Reclaiming the Truth: the role of European citizens on countering fake news

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by Rui Vieira, master's student in EU law at University of Minho
▪

The epidemic of unrestrained fake News on social medial in the latest years has revealed itself to be a major concern for the European democratic culture. The same way there is a massive amount of information circulating, there is also a massive amount of misinformation and sensationalistic, unreliable information flowing through Social Networks. The repercussions and negative effects on public opinion are varied. From social tension to the promotion of demagogy, uncertainty and pessimistic skepticism on the public opinion.

Facing such global-scaled problems, the Commission wants its citizens to feedback on fake news and online disinformation. A Public consultation on the ways to tackle this online problem is available between November and February.

The demand for possible regulation for this problem came after a 2017 Resolution by the European Parliament calling on the Commission to analyse in depth the current situation and legal framework with regards to fake news and to verify the possibility of legislative intervention.

In fact, the advent of Social Networks did nothing more than to increase older concerns. In the last century, it was already discussed if there is a conceptual distance between news and the truth and if a democratic public opinion is compatible with a free press and the search for the truth[i].

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The concept of undertaking strikes back – the activity of religious orders and congregations

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by Ana Filipa Afonseca, member of CEDU

▪

The Court of Justice, final interpreter of the Treaties, has dealt with a broad spectrum of concepts of undertaking, making certain decisions somewhat perplexing to lawyers unsuspicious of the particularity of the concept of undertaking in the context of competition rules. These decisions are still the living proof that competition is at the heart of legal (and political) modeling process of European integration.

On the other hand, regarding the field of state aids, in the Congregación de Escuelas Pisa’s ruling, Case C-74/16, 27th June 2017, the Court of Justice had the important and difficult task of deciding whether the activities carried out by Spanish religious establishments were of economic nature. With this assumption, the Congregación de Escuelas Pías had received an illegal fiscal exemption and this measure is a forbidden state aid in the terms of the Article 107(1).

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Competition, coin mining and plastic memories: why the EU should watch the Web Summit carefully

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by Tiago Cabral, member of CEDU
▪

After the overall success of the 2016 edition – with a few exceptions like the failing Wi-Fi[i]– Lisbon hosted for the second time “the largest tech conference in the world”. We are obviously referring to this year’s edition of Web Summit which brought about 60.000 attendees from more than 170 countries to the Portuguese capital. This event is obviously significant to the Portuguese economy with an investment of about 1.3 Million Euros originating an expected return of about 300 Million. But there is more to Web Summit than the number of attendees or its effect on the Portuguese economy (even if both are relevant), it offers a look into the future and the future brings a plethora of complicated legal and political challenges. Some of these challenges demand a supranational response and the EU should watch very carefully the trends coming out of Lisbon. In the following paragraphs, we shall highlight a few topics to illustrate.

1. “The Digital Single Market has become a new political and constitutional calling for the EU” and it cannot work in the absence of healthy competition. The European Commissioner for Competition’s “clearing the path for innovation” speech[ii] (7th November) – even if its content or delivery certainly did not impress us – made clear how seriously the Commission is taking this issue. American Tech Giants dominate the EU’s market and without proper competition enforcement, European companies may fall prey to anti-competitive behaviour before they have the chance to get a foothold. The speech also made a few interesting points about the growing importance of big data in competition and about trust in competition. However, it had a rather uncomfortable “Google paranoia” emanating from it. The 2.42€ billion fine against Google for breaching EU antitrust rules was historic – whether or not we agree with it –, but so were, for example, Microsoft v. Commission (2007) and the 561€ million fine against Microsoft (2013) for non-compliance with browser choice commitments. Yet, by name the Commissioner only referred to Google. There was a reference to the issue of special tax treatment, which immediately brings the controversies with Apple and Amazon[iii] to mind, but the companies were not named. Since there was no time to properly explain the details of the referred antitrust proceeding – or of the other two ongoing antitrust proceedings against Google, regarding AdSense and Android – the speech did nothing to further inform the audience on this issue and only left the feeling that there is a fixation on Google in the Commission. Interestingly, the 6th November intervention by the Commissioner where she was interviewed by Kara Swisher suffers no such issues. The interviewer asked the right questions, what companies are breaking the rules, what is the Commission’s reaction and what are the consequences. There was no singling out of a company with references to Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, no attempts to explain the complicated reasoning behind the proceedings in a few short minutes, the comparisons to the US also added value to the interview.

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Rose-tinted glasses might prove fatal: populists and their performances after the 2017 Dutch general election

On By officialblogunioIn EssaysLeave a comment

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by Rita Costa and Tiago Cabral, members of CEDU
▪

Seven months have passed since our submission to the 2017’s edition of the Professor Paulo de Pitta e Cunha Award regarding the European Union’s existential crisis. In our paper, we stressed that the year of 2016 was marked by a rise of populism and isolationism around the world, and addressed that the European Union must reform itself in order to regain the citizens’ trust and reinforce democracy, even if doing so entails a revision of European Constitutional law.

In one of the paper’s final remarks, we wrote:

“On May 2017, the French go to the polls in the Presidential elections. The eurosceptic candidate Marine Le Pen is an almost certain lock for disputing the second round of the elections. Even if it is unlikely that she will ultimately achieve victory, the same was said of Donald Trump. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ PVV might become the largest political party in the Tweede Kamer (lower chamber of the Dutch parliament). While it is almost certain that PVV will not be able to form a government because they will not achieve the required majority and do not have the support of other parties, such a result should be cautiously noted. In Germany, the dispute will be between Merkel’s CDU and Schulz SPD, none of them being an immediate risk to European integrity. Even so, AfD’s evolution in recent years is worrisome . (…) The political forces that wish for the disintegration of the EU have a lot of defects, but no one needs to tell them ‘di qualcosa, reagisci!’”

Now it is time to draw up the second chapter with an update on the 2017 European political landscape.

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Editorial of November 2017

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by Sophie Perez Fernandes, Junior Editor
▪


The forest fires in Portugal and the EU

The Author of this post took the photo above during a common episode of her daily life, returning from work. While I was waiting for someone I stared at the landscape around me. Sadly, I realized, on that sunny, bright and warm October day, that the surrounding green I’d been accustomed to had partially disappeared. And I photographed it. I will not bother the reader with the reasons – these are personal and subjective. That is not the case of the reasons for its disclosure with this post.

The place photographed will not be revealed. The place is not the point – and not being the point, it is the point. It could be anywhere. That landscape is not only the one I photographed in that spur of the moment. Anyone present in that place, at that moment, was contemplating the same landscape – it was not a matter of me, but of us. And similar landscapes are, sadly, scattered through Portugal today and will remain for a long while – us is so much bigger than that place, at that moment.

And because the forest fires that ravaged Portugal in 2017 are so much bigger than that place (Portugal), at that moment (2017), the European within me was on alert as well.

The forest fires that occurred in Portugal were impressive not only because of their dimension and their impact, but also because of the unusual period of recent occurrences. In addition to the heavy human losses – the number of fatalities tragically exceeds a hundred – and to the equally heavy ecosystemic damage – associated with the loss of biodiversity always linked to any phenomenon of forest degradation/destruction –, the anomalous character of the forest fires recorded on October 15 and 16 also generates awareness to the reality of climate change.

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The ultimate guide(line) to DPIA’s

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by João Marques, member of the Portuguese Data Protection National Commission and member of CEDU
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Although merely advisory in its nature, the Article 29 Working Party (WP 29) has been a major force in guaranteeing a minimum of consistency in the application of the Directive 95/46/CE, allowing member states’ public and private sectors to know what to expect from their supervisory authorities perspectives on various data protection subjects. Its independence has played a major role in the definition of its views and opinions, focusing on the fundamental rights at stake and delivering qualified feedback to the difficult issues it has faced.

The new European legal framework on data protection has produced a step forward on this regard by instituting a new formal EU Body – the European Data Protection Board – EDPB (Art. 68 of the General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR). This will represent a significant step forward in the European institutional landscape concerning data protection but it does not mean that the WP 29 is already dead and buried, quite the opposite.

As it is already known, the EDPB will have far reaching powers designed to guarantee consistency and effectiveness to the rules of the regulation across the EU. One of the said powers translates into the issuance of guidelines in several matters [Art. 70 (1)(d), (f), (g), (h), (i), (j), (k), (m) of the GDPR].

The problem is, of course, that this new EU Body will only exist from May 2018 onwards, leaving a gap of two years (from May 2016, when the regulation entered into force) to be filled by the current legal and institutional frameworks. As such the WP29 took it into its hands to materialize these particular tasks of the EDPB during this transitional phase, fully aware that the guidelines it may issue for the time being could still be rebutted by the EDPB members. Nevertheless this is a calculated risk as the members currently sitting in the WP 29 will almost certainly be the ones who’ll be sitting in the EDPB.

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COTY: a luxury case

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by Joana Whyte, Associate Lawyer at SRS Advogados and member of CEDU
▪


Coty[i] is a much awaited case among competition law practitioners and scholars. This judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is expected to be a landmark for the luxury goods industry and will determine how the industry can protect their brands and whether restrictions on certain internet sales can be lawfully upheld.

The judgment will also be of extreme importance for Amazon and similar online marketplaces (such as eBay) who are concerned that internet sales bans will impede the growth of their businesses.

Coty Germany is one of Germany’s leading suppliers of luxury cosmetics who sells luxury cosmetic brands via a selective distribution network, on the basis of a general framework distribution agreement uniformly applied throughout Europe. The agreement is supplemented by other more specific contractual clauses designed to organise the said network.

Parfümerie Akzente has, for many years, distributed Coty Germany’s products as an authorised retailer, both at brick and mortar locations and over the internet. Internet sales are made partly through its own online store and partly via the “amazon.de” platform.

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Editorial of October 2017

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by Joana Covelo de Abreu, Junior Editor
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Promotion of internet connectivity in local communities (“WIFI4EU” legislative framework): deepening European Digital Single Market through interoperability solutions

Digital Single Market has become a new political and constitutional calling for the EU since it can promote both economic growth and sustainable development.

Therefore, four researchers – which are, respectively, Editors and Junior Editors of this Blog (Alessandra Silveira, as Scientific Coordinator; Pedro Froufe; Joana Covelo de Abreu, as the responsible for the research deliverable; and Sophie Perez) – were awarded a Jean Monnet Project funding by the European Commission, concerning the theme “EU Digital Single Market as a political calling: interoperability as the way forward”, with the acronym “INTEROP”. This project, with a 2 years’ duration starting on September 2017, is settled on scientific research around administrative interoperable solutions in order to evolve and develop new juridical sensitivities that can rely on interoperable environments, especially concerning debt recovery in the European Union.

Taking into consideration new developments on administrative connectivity, last September 12th 2017, the European Parliament discussed and approved a European Resolution which endorses the necessary legislative alterations, settled on a new Regulation regarding the promotion of Internet connectivity in local communities, universally known as “WiFi4EU”. It will promote the installation of free Wi-Fi spots in public places, squares, municipalities’ facilities, libraries and hospitals. Carlos Zorrinho, a Portuguese Member of the European Parliament (MEP), was the Rapporteur of the resolution, and understood that this solution will promote “neutrality on internet access” despite the geographical location or the economic conditions of the user – “it does not discriminate no one and no territory”. Therefore, “WiFi4EU” is the embryo of the proclaimed European Gigabit Society.

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On the Catalan separatism and the political comprehension: democracy is (must be) more than voting…

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 by Alessandra Silveira, Editor

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On October 1st, we watched stupefied and live the events around the unilateral declaration of the independence of Catalonia. The European Commission has resisted the persevering attempt of the Catalan separatists of converting the Catalan question into a European question.  President Juncker considers that is an internal issue of Spain and the decisions of the Spanish courts and of the Spanish Parliament should be respected. Unpleased, the separatists spread on social medias messages claiming the application of article 7, Treaty on the European Union, i. e., calling on the suspension of the rights of a Member State due to the use of military force against its population.

We shall then make a brief exercise to test the conformity of such argument and try to understand why the EU has resisted taking parting in this imbroglio. What were the Spanish police doing in the voting pools? They were assuring the execution of judicial decisions – of the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Catalonia itself – aimed at preventing the realization of an unconstitutional and illegal referendum, organised in clear violation of the rule of law. Or, more concretely, the policemen were apprehending documents and instruments destined to facilitate the voting, especially ballot boxes, computer equipment, ballot papers and propaganda papers – and reacted against the ones who were trying to hinder their action.

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State of the Union 2017 scenario: with full breath ahead

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by Sergio Maia, Managing Editor
▪

On September, 13th President Jean-Claude Juncker addressed the annual speech of the State of the Union (here). Against the background of the White Paper on the Future of Europe and in solid dialogue with the European Parliament, President Juncker presented some new ideas as well as highlighted previous proposals. More importantly, the European Commission demonstrates that it is effectively holding the position of initiative with which the Treaties empower it – in close democratic discussion with the Parliament.

Here we intend to comment the first impressions about key aspects of some of the topics the Juncker Commission brought to life and debate.

1. After valuing the European institutions role on “helping the wind change” for growth, job creation and control of public deficits, he expressed the will to strengthen the European trade agenda by negotiating international agreements. It seems that after the cases of the Paris agreement (on environmental issues) and the uncertainty around TTIP, there are two messages underlying this point. The first is to make the EU the main business platform worldwide (Canada, Japan, Mexico, South America and the proposal to open negotiations with Australia and New Zealand). Reliable and stable, Europe wants to be the ideal partner and the first in line in global economy. With many interrogations amounting over the US, this also seems to be an external policy strategy (“we are not naïve free traders”, he said). Alongside investment, the idea is to make the industry stronger and more competitive as well as being the leader in fighting climate change. More and more signals of the projection of the leadership of the Union in the world.

2. As far as migration, external borders and the Schengen area are concerned, migration will remain a priority. So will the support to Italian authorities who are “saving Europe’s honour in the Mediterranean”. In parallel, the Commission wants to work on legal pathways to end illegal activities like trafficking at the same time it calls for solidarity in welcoming refugees. This is a novelty. After Germany’s policy of opening doors, now the EC looks like the new leading actor in this matter. Contrary to the position of his political family, which never clearly came out, President Juncker took on a stand closer to the approach of S&D. It will be interesting to follow the next parliamentary debates and what the EPP’s reaction will be, even though its following remarks were in a more agreeable way to these terms. Finally, suggesting that Romania, Bulgaria and soon Croatia should become members of the Schengen area is a political movement on a critical region where Russia has been growingly active. The idea seems to be to overpower its influence there – the direct reference of the 100th anniversary of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania proves just that.

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