partner for the Council of Europe, and it is the perfect place to exchange about the direction the Internet is taking us. I think it was already mentioned earlier, we certainly should look at both threats and opportunities. This is certainly what the Council of Europe is trying to do, and that is why our Secretary General has launched a new democratic pact for Europe that, among other things, I will come back to it later, wishes to consult very widely, including with civil society, with young people, with local governments, with businesses, and, of course, governments.

And European and outside of Europe partners to better understand what are the root causes of democratic backsliding. and also to be followed by a more operational phase in which we will try to seize on the opportunities that this transformative phase is affording us. But what are the threats? We have an annual report, a bit like a State of the Union report, that indeed has highlighted warring trends over time. So we can say there are trends, unfortunately. Some of them were mentioned earlier. Governments attempting to limit civil societies and people’s ability to operate freely, including online. Enactment of laws that curtail press freedom in a number of our Member States. The use of emergency powers to bypass democratic scrutiny, just to mention a few.

These actions, of course, have not only their heart in themselves, but they undermine institutional checks and balances that are, of course, essential with functioning democracy. So that is why we have been speaking about democratic backsliding and erosion of trust, a key word I think I’m sure we will use in the future conversation. These are happening whilst technological revolution is unfolding, driven by digital technology and artificial intelligence that move faster than democratic safeguards. So there is a disconnect in the time. It takes us also to remedy. However, of course, we’re clear the answer is not to resist this transformation. There’s no going back. The answer is to make transformation responsible in line with human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

What are the main threats to democracy as we see them? First of all, there are threats to elections, foreign information manipulation, disinformation campaigns. And rapid advances in AI drive polarization and distort election campaigns. Anyone can create and transmit an online fake in seconds, undermining the integrity of the information space, which is essential for democratic participation and confidence in institutions. Public service media remains so far the most trusted source of news or people. Social media influencers are rapidly gaining prominence, notably among the young elders. So trust is moving to environments that were not designed with democratic accountability. And this is, of course, something important to note. Traditional media, the institutions we have relied on for democracy for so long, are weakened economically and often behave differently online.

The editorial line that is so crucial to hold in print often moves to a faster pace and a more reactive mode on a platform. So the norms that govern the broadcast. do not translate automatically to a feed. We cannot therefore assume that trusted institutions will remain trusted if rules that apply offline don’t apply online. And here I want to quote, because it is excellent, the OECD report that examines trust in institutions that shows there is only an average of 39 % of individuals trust news media, mirroring, unfortunately, the level of trust in the government. So their recommendation, for one, at least already to start with, to support a healthy information ecosystem and invest in evidence -based communication remains to us as crucial as ever.

And let me end this first round of threads with a philosopher, I’m sure you all know Hannah Arendt, who noted that the ideal subjects of authoritarian regimes are not so much those who are already convinced ideologically, but rather the people for whom the distinction between the right and the left is not so important. Pact and fiction? And the distinction between true and false no longer exists. Thank you.

Felix, turning to you, I’d like to focus on the role of tech industries, and I mean tech industries at large, whether it’s platforms, AI firms, or social media. How do you see the role of tech industries when it comes to actually safeguarding or undermining, depending on how you look at it, democratic integrity?

Yeah, first of all, thanks also from my side for inviting me, and good afternoon, everyone. So to the question, what the role of the tech industry in this context is, the very first thing I would say is that the role of the tech industry is very important. The very short answer is that it’s obviously a very far -reaching and impactful role. So the slightly longer answer to this is that we face each other, we face a situation in today’s Internet where A handful of largely profit -driven mega corporations have captured basically the largest part of the Internet, and they are now through their business models obviously also dictating how communications in the public sphere is actually happening.

So this, strictly speaking, it does not only touch democracy and political topics, how public opinion is shaped, but it touches also other parts, of course, how commercial decisions are taken. And it was mentioned before also when you read about what Youth DRG found basically or observed. And this… One of these observations, largely the profit -driven way of acting, this has obviously transpired. not only to the youth, but to everyone most likely. And again, it’s probably a pretty natural consequence if the business model is advertisement, which is based on the extraction of user data and then selling it to advertisers. The result of this is obviously that content is largely polarizing. It creates more engagement and opinions that are maybe not natural to how we are.

They are surfaced in an algorithmically enhanced way. And there’s also the topic of centralization that I mentioned in the very beginning. And we may think that this is the only way, but there are other ways. And I hope that one of the ways is… how Mastodon and this part of the internet that we call the Fediverse or the open social web, how we have built that, that this can act as an alternative. I would argue that it’s a good example that decentralization and a different way of doing this can work, that it can work at scale. To put some numbers behind this, there’s currently more than 15 ,000 active servers that run software in this space. This is not only about Mastodon, which is more like a microblogging platform, but there’s also more like photo sharing ones.

And these 15 ,000 servers, this may sound very technical, and I know this is like a technical audience here largely, but it was previously mentioned. A server is owning a server and being able to administer it. This is like true power and autonomy in our space. It’s owning your small part of the Internet. The European Commission does it. They have their own Mastodon server. Also, Corrective does, as far as I know. It’s tied to a domain name, of course, but this goes further than that. It’s also about being able to take moderation decisions on your own. I think it’s especially important. Ms. Hoferichter mentioned the pluralism of languages. Obviously, this also includes dialects. It also includes culture.

There are different interpretations about facts. This is something that only in a truly decentralized social network, this can actually be brought down on a content moderation level. And this is what creates true power in a space. It’s something that does not exist anywhere else, and it’s an alternative that can work and that is growing. Thank you.

Thank you. Caroline, if I asked you the same question, how do you see the role of tech industries from your point of view, particularly in view of the concerns expressed by our youth dig participants and the degree of distrust that they mentioned?

Yes, thank you very much for letting me bring the fact -checking perspective to the panel. I think we can all agree in this room, and we have said this over and over again, big tech industries plays an important role in amplifying the role of tech industries. the problem of disinformation and misinformation, and maybe we can even name it. We’re talking about Facebook. We’re talking about YouTube. We’re talking about Google. We are talking about TikTok. We are talking about Telegram and so on. And I think when I’m looking at it, like, as I said, from a fact -checking perspective, what worries me most is that the situation is getting worse and there’s evidence that it is getting worse.

There’s a lot of evidence, and fact -checking organizations in Europe and around the world are bringing evidence to this problem, like, on a daily basis, but actually platforms are retrieving from mitigating that problem on their own platforms. So, and we’ve seen that also, I mean, we’re in Brussels, so there’s regulation that still needs to be strongly enforced, and what can we actually see? So maybe let’s look at two more positive examples, also, again, from that fact -checking perspective. Many of you might have… I’ve heard of the fact -checking partnerships program of Meta, so where fact -checking organizations would publish their fact -checks on the platform. to address the problem where it actually takes place. And another one is from Google, which is a claim review.

And both examples actually have shown, like in the past year, we have seen that the platforms are retrieving from the efforts. And some of it has been very noisy. Others have been a bit more quiet. And I imagine that many of you in the room remember when Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of the fact -checking program, the third -party fact -checking program in the U .S., with a big announcement in January. Last year. But also since I think it’s a bit of a diverse crowd, how many of you do know claim review? Is that something that everybody here knows, or is this something that is new to some of you? No reaction. Show of hand.

You know it? Okay. So at least one person knows. So maybe this is representative. Who knows? But, sorry. it’s from youth dig so okay so and so actually kareem it’s just it’s um it’s a tagging system for fact -checking articles um which helps like identify fact -checking articles and with research engines to better spread facts around the internet and google has retrieved from financing that technology and that infrastructure and um the fact -checking organizations around the world are still using it um because we want to um we want to spread facts but the thing is with platforms retrieving from these efforts while the problem is getting worse um we i just get my notes i forget them anyway um we can see with what has happened over the past year how much the industry has actually impacted from political shifts and from individual organizations decisions so what can we actually learn from it.

I think what is important is that we build technology ourselves and that we try to become independent from these decisions. So in Europe we have more than 60 fact -checking organizations that are organized in the European Fact -Checking Standards Network, the EFCSN, also present in the room here if you’re more interested in knowing what is happening. And what we are doing as fact -checking organizations is we try to build like an ecosystem that is based on facts. So what we do is actually we monitor what is happening online, which disinformation, misinformation and information manipulation is spreading online and what can we do against it. Like the basis for us is journalism, but we also very much looking into monitoring to actually find out what is happening.

We are building structured data sets. We are doing media literacy activities. and we are also collaborating across different sectors with scholars, for instance, to provide an image of the problem there is. And I think if we want to go in that direction, what is important is that we support the ecosystem behind it. So the fight against misinformation is increasingly under pressure. So this is financial pressure, but it’s also hate attacks against fact -checking organizations. And it’s important that how can we actually strengthen that ecosystem. And the challenge is obviously we need a sound system that is also lasting over the coming years. And this is also since we are in Brussels, and currently there’s talk of the MFF.

We’re looking at how can we regulate platforms. And on the other hand, we also have to see how can we support the fact -checking industry, and also journalism in general,

Would either of you like to comment on a particular aspect of dis misinformation as a threat to actual democracy before I move on to the next question yes Claudia?

I think it’s reassuring that there is so much thought put into this it is fundamental for democracy I mean we cannot we are here in a more tech oriented crowd but out there people are making choices based on lies and fakes and their personal choices their political choices and those matter a lot because we still live in governments that are elected through ballot boxes so we cannot emphasize enough how what you’re trying to do matters to the fundamentals, which is the elections, as I said. I think this is very important. So I’m very happy that there is so much investment, both, of course, technological and, of course, intellectual as well. One cannot emphasize enough importance of, as I said, telling truth from fake and being able to do that.

The young crowds are better at it, but the older sometimes have more experience. So there is an interesting cooperation to be built also. This is what we’ve noted in some countries where the ability to detect fake can be brought together by different generations.

Felix, do you want to comment on that particular aspect or maybe to the reactions of the public? To what they see online? I mean, because reactions are so quick, they’re immediate, they’re primary reactions. So very often there is not a time for reflection, like when you read an article in the press, for instance, in paper press. It’s more primary reactions. It’s more immediate. Can you react on that?

Yes. The format itself, of course, as you correctly point out, it almost demands an immediate reaction. And what we see very strongly is that even if some clear what’s the difference from fact, a lie basically, is created online on social media, it happens so quickly and a couple of days later it doesn’t even matter anymore. Even if you call out the author of this lie basically, it has almost no value anymore because there are so many new events. So there’s clearly something in the format that makes it even more difficult to moderate.

Thank you. Now, we’ve looked at challenges and opportunities, but maybe Claudia, I’ll get back to you on this, because how do you think policymakers, civil society or industry should act, should respond, should react to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead? What can they put in place? What can they do?

Well, we do. At the Council of Europe, we are intergovernmental organization, so we work with governments. We also involve in our reflection, as I said, through this new pact, all the other actors. But there’s one thing we do and we have been doing for a long time, and that is setting standards and speaking about treaties. We started with the Transborder Television Convention, the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, still a global reference 20 years on. And more recently, you’re probably aware, on a framework convention on artificial intelligence, human rights. Democracy and the rule of law, which is the first legally binding international instrument, which means that it can be exceeded by states that are not member of organizations.

So one thing we do pretty well. is and we will continue doing is setting standards that can expand the legal the european legal space beyond our borders this is a very specific um ability our organization has because it’s intergovernmental of course this is difficult in this area it’s extremely difficult because if you want to be effective in responding to abuses online you have to still keep a very careful balance between regulation human rights and freedom of expression that in many contexts are missing so weak safeguards may allow of course manipulation to spread while disproportionate restrictions can undermine the democratic debate so council of europe approach in this matter is provides as i said a framework a compass if you wish based on our key values to navigate these two tensions the tension between regulation and freedom so this is one of the things that the organization can do.

Felix, what do you think industry can do? You mean industry also Macedon is part of the industry or a bit and you know sort of partly?

Yeah, so if you see industry more as companies, let’s say and companies they also have a special role to play because I mean first of all they are connected to selling things so again advertisement, there’s you know if you sum up all the budgets that are spent basically then you see the collective power that industry has, where it goes and what is done with with these revenues, this is it’s It’s basically the true cause why we face each other, why we face this situation that we’re in. But companies, they have also, of course, a different role because it’s not only about the advertisement and the money that is spent, but also the special relationship that they have with their customers.

Some customers, they have an almost emotional attachment to companies where they buy goods from. The public perception and how it can be shaped is a very strong and obviously unregulated way of creating connection and shaping public opinion.

And Caroline from your point of view what could be the role of civil society but also of tech industries in view of these challenges and opportunities?

I think when we talk about what can we do against disinformation, we’re often talking about democratic resilience. So how can we actually build a society that is resilient against mis- and disinformation? And I think here civil society and also journalism play a super important role because what we do is like often we are asked that it’s said that fact-checking can be one pillar in the fight against disinformation and misinformation. I would say that it’s actually the foundation for any useful means against disinformation because what we do is one, we provide visibility of what is actually out there. You’ve been talking about standards and I mean one key standard in journalism and also in fact-checking is transparency.

And this is what big tech usually does do. We don’t know how the algorithms work. We don’t know what is happening on the platforms and even researchers are still having so much trouble of getting access to data from big tech. So I think it’s important to have a foundation for any useful means against disinformation. which would help us to design meaning. full answers to the misinformation problem. And what we do, especially as fact checkers, so a lot of our work goes into monitoring to show what is happening out there, what is the responsibility of big tech industries, and what can we do against it. it. So the next step is then when we do a fact check, often it’s said like, well, you do just one article, but there’s so many lies out there.

What is the meaning of it? Every well -written fact check article is like a small media literacy training because it provides a reader an impression of how credible information production is working. And then, of course, we see how can we disseminate our knowledge and our findings to a bigger audience. So we would do that through media literacy initiatives that can be designed for younger people, for younger audiences. But let’s not only think about the next generation. We also have programs going on in schools, in universities, for parents, for senior people, and so on. And then it is also about, we’ve been talking about technology. Of course, there’s big tech industry, but there are also a lot of very positive examples from the fact checking universe on how we are building AI -based assistant tools.

To speed our fact checking, to make fact checking more efficient. And also to make that technology available also to other actors. And I think it’s really like having all these different approaches together makes a difference and can help us to build like a resilient society. And maybe the last thing is also we’ve been talking about trust. And I think we can see kind of a divide between politics and citizens. And I think what civil society organizations can be very good at, and this is not only fact -checking organizations, but civil society in general, is actually reach out to the people, go to the people, get into the local to build trust and to have like a sound relationship to citizens to actually make a difference.

Can I quickly comment on the topic of media literacy? So this is obviously an extremely important topic and what is especially important from, from our perspective, you know, from the social media perspective, is that media literacy is also potentially extended by by things like social media literacy. So very often we talk about basically the traditional media and the origination of pieces of media and how they are disseminated. And social media, it’s almost considered as, yeah, it’s kind of like just this distribution tool for the media. And we have to deal with what we have anyway. Either we do it via Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, and there’s different ways. And we need to analyze, of course, how this circles back to the creation of these media pieces.

But again, and I can’t stress this enough, that there is like a different way of dealing with social media, of owning. And I think social media are possible, not only exemplified by Mastodon, but others as well. And this is, you know… in a future where young people, but also older people, of course, they understand that social networks is something that can be owned, that can be taken under control. This is a hugely important point as an extension of the traditional definition of media literacy.

Thank you. Yes, Claudia.

It is very interesting what you’re saying because I see that we’re in this effort to make sure that not only we look at Norse, but also at the environment where people operate, notably young people. We have all these efforts on media literacy, on trying to make sure that people can access the media world and the Internet, the different generations, but it is true what you’re saying. It’s not only the medium of transmission. If it has an intelligence, it can also be owned, as you said. So I find this particularly interesting. And this would be a space for collaboration because I find this very, very interesting.

and maybe another addition also to the topic of media literacy i mean if we’re looking like like the fact -checking sector has been evolving since 2016 mostly where it’s really become like a distinct area in journalism to fight to fight disinformation so it’s now a decade and also like from an inside perspective i think it’s quite impressive on how fast um we have evolved and also um how keen we are on collaboration among each other but also into different sectors but the question is also i mean what are the challenges to the sector and also i think when we look at media literacy i think more or less all media fact -checking organizations also do media literacy activities but what we see with many of these activities they’re project driven because we’re depending on third -party funding which could be coming from european level which is a national level and it depends on which country you’re looking at so i think me coming from germany we are still in a comparably favorable context and there are the european nations where they’re facing even more problems when it comes to financing.

But the problem is, like, you know, when you have one media literacy initiative and another one coming out, I think we also need to look into the impact logic. And what the sector needs is sustainability. And sustainability comes through sustainable funding as well. And again, flagging, like, the European Fact -Checking Standards Network, who is very much advocating for these topics for the fact -checking community from Europe. But this also goes out a bit to the Commission. Like, how can we find ways to actually fund our ecosystem that it is sustainable, that we cannot only look, okay, what is happening next year, but maybe in a couple of years. But we really need, like, a sound structure for journalism in Europe.

And the question is, and I mean, this is not only journalism, but it’s also, like, the places where journalism is taking place. And the space is becoming very tight when we’re looking at AI summaries on search engines, which are totally… undermining also the business model of journalism. So there are so many challenges from so many different angles. And I think it’s also upon politics to just create the structure for journalism to exist.

Thank you, I think we’re highlighting more problems than actually finding solutions but I think they need to be brought into the debate as well I understand we have a question online so João, please

Yes, apologies first of all if I mispronounce the names but we have two participants that would like to pose a few questions I’ll read them but just to contextualize I do think that most of the ideas have been shared by you I still think that it’s worth at least a short reflection on them So the first one is from Raina Goui and the questions are as we work on building more trusted digital infrastructure how do we make sure trust includes the perspective of people most affected by these systems like smaller language communities, young people and everyday users and how can multi -stakeholder spaces like EURD keep trust from being defined mostly by platforms or industry?

I think we can take also the other participants. So the question was coming from Tilaka Shanmugavil. And the question is on bot networks, on social media, spread this information at scale. And the question is, how can fact -checking be integrated into cybercrime investigations to trace these sources?

Okay, so who wants to take maybe the first question? The fact that we need trust to apply to all and particularly the most affected minorities. Yes, Claudia, please.

I’ll just go back to this very fact -based work by the OECD that looked at trust in institutions, political, by the local government, the administration, the media. And in fact, it is interesting to see that the most trusted institutions are the police, the judges. then come the uh civil servants the local governments and then there is a big step and uh exactly the governments the media and even less the uh the parliaments so you can see the parliaments that are the elected uh persons that we elect through our free will this is where we again i said it before uh that’s where we can express a change we can make things change that’s the least uh trusted uh so i think this is very important to the trust is is something that needs to be looked at at this in these different dimensions in order to be able to to tackle

it yeah maybe europe is local um because also i mean the examples you just came up with you can see it’s also a question trust is also a question of proximity maybe um so i don’t know at correctee for example we have a collaboration um with local um volunteers fire brigades or with small citizen foundations that are very much functioning in the local. And of course, such approaches scale different than like a video online, for instance. But I think if we really want to build trust, I think it’s that we need to get into the local and towards the people, especially where they maybe don’t want us or where they wouldn’t come to voluntarily. And this, again, maybe goes back to building like strong networks across different sectors and also civil

And what about an integrated fact checking? Maybe the second question. I mean, you know, Felix, you’re very welcome to intervene on both as well.

Yeah, again, here coming up with an example for Corrective, but we’re also we’re not the only ones following such examples. We’re very much looking into participation. How can we actually integrate citizens into fact checking? And this starts with like fact checking. Tip lines that most fact checking organizations have. in place so we ask people which misinformation or suspicious information do we actually spot spot online and then going into how really integrating them into fact checking and the next question is like i mean with the results with our monitoring results with the fact checks that we collect how can they be integrated into different approaches fighting this and this information um what you can see and there’s also like a big approach to the efcsn we build structured data sets of everything that we find and i think um to integrate these data sets like and the knowledge that we have gathered over the past years um can be can be a good way a meaningful way one also to do to maybe build new business models for fact checking still following um our our impact logic and at the same time also um like easy cross -sector collaborations to scale and i think that question was also related actually who spreads and disinformation online and we can see this of actors is that just as there’s like different motivations to spread misinformation that can be political but there are also economic factors um that can be a reason or maybe just like general general hatred um but again maybe also a small note to the platforms again if they would be more transparent on what is happening on their platform if they would provide access to the data we would have more knowledge about who is spreading this and disinformation it would be easier to trace those who are responsible.

felix um

yeah so so echoing um a lot of things that that have been said already but um i think the the the firefighter example it it’s it’s a good one because because fire brigades they are usually um organized in a very local level and the same analogy could be made to our network infrastructure that it’s not this one mega network that takes one moderation decision on very difficult political topics and it tries to find one decision for the whole world but it’s like these local decisions, these basically micro decisions at the source of where these signals appear and it’s a system that is certainly not perfect, it still needs a lot of further investment and we’re very happy from all the funding that is coming from Brussels and also Berlin.

for us but it’s something that dealing with moderation and also with fact checking of course on the local level I think it’s the only way that it can actually work because it represents much better how society and also nature in a way is represented online.

Thank you. We have one question from the room there and I’m going to take only that one. There’s probably more but due to time constraints I’m going to take that question over there. Our speakers are around so maybe over coffee you can corner them. So I’ll take the question from the lady over there.

Thank you. First of all thank you for acknowledging me. My name is Mariam Kessetaya. I’m a youth participant this year and specializing in international law. What I wanted to emphasize was actually the follow up to what you mentioned. We mentioned institutions that to deal with fact -checking and misinformation, disinformation, and some of the legal regulations that help public institutions probably to deal with this. However, there is really a thin layer between censorship and trying to use these digital regulations and the legal basis to justify them. So my question is, like, actually this is the end result of this is this broken trust, right? So I want you to maybe think about do you think that European institutions can actually play a bigger part in rebuilding this trust?

Do you think that, and if yes, how this should be done? And also, do you think that existing institutions should take on this role or there should be, like, additional separate independent entities created for this? Thank you.

Yes, a wonderful question. Thank you, because it allows me to place two points I didn’t manage to say. First of all, the answer is yes, of course, European institutions have a great role to play. This is beyond the initiative that I mentioned of a new democratic pact for Europe, which wishes through a very thorough in -depth consultation that we’ll be finishing at the end of the year, listen and hear from different parts of societies, governments, as I said, it’s a very large consultation. And what we have understood is that, yes, there is a role for European institutions. And let me give you a couple of examples of where we’re trying to respond in a meaningful way to very worrying trends.

We didn’t mention the foreign interference because, yes, there is a lot of disruption, there is a lot of fakes, but there is, I would say, even worse, there is organized attempts by… outside forces that are not there acting sometimes even with under criminal with a criminal basis to interfere in elections in media social justice public health so the damages to our societies are are very very deep and these are of a transnational character you have probably followed recent elections in some of the european states to note that the governments are taking action now governments are taking action but this action should be coordinated so to go back to your question yes our member states for instance the vast council of europe to look into the possibility of having an appropriate legal instrument uh to uh to tackle the question of phoenix you know the foreign interference and manipulation um this is one example another example where we’re trying to again uh see whether we can not only counter have a counter effect or you take protective measures but also embrace somehow the transformation that comes with technology and we are practicing more and more foresights so we we try to work with parliaments with civil societies with local governments and ask them to do what would be a sort of anticipatory governance scenarios of possible future where democratic frameworks will be stronger ecosystems will be innovative but also safe and this gives a way in a way helps strengthen our democracies and the role of everybody so yes european institutions have a role i don’t think you need to create a new one there are enough out there council of europe of course the european union there are many more and i also want to emphasize that non -european organizations also have a role to play everything we’re discussing doesn’t happen in europe it happens globally so we must absolutely keep in mind that actors can be reached out across the european borders.

Thank you. Caroline, Felix, a quick word on that particular question? Caroline, yes.

Yeah, I think also because you’ve been talking about the global perspective, I must say when I’m around, I mean, there is obviously, I mean, there is a regulation in Europe. And I think when we’re talking about platform regulation internationally, you’re looking at Europe. And when I’m in a more international context, personally, I’m proud that we do have that regulation in Europe. But at the same time, having it is one thing. And the next thing is then enforcing it. And obviously, it’s not easy. But I think we really need fierce enforcement of the regulation there is.

Thank you, Felix. I think there’s a follow -up question. But I’m afraid we don’t really have time. So we’re going to have to cut here. Questions?

I think I’m good.

Thank you very, very much for joining us for this session and for sharing your experience. Thanks a lot. so we’re now going to break for coffee for half an hour, a short half hour I’d like to invite you to be back in the room by 10 to 4 if possible because we have a surprise mini session for you just before we invite the executive vice president of the commission so go and enjoy your coffee and back in the room at 10 to 4, thank you thank you it was very interesting