The digital platform to be launched on 19 April for EU citizens to participate in the Conference on the Future of Europe has been developed with the threat of disinformation in mind, the European Commission said on Tuesday (13 April).
In a debate with the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, Commissioner Dubravka Suica was questioned by several MEPs on how to prevent abuse of the citizens’ forum, assured that everything is being done to prevent misinformation, hate speech and other interference such as ‘trolls’ or ‘bots’.
The vice-president for democracy – who was elected by the Commission to co-chair the executive board of the conference, together with Ana Paula Zacarias, Portugal’s secretary of state for European affairs, representing the Council of the EU, and Guy Verhofstadt MEP for the parliament – stressed that there would be a team of moderators, native speakers of all EU official languages, who “will constantly monitor the content of t
Portugal’s Secretary of State for European Affairs, Ana Paula Zacarias, said on Wednesday that the procedure for assessing violations of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary may be delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The Portuguese chair [of the Council of the European Union (EU)] will continue to hold hearings for the two Member States concerned [Poland and Hungary], but these are imperative face-to-face and we are constrained by the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said in a debate with MEPs on the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee.
She highlighted European resilience, “in particular the rule of law”, among the priorities of the Portuguese six-month presidency, highlighting the commitment “to dialogue under Article 7”.