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.
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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.