Birgit SIPPEL

Policy topics Birgit SIPPEL is active on

What Birgit SIPPEL has said (47)

• 2026-07-15 “Thank you very much, chair, and thank you, missus Chago. I will try to concentrate my question on 2 areas. 1st of all, your report already mentioned that AMLA began to start preparatory engagement with EPO, Europol, Eurojust, OLAV and working arrangements are currently negotiated. We very much welcome these efforts especially at a time when all these bodies are undergoing mandate revisions. But cooperation is essential to translating financial intelligence into investigations, prosecutions, asset recovery, and the disruption of organized crime as we also underlined in our recently Libra resolution on upcoming anti corruption strategy. So in order to make all these arrangements operational, I would like to ask whether you can already provide us with more detailed information on what concrete working arrangements, information exchange channels, and referral mechanisms AMLA will establish and on what timetable? And another question is on the data protection officer. We note that, AMLA appointed its DPO already last year. And given the highly sensitive nature of the financial intelligence and personal data which AMLA will handle, robust and independent data protection oversight is essential. So can you tell us about the role the d DPO has played so far and what safeguards are in place to ensure this officer can act independently as AMLA's data holdings and information sharing with law enforcement partners expand? Thank you very much.”
  Anti-money laundering regulation
• 2026-07-13 “(15:24:59 - 15:27:22): Thank you very much, and thank you for this 1st presentation. I will focus on the 3 points that you mentioned, and I will start with the European values. And I hope you are totally clear that our values are under threat both from outside and inside European Union. You mentioned Hungary where some progress already has been made, but there are also still some open questions. You haven't touched about the situation in Slovakia, and we also forever now and then hear sad stories coming from Italy and Greece. So I would like to know to what extent you are looking into different developments. We also see that democracy, rule of law under threat by digital means. We see a lot of disinformation, discrimination, hate that is spread on the big platforms, which in itself is a problem, but also has a link to competition and digital sovereignty. And I would like to know how we can make sure better than ever before that the big providers are following our legislation, are respecting our values, while at the same time, we see nearly every day they are not doing that. Nevertheless, we work together with them. And on the other hand, we say we want to become more sovereign. How can that work? And do you have some ideas how we can become better in that area? Also, once again, respecting digital rules, but also maybe what's your view on digital taxation? Because it cannot be that every citizen has to pay higher and higher taxes, and some big companies are not contributing to our society. Having said this, I think all the threats that we are seeing also lead to hybrid threats, critical infrastructure, where we are also depending very often on companies coming from 3rd countries. And maybe you also have an idea how we can improve the situation on protecting critical infrastructure with own means and what 1st steps could be to increase sovereignty in these areas. Thank you.”
  Disinformation & online freedoms
• 2026-07-13 “(17:33:42 - 17:34:54): I would like to thank you. We have heard that behind the attacks, there are different groups and different governments. We've also heard that regardless of the actual attack, the aim is always to create fear and insecurity and to destroy the trust in democracy and society. Police cooperation is important in order to investigate and reveal all of this. But if we want to be truly successful, particularly with children and young people, it would be good to be proactive if we could make people and societies more resilient against this kind of radicalization and manipulation, even if it's not directly in your portfolio or the tasks of this committee. What kind of cooperation is there with other agencies, EU agencies, with national authorities, member states in order to be proactive, to act in advance so that fewer people end up falling into the trap of radicalization?”
  EU law enforcement cooperation in criminal matters
• 2026-07-13 “(16:41:22 - 16:43:08): Thank you very much, chair, for the presentation. Just by chance, I had the possibility to take part in the last trial log. To be honest, when we finished on that day with the progress that you just described, I was hoping that directly, we will continue the work for the long term solution. Unfortunately, I learned that some meetings were canceled, and now the next trial log will only be on September 29. Even though I agree that it was very interesting how often in different procedures we were able or forced to vote on the interim, I on the one hand agree they are separate files, but I don't that much agree when you mentioned that the two files are complementary. Because I hope that the result of CSIM will be something very close to the parliament's mandate and will not entail the parts of the interim that we only agreed upon because there was a loophole. I hope we will in this house and in this European Union never ever again be in a situation where an interim solution that was tough to be there for only a short time ended up in already 5 and with a possible final date, maybe even 8 years. That's not proper legislation, and I think our citizens, including our children, deserve better.”
  Privacy & detection of online child abuse
• 2026-06-24 “(10:42:27 – 10:44:58): Thank you very much, and also thank you for the presentation. I may focus on 2 points that you mentioned or maybe a 3rd 1. Very precisely, the judgment on article 2 of our treaty and the question of concrete impact and practice, to what extent will this or has this already changed the way you are looking into some concrete issues? That would be very helpful. On the question of the concrete use of AI and digitization, maybe 1 point, you mentioned also hate and racist content, and you mentioned that filters obviously don't work. They may not work always perfectly. Okay. But we also have again and again reports that even if we give information on concrete illegal content, we again and again see that, providers nevertheless do not delete this content. So it may be a combination of filters that are not working, but also the unwillingness of platforms because we all know only bad news are good news. They are spreading. That creates profit. So have you looked into the question to what extent our legislation like GDPR, DSA, and others are really enforced? And were you also able to check if all the sanctions, the fines really led to a change in behavior. Because to be honest, I haven't seen that, but maybe you were able to look into that more precisely. Then I have a final question on migrants and labor, And I will focus for the moment on those who arrived legally, but nevertheless, they have problems already within European Union. We are not always recognizing every level of qualification because our system's so different. That's even more a problem from people coming from 3rd countries. So they may have a qualification, but it's not recognized in our member states, and therefore, are overqualified, which is a problem for them, but also for our society because they could be more valuable in their job if we would recognize their qualification. Do you have any ideas how we could improve that situation? Thank you. *Lena Düpont @Chair: (10:44:59 – 10:45:01): Madam Grotteo, you have the floor.”
  Digital platforms liability for harmful and illegal content
• 2026-06-24 “Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank the Commission for the clear statement that it doesn't matter if discrimination is individual, systemic, structural. It doesn't matter All kind of discrimination is unacceptable. I also have a question, and I think it was mentioned in the presentation of the speaker from Enar. When we talk about intersectional discrimination. And of course, we have concrete measures, ideas to fight back, discrimination based on gender, on disability, on other things. But of course, we might see one person. And that's the intersectional discrimination that is a migrant woman with a disability. And I'm not sure who may answer the question if it's the Fra or maybe even the commission, to what extent we already have ideas for measures fighting back these intersectional discriminations.”
  EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination
• 2026-06-24 “(09:48:17 – 09:50:06): Thank you very much. Yes. Our rapporteur, Sander Rottulu cannot be here, so I will read out his remarks. Only in 2025, approximately 444,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were withdrawn from circulation. This represents 1 of the lowest levels ever recorded relative to the total number of euro banknotes in circulation. Nevertheless, euro counterfighting continues to pose a threat to citizens' confidence in the single currency. For this reason, it is essential to continue supporting the Pericles program now entering in its 5th edition. The objective of the S and D group is to further strengthen the program in the next multi annual financial program, building on the positive results achieved so far. At the same time, we believe it's important to carefully assess any extension of the program's objectives as proposed in the draft report. We have some reservations about the inclusion of new areas of actions such as money laundering at a time when resources remain limited. We should bear in mind that the proposed budget of EUR 7,000,000 for the next 7 years does not fully reflect the impact of the inflation accumulated since the launch of the current program. It's therefore essential to ensure that the objectives assigned to Pericles are matched by adequate resources and vice versa. We nevertheless stand ready to work constructively with the repertoire, Mr. McNamara, and with the other political groups to find the right balance and further strengthen the effectiveness of the program. Thank you.”
  Anti-money laundering regulation
• 2026-06-24 “(11:21:25 – 11:22:55): Thank you very much. I have a question and maybe a remark. On the NGOs, do I agree with every single NGO? Maybe not. But on the other hand, I'm happy that they are all there. In the last years, I visited a lot of cities. I spoke to a high number of NGOs, and everything I learned is it's great that they are there. They support a lot of totally different groups of people. They organize a lot of work. They bring people together. They support voluntary work. They empower people to become active on themselves. I'm totally convinced without the NGOs, even in my relatively small city, our societies would be much poorer, much more isolated. The citizens and our societies would be less resilient. From that point of view, my question would be, are there any studies to be done to see what role NGOs have for the life of individual people and groups of people, but also what would be the impact if tomorrow all the NGOs would be gone? Is there also the possibility maybe to work together not only with other agencies but also maybe to take note of the experience from organizations like the Committee of the Regions?”
  Regulation of NGOs in Europe
• 2026-06-24 “Thank you very much. I will focus on 2 or 3 things. I'm really tired. After all the many years that I'm still confronted in the internet with a broad range of different cookies and I'm tired. That. Still, it's not even easy to understand if and how I could disagree. But your answer now is to give more flexibility to companies and ensure individual choices and control. I don't want to have these individual choices. I want to have responsibility for companies that are not controlled. So why are you choosing this way? You are talking about innovative companies, but we already have a lot of alternatives to products from Microsoft for so-called social media, for messengers, and also for some AI measures. But we are not promoting them. So it's not good enough to spend money for innovative solutions. If then we don't promote them and therefore our citizens are not using them. So promotion of all these ideas is also important. We have a lot of innovative companies who are using AI in the area of non-personal data. But instead of celebrating this, we are again and again focusing on using personal data and on the Digital simplification omnibus. We even watered down the definition of personal data and make it difficult to access own personal data. So if we really are interested in sovereignty, we should not only concentrate on technical solutions, clouds and things like that. I wonder why we don't insist on our own rules and standards. And I would like to know if the sanctions that so far have been done by the Commission and the fines that we have given to companies, and I'm afraid they will laugh about the amounts of money. But have you seen any change in the behaviour, or isn't it true that we still see that even if they are alerted about clear illegal Content. They are not deleting it. They are continuing their business model on discriminating people, giving wrong information, and not respecting European legislation.”
  Digital platforms liability for harmful and illegal content
• 2026-06-24 “(11:54:24 – 11:56:22): Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Schmidt, for your presentation. I'm going try to focus on 2 areas, starting with nearly the end of your presentation, when you talked about what is in the focus for 2026. And for example, you mentioned follow the money. And that seems to be only logic because even though we have a lot of debates in these days about cybercrime, the number of cases that is growing both in the ongoing and new cases is on fraud and money laundering. And I would like to know if that's only for the cases that you have or this is the general reality we are talking about. And I also would like to know if the increase in the cases also shows the damage that is done and the damage might be bigger by fraud and money laundering for the whole of society than by cybercrime, if you have any evidence about that. Talking about evidence, you also talked about e evidence. And I would like to know where having the date of August this year in mind, you still see some open challenges to be solved in the practical use of e evidence? And also if you are aware about the readiness of the platform for authorization and exchange of e evidence? And a final general question, you mentioned again and again that cooperation is of high importance and I fully agree. It also seems that member states more and more agree because I also saw an increase in the Jits. So in all these corporations and having in mind that still we have different systems for the prosecutors, but also for your judiciary, where do you see nevertheless still some challenges in the good cooperation with the member states? Thank you.”
  Anti-money laundering regulation
• 2026-06-17 “Thank you. Picture this. A child opens an app just for a brief moment, but the algorithm has 1 goal. Keep the child on that app. Make a lot of profit. The app is like a vortex, dragging children and adults into echo chambers where you hear what you want, and the algorithm shows you that. It's extreme emotional content, which is rewarding. Facts and nuances are pushed aside, and the algorithm knows it. Anger will keep you online longer than sensible things will, and you'll continue to scroll. And people and children fall down rabbit holes of hate, and, the companies are making billions. We must protect children. We mustn't have unending feeds, which addict children. And instead of age verification, we need to truly implement our rules. We need to ensure that our democratic values are followed. If you don't respect that, then you must not be allowed to operate on the European market anymore.”
  Safety features & content control for child protection online
• 2026-06-16 “Thank you very much. What does digital sovereignty mean? We have a few companies protected by their governments who are controlling this, who have access to, data. People and their data are simply raw materials for companies to profit from. This surveillance, capitalism is not an acceptable economic model. We have personalized ads, uncontrolled algorithms, personalized content. This is clear manipulation. It disturbs societal cohesion. Europe needs to become more independent chips, platforms, messenger, software through to, cloud systems. We need to, ban personalized advertising. We need to have a proper digital tax. And if we see, continual violations of our legislation and our values, we have to have restrictions on, access to European, markets. This is important for diversity and democracy. Thank you.”
  EU digital & tech sovereignty
• 2026-06-16 “Thank you very much. What does digital sovereignty mean? We have a few companies protected by their governments who are controlling this, who have access to our data. People and their data are simply raw materials for companies to profit from. This surveillance capitalism is not an acceptable economic model. We have personalized ads, uncontrolled algorithms, personalized content. This is clear maculation. It disturbs societal cohesion. Europe needs to become more independent chips platforms messenger software through to cloud systems. We need to ban personalized advertising. We need to have a proper digital tax. And if we see continual violations of our legislation and our values. We have to have restrictions on access to European markets. This is important for diversity and democracy. Thank you.”
  EU digital & tech sovereignty
• 2025-09-08 “P-003471/2025 Answer given by Mr Brunner on behalf of the European Commission The Commission continues to be focused on supporting the Council in reaching a compromise as soon as possible on the proposal for a Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse 1 (‘the Proposal’). This would allow the inter-interinstitutional negotiations with the European Parliament to start, given that the European Parliament already adopted a negotiating position on 22 November 2023. As the impact assessment accompanying the Proposal shows 2 , voluntary detection of child sexual abuse online in private communications has been instrumental in rescuing children from ongoing abuse and to arrest offenders in the EU. Protecting children from these heinous crimes is the Commission’s priority. Therefore, the Commission will consider a further prolongation of Regulation (EU) 2021/1232 (‘Interim Regulation’) 3 if necessary. The Commission is working on completing the report on the implementation of the Interim Regulation, including the compilation of the required data from Member States as well as the data from online service providers. 1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:52022PC0209. 2 see Annex 7 of SWD(2022)209 final. 3 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj/eng.”
  Privacy & detection of online child abuse
• 2025-02-26 “P-000847/2025 Answer given by Executive Vice-President Virkkunen on behalf of the European Commission The intention of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 1 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 2 is to enable all EU citizens and residents to identify in a secure way and under full protection of personal data for online public and private services. Providing digital identification guaranteed by governments to the private sector is therefore a basic objective of the Regulation. In addition, user identification by private services is mandated in paragraph 2 of Article 5f on the cross-border reliance on European Digital Identity Wallets in the basic act. It specifically states that where ‘… strong user authentication for online identification or where strong user authentication for online identification is required by contractual obligation, including in the areas of transport, energy, banking, financial services, social security, health, drinking water, postal services, digital infrastructure, education or telecommunications, those private relying parties shall, … also accept European Digital Identity Wallets that are provided in accordance with this Regulation.’ Relying parties, whether private or public must register in the Member State where they are established in order to rely upon European Digital Identity Wallets. As noted above, there is already a broad obligation for the private sector to rely upon the European Digital Identity Wallet for user authentication and identification. As Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 is not regulating how to provide for identity matching for private relying parties, it is up to Member States how to tackle this. 1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2014/910/oj/eng 2 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202401183”
  Electronic identity
• “Thank you very much. And just to underline the need for legal migration into employment, what I hear again and again from companies is that even in case they want to have a third country national to come into their company to work there. It can last one year until they have the permission to stay and to work. So that's unbelievable. And it might also explain why the number of irregular migrants who are willing simply to work, who have no reason for asylum is so big because they cannot wait. They need a perspective. So I think we have all the reasons to facilitate this. And together with the strategy, we even can react in case this should be, as some call it, abuse. So I hope the Commission will encourage member States to facilitate the rules. I have another concrete question. You mentioned so-called trusted companies. Could you a little bit elaborate? What are the criteria to find out what makes a company a so-called trusted company?”
  Legal migration
• “Thank you very much. And some very small, concrete questions for this debate. We have 45 minutes for the early debates. We had 50 minutes. My question is, is this the only involvement foreseen by the Commission on these important files, or is there anything else? This is really alarming on within the European Union. I remember debates in the last mandates which showed that never was completely implemented and enforced. Maybe I have missed something. Could you please indicate if this has totally changed or still it's not enforced? And if it's not enforced completely within European Union, why? Are we going for international prim? And finally, earlier this day, we had a debate where commissioner talked about trusted companies and he was not able to present criterias because he made a proposal. But we don't have the criteria for trusted companies. So you talk now about trusted third countries. Do you have criteria for this to decide which is a trusted third country for this purpose? And just to keep everybody informed, because we also have some new members here in the House talking about automated police information exchange framework. Could you a little bit elaborate what kind of data and for what purpose? Thank you.”
  EU law enforcement cooperation in criminal matters
• “Thank you very much Chair. First and foremost, I want to of course welcome our guests and it's a very important discussion that we're having and unfortunately very seldom also. And as you very rightly expressed, it is that the rights of those rights are human rights, the rights that we should discuss even more. But I must say that I'm very much disappointed at this Parliament even because it's not that this Parliament even is accessible enough in many, many ways and that's something we also as an institution need to work on because right now we are not a role model. And to start with, there is not, they are not, it's not a diverse Parliament enough. But those colleagues who have any kind of disability, as according to my experience and colleagues I had during the last mandate, I saw it very closely how the support that everyone should have to be able to conduct the parliamentary work was not there. With this said, my questions are broad. The first question is how does it look among the member states? Is there any member state that you see as a role model? And how does it look when it comes to action plans, action plans on a national level and are they implemented those that are having it? And then a final question is about awareness, was mentioned just a couple of minutes ago. How does the support to the civil society look like because we unfortunately live right now in a context where there are attacks on civil society in different ways, direct attacks but also attacks in the sense of cutting the fundings. How does this affect the disability organizations also? Thank you very much.”
  EU policy on disability inclusion & accessibility
• “(17:39:31 – 17:40:32): Thank you very much, chair. Our shadow, Muriel Laurent, has to attend a parallel meeting. And with apologies for her absence, I will read out this statement of her behalf. 1st, I would like to thank the repertoire for his draft report and the work done so far. I note some positive changes in his proposal, particularly the introduction of specific objectives, although I would prefer to specify the actions eligible for funding under this instrument. And I believe we will find common ground on this issue. In my amendments, I will focus on improving the wording of the text, removing references to returns that are covered by the asylum migration and integration instrument, and strengthening the provisions regarding partnerships with NGOs, which are essential to the implementation of actions funded under this instrument. Thank you very much.”
  Regulation of NGOs in Europe
• “Thank you very much. And I think I can make it very short. I would have hoped that after many years in the year 2026, no debate would be needed to declare that conversion therapy should not take place. We have decades where some actors try to say this needs to be healed and it never worked. And I really wonder, what are people afraid of to talk about this and to accept that we are different. And sexual orientation and identity and differences that we see and we are talking about in this meeting is not a fashion show, sorry to say. It's something that we could realize throughout all the centuries. It was always there for some people. And I think it's time really for a ban. It's time not to spend money for those, be it European money or national money who are working with conversion therapy. And we also should make sure that there is public awareness that this is a crime to human beings, to the health and to their dignity. Thank you very much.”
  LGBTIQ+
• “Thank you very much. I will try to shorten my notes and I will first talk about AI, where my colleague Christiane is the shadow. We fully recognize the need for effective implementation of AI act. And we also recognize that delays in standards and other points create real challenges. However, what the digital omnibus on AI creates and proposes goes well beyond technical simplification as we do not have the time. I will only mention two more serious examples. First, the conditional postponement of high risk AI obligations made dependent on a future commission decision creates a de facto suspension mechanism, and it risks leaving people unprotected against high risk systems in different areas at the very moment these systems are scaling up. Second, the proposal increasingly relies on provider self-assessment, including the possibility to declare annex three systems as not high risk. Now, this could become a loophole rather than a simplification. So three questions to the Commission. What concrete mechanisms will ensure active supervision rather than enforcement that is triggered only after harm has occurred? How does the Commission intend to prevent systemic under classification of AI systems or processing activities, particularly in high impact sectors? And in the absence of such mechanisms? How can the Commission credibly claim that simplification will not result in lower levels of protection in practice, especially for vulnerable groups who are least likely to lodge complaints. And let me now a final remark. You said that Pseudonymized data are no longer personal data because either it's not possible or it's illegal to refer back to a person. That's crazy, because we see every day that big companies are not respecting our legislation. Thank you.”
  Artificial Intelligence
• “Will I be aware that my door is broken? Yes or no? Will I be aware that my encrypted messages have been read for a reason or without a reason? Maybe the provider will know that, but maybe the government will tell the provider you are not allowed to tell it. Not only to protect the invitation, but also maybe to hide away from the fact that you were looking into messages. At the end, totally innocent people. So I think there are a lot of political questions to be taken. And we also should understand the consequences of what we are talking about. So it's not that much a question. I was not looking forward to hear from you. How can we do this? Front door into encrypted messages the same way as going into houses. I think it's simply not possible. But we have to be more careful. And if you have any idea on that, how we can raise awareness for this on political level, but also in law enforcement, that we have to be very, very careful not to destroy our own foundation as European Union, to respect rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy, while willing, of course, to use electronic data evidence. But I think we have a lot of things to do to avoid. We are ending up with some Autocratic measures. And today everybody.”
  Privacy & law enforcement
• “Thank you very much. Well, AI, is that freedom through innovation? What we see, in fact, is innovation without responsibility and power without accountability. Ai chatbots like chatbot are a systematic infringement of dignity and fundamental rights. They are being trained to undress pictures of real people, to sexualize them, to force them into poses that they never would have consented to. Women are being reduced to objects, children a digital victims in the thousands. This is not an accident. It is the desired result of a culture that promotes growth for the few, and puts it ahead of the interests of all of us. We should not accept dignity and rights. Being stamped all over, with women being sexualized and children being seen as collateral damage to a digital business model. So what we need is a clear ban on AI sexualization. We need a proper digital tax, personal liability for the providers, proper supervisory bodies, and temporary bans on access to the European market. We need to enforce rules that protect us here in Europe.”
  Artificial Intelligence
• “(15:40:38 – 15:44:01): Thank you very much, and thank you for your presentation. I may start with the remark. Even though I understand what you are talking about, talking about very complex developments in the area of digitalization and artificial intelligence and maybe also the need for some additional rules, one could get the impression that we are creating legislation, ever new rules, which partly are not only overlapping but contradictory to each other. And in the end, we might forget that there is something like GDPR, and no one is willing to follow the rules. That's an impression one could get with all the legislation already on the table and some new legislation in front of us, even added by the fact that there are different authorities who are created to follow if the rules are followed and what rules if it's not very clear. Having said this, I think there is one fundamental problem, very easy to describe. We are talking about some very big companies in the hand of only a few people who are so powerful that maybe we don't dare to regulate them. Enforcement is a real problem. Big companies are not enforcing our legislation, and we are not always using all our powers to stop them. But I also have some concrete questions. You talked about different rules for smaller and bigger companies. And if I remember correctly, already in GDPR, we had different level of rules and obligations for smaller and bigger companies. So talking about the new legislations on the table, where and to what extent do you see additional rules for bigger and smaller companies? And what kind of definition are you using for smaller and bigger companies? Is it the similar rules as in GDPR or are there other rules? Talking about consent fatigue, I'm tired to listen to this, and I'm tired to hear that we need to give control about their online choices to the users. I don't want to control everything I'm doing. I want to have the insurance that when I'm using online services, I'm not profiled. There are no cookies to follow every step. My steps are not followed in the offline world. Not everything is pointed out. I don't want that to happen in the online world, and I would prefer solutions that ensure quite this. No cookies to build profiles on me and send me ads and something like that. And the final question is the question of access to personal data. You mentioned the digital omnibus. And if I understand the proposal correctly, it will become more difficult for users to get access to all their personal data on whatever area. Could you please have your position both on the so-called consent fatigue, but also on access to personal data and what solutions you would prefer on that file? Thank you.”
  Privacy & digital economy
• “Thank you very much, chair. And thank you to our guests. It's true that our digital environment is important also for law enforcement. And I am happy that you, Mr. Needy, mentioned evidence that hopefully soon will come into force. I remember that in that context, we did not only talk about a safe transfer of data, which of course is of essence, but also a digital system of authentication of the people who are allowed to ask questions. Maybe you could a little bit explain if we already have this in place or how much time it will take. Regarding, we should have the same thing offline and online. It's not always easy to describe what is the same level, but to be honest, I sometimes have the impression that in this new online world, we are asking for much more than we would do in the offline world. Sometimes the argument if you have nothing to hide is used to explain that all our messages could be read the same. You could say if you have nothing to hide, where is the problem that police officers will visit you at home at any time they want? So that's a very bad argument. But I also see that very often we manage to find out criminals, but I also sometimes find out that the problem was not. In some cases it's true we were missing the information, but we also had cases where the information was with one police force, one prosecutor, but it was not exchanged for different reasons, not for bad intention, but maybe because the authorities was overburdened, did not see the necessity, the importance to exchange data. So how do you see that angle beyond the digital environment that we have to improve the cooperation between different law Law enforcement areas to make sure that relevant data is realized as relevant data, and then also is exchanged. Thank you.”
  Privacy & law enforcement
• “Thank you very much. And some very small, concrete questions for this debate. We have 45 minutes for the early debates. We had 50 minutes. My question is, is this the only involvement foreseen by the Commission on these important files, or is there anything else? This is really alarming on within the European Union. I remember debates in the last mandates which showed that never was completely implemented and enforced. Maybe I have missed something. Could you please indicate if this has totally changed or still it's not enforced? And if it's not enforced completely within European Union, why? Are we going for international prim? And finally, earlier this day, we had a debate where commissioner talked about trusted companies and he was not able to present criterias because he made a proposal. But we don't have the criteria for trusted companies. So you talk now about trusted third countries. Do you have criteria for this to decide which is a trusted third country for this purpose? And just to keep everybody informed, because we also have some new members here in the House talking about automated police information exchange framework. Could you a little bit elaborate what kind of data and for what purpose? Thank you.”
  Privacy & law enforcement
• “Thank you very much, chair, and thank you for this presentation. I think it's unfortunately again and again important. And you mentioned it in the beginning that the dpos and thus also the edpb is not only there to control, but to give guidance and support different actors to ensure data protection and privacy. And it's clear that with all the developments regarding digitization and artificial intelligence, these tasks are increasing. So I'm happy that in an answer to another first question, you already raised the question of resources, but it would also be interesting to hear what kind of actors are making use of your service to support, or is it that you have to contact them to offer support? So how is this cooperation working? We also in the past heard a lot of things that if there is a complaint or I feel that my rights regarding data protection and privacy are not taken seriously or even someone is working against it, that the procedures are not really harmonized and sometimes I don't get a final result of any complaint. So what are your precise hopes on this legislation when it comes to harmonization of procedures? And a final question goes to artificial intelligence. Um, if I remember correctly, it will not always be dpos to work on artificial intelligence. Maybe there will be other institutions to have the control. How do you see your role? And to what extent do you believe that we are already lacking behind protecting privacy of people? Because we already see very, very well done dark fakes where even can see not only pictures, but videos showing people, very often prominent people, saying something, doing something. But then if you have a chance to check, you find out. This never happened. The person never said this. So do you think that the current legislation is good enough to help us identify such fakes? And do you have additional ideas how to better protect us against such misinformation?”
  Transparency and oversight of AI-generated content
• “Thank you. Protecting children and fundamental rights are very important in terms of the symbolism of politics. The title of this default sets out the many challenges facing us. Sexual abuse of children, which is something which shocks all of us. This is why it's so important that we identify what protective measures are needed. Sexual abuse of children often takes place very close to home over years without anybody noticing. Abuse takes many different forms on the internet, and in particular, dissemination of images is not just the responsibility of one person, but often evil criminal gangs. Moreover, we often hear about suggested solutions according to individuals ideas, but all too often what we're actually talking about is business models based on data manipulation. Clicks for money. But when it comes to responsibility, forget it. Online and offline. We need to adopt measures which will provide protection for young people, ensure that public prosecutor and enforcement agencies have the tools they need so as to provide protection while undermining, uh, individual rights, including those of children. I'm happy that the European Parliament has now found a good compromise, enabling us to extend the interim regulation, thereby ensuring that the European Parliament's mandate for the permanent regulation B be strengthened. Child protection cannot work via indiscriminate mass surveillance, but only via evidence LED checks, while at the same time encouraging children and other members of society to be more observant and attentive.”
  Privacy & detection of online child abuse
• “I'll be speaking German. I'm not totally sure, but I think my question is actually a director, Mr. van der Hennes. A number of legal systems have not looked at environmental crimes as a priority. And it's very difficult to understand when you think about the amount of damage and how it feeds into organized crime. And you look at the sustainable damage, the long term damage that is created due to hazardous waste and its mistreatment, not just environmental contamination, but also posing health risks and risks to lives. So my question is the following. Could this lack of interest also be because a large part of this waste is are not dealt with or stored in the EU, but in fact are sent off to third countries? So we don't see the damage, we don't pay the price. And despite the fact that there is awareness raising, we need stricter controls. And perhaps these stricter controls will allow us to stop storing or just offloading our hazardous waste in third countries. Maybe this would make this a priority. Thank you.”
  Environmental crimes and justice
• “(16:46:26 – 16:48:42): Thank you very much. And I may have two questions. First of all, maybe to commission. Talking about all the different actors, the different kind of challenges, we talked about physical barriers, we talked about attacks to digital systems. We talked about natural disasters. So everything might happen in all of our member states even though the challenges, the level of challenges, and the possibility to react might be different. Do you have an overview or are you on your way to collect the information? Which of these challenges are of most importance in the different member states? And if member states already working on risk assessments and on finding an answer, and do you also have already an idea to what extent member states need support with ideas, technical support, money, things like that. I also have a question to our last speaker because being prepared, of course, first of all, is a task for our authorities, for governments, but it's also a task maybe for every single citizen. So what we do need is information. What can we individually do to be prepared? And information needs to be done in a way so that we are strengthened not to create fear. That would be not helpful. So what can we do to improve preparedness, prevention both for authorities but also for individual citizens? Not every individual citizen will be in the position to protect themselves. So what kind of public support do we need in case there is a flood, people need to leave their homes, they need food, or things like that? And do you have an overview to what extent this already is in the thinking and planning of authorities? And are there some positive examples from some of our member states already? Thank you.”
  EU policy on criminal justice
• “I think the main question to everybody is if civil society is able to raise more awareness and to also indicate the challenges that are there for suspected and accused persons and for our democracy in whole.”
  EU engagement with civil society
• “Thank you very much a rare opportunity for the S and D to begin with a round of questions so thank you very much for that thank you very much as well for the presentation of this new process. There are two areas where I have comments to make namely migration and security. On the question of asylum implementation and the package there I'm still quite frustrated and sometimes I'm quite bitter about this when it comes to the question of implementation within the member states not all information seems to be available and this means it's very difficult to track what exactly is happening and with a number of decisions that have been made as well regarding the commission's proposal on safe third countries we would have the impression that the asylum system is becoming better or that was the intention anywhere and this is where my question comes in. So what about the procedures on the existing asylum system what's happening there doesn't seem to be that anything is moving there certainly not in the time of the report so this is my question what does the commission think about this do you think that the current asylum system is being implemented correctly across the EU have there been any violations any treaty violations that have come to light if we're focusing on the new system and I have expressed my criticism before I would at least expect a great deal of pressure being exerted to ensure that that does not happen treaty violations. I'm just coming back again at the end we spoke about legal migration for employment we do have European legislation in this domain but I don't think it's used at all ultimately it has no effect so I'm wondering what will you do for people who want to come here in order to work and of course if if we have the needs for this labor but how are you intending to improve or simplify procedures so that we make these possibilities available to people because my impression is that that's not happening now. Where security is concerned indeed there were a number of procedures in place addressing treaty violations however what I think is quite striking we're all saying just how important security is and just how important it is to work together and then often there's a failure when it comes to exchanging information certainly that's the case with these partial treaty violations so where do you see the particular challenges there a lot of questions there I'm hoping you're able to answer them all thank you.”
  Legal migration
• “Thank you very. Much. And thanks to our guest speakers, who gave us a broad overview about all the different pillars that we have to look into when talking about this important issue, Um, of course, when trying to take the next steps, we have to avoid that. We simply create fear in our citizens, but tell them that we have a solution, and that we can deal with all the different crises that might come up soon. Having said this, when talking about the concerns of citizens about security, you can easily understand that very often Social Security is also playing a role into that. And security also in the social area is important to create resilient societies and get the support of all our citizens for everything that is necessary to take the correct steps in creating safety and security for everybody. As you also indicated, all this will mean we need a lot of financial resources, but this will be very difficult to be honest with the current budget that we have as European Union. So my very concrete question, in addition to everything that already has been mentioned, would be, are we prepared to finally seriously look into the question of own resources? Several ideas for that are already on the table, and I hope that we will. With that, find a solution for safety, preparedness and resilience societies altogether.”
  Own EU resources
• “Thank you very much. I'm going to be speaking in German again. I'm grateful to the Chair and the secretariat that you've contained a number of elements of the Parliament's position in the technical notes. Unfortunately in the text of the Council I don't find these elements contained there. In Germany we're proudly declaring now there are no more unlimited, there's no more mass surveillance but that's actually incorrect. There's no obligation for mass surveillance of our communications but the platform providers are being asked to do this on a voluntary basis and this means that there are no specific provisions or safeguards in place and they're even required to continue to develop their technology which means that of course they're going to be monitoring everything in the future with the justification that they have to do this in order to continue to develop their technology. We've heard the impressive reports, impressive figures on how many drafts and how many texts etcetera have been produced here but I think that there are a number of false positive messages being sent out here and I would be interested in the legal measures that we could resort to if there are in order to protest against these measures and these falsified, these false figures. There's one figure that I didn't hear and that is just how many children have been saved from these situations of abuse. How many children has it been possible because of digital investigations etcetera have been protected from these cases of abuse? I haven't found any figures on that and I have the impression that we're trying to make life easy. We say that okay we're moving into the digital domain that's good but any instance of abuse for a child is unacceptable and that is still happening. I think that we're not talking about this enough. In recent years we've seen cases in Germany where we have perpetrators who have spent years abusing children from the safety of their own home. No one would have noticed that, no one would have taken it seriously enough at the time and this is where we have a real problem. And then this is something that you mentioned on the previous agenda item you said keep in mind the fundamental rights. Yes, I have them in mind as well but the question is how are they being put into practice specifically and I think that if we look at any communication on the internet that we want to control we know that children and young people are developing their their characters their future characters on the internet as well. Often victims are seeking help from other people who've been affected or from organizations that are based on the internet so if there are no rules there and they can't feel safe there anymore that they're able to tell their own stories without any old person stumbling across it or listening to it then that is a restriction on the freedom of children and particularly the freedoms of victims as well and I find it very difficult to understand how you will implement the Danish Presidency's position.”
  Privacy & detection of online child abuse
• “Discrimination is banned. Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights is clear on that. However, right across the EU there is rising hate crime and hate speech both offline and online. Laws are being pushed forward that target minorities, discriminating them and criminalising them, such as the gay propaganda laws and the pride bans in Hungary. These are stoking fears, and these are saying that people should become less and less visible in public. Religious minorities, people with disabilities, older people, LGBTQ people, third country nationals, and many, many others are facing barriers every day when it comes to housing, access to care. And many, many women are becoming more and more disadvantaged. That's why we need a standard level of protection for everyone in every aspect of life. The horizontal Anti-Discrimination directive, however, has been in a deadlock in council since 2008. That is unacceptable and that is why I am calling upon the council to end this deadlock. Finally adopt the Identity Discrimination Directive.”
  EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination
• “Thank you very much. To be honest, I'm really a little bit concerned and worried and do not know how to start, because I'm also a little bit shocked that in the year 2026, with all the debates we had about digitalization and artificial intelligence, we still believe some people still believe that creating a so-called front door, back door into encrypted messages is the very same thing as receiving one key for one specific door. And it's not the same beyond the question of the technical challenges that are there. If you receive the allowance that permission from an authority that you are allowed to open one door. Okay. But with that, you cannot open, even for physical reasons. No police force in one city will ever be able to open 100 doors within seconds. But if you would ever create this frontier, you can do that very thing. You can go into a number of accounts within seconds. And then there is the question of admissibility. And I don't know how we should control that. Will the persons be aware that someone entered their house or their encrypted messages? And if you have the possibility to go into many messages, will you really say, oh, we only look into the messages of the one suspected person. So we will say, just to be sure we don't miss something, let's also go into the messages of all the persons around that suspected person, maybe even a number of totally innocent persons. And will you nevertheless keep all the data from all the people who will control that? And that leads not only to the question of admissibility in front of the court, but also it raises concerns about the rights of suspected and accused persons.”
  Privacy & law enforcement
• “Thank you very much. And thank you for the presentation. Um, to get more concrete answers, uh, I may ask to concentrate On two countries, especially Egypt and Afghanistan. You talk about return that need to be facilitated, need to be fastened. And very often we talk about points with which we could put pressure on countries like the trade preferences or the way how to deal with visa liberalisation. Just in the answer to my colleague from EPP. You also mentioned tourism students legal migration, now talking about legal migration and students. And in the context of Afghanistan, who will come. Are we sure that normal citizens are profiting from that or other people? And who will benefit? Because you mentioned that both interests of European Union, but also of the third country, have to be taken into consideration. What kind of interests are we talking about? The interest of a government that will be recognized in the case of Afghanistan, even though the situation is terrible over there? Or are we really talking about the interest of citizens? So what precisely is the benefit for European Union beyond sending people back to such countries? And what's the benefit precisely for Afghanistan or Egypt, and especially not only for governments, but also for the citizens coming from those areas? Thank you.”
  Legal migration
• “Thank you very much. And I think I can make it very short. I would have hoped that after many years in the year 2026, no debate would be needed to declare that conversion therapy should not take place. We have decades where some actors try to say this needs to be healed and it never worked. And I really wonder, what are people afraid of to talk about this and to accept that we are different. And sexual orientation and identity and differences that we see and we are talking about in this meeting is not a fashion show, sorry to say. It's something that we could realize throughout all the centuries. It was always there for some people. And I think it's time really for a ban. It's time not to spend money for those, be it European money or national money who are working with conversion therapy. And we also should make sure that there is public awareness that this is a crime to human beings, to the health and to their dignity. Thank you very much.”
  LGBTIQ+
• “Thank you very much. And it's good to hear that big companies are very engaged going against the use of spyware. Um, I would like to know if this also includes that meta itself will no longer collect massive data from their users. And if this engagement also includes that, you will no longer give access to all those data to companies for targeted advertising? Or is it that you only criticize governments but you yourself keep on targeting people and collecting all the data. And maybe in future you will inform users how they can avoid that you are collecting all their data. Or is it that also in future? Some NGOs have to do that and keep users informed how to avoid you are using the data.”
  Privacy & digital economy
• “(17:34:15 – 17:36:37): Thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation. And I do have some concrete questions. I would like to know what precisely you are talking about when you talk about lawful access to data? In the old world with paper prints still in place, there were some rules. So you needed to have some level of evidence, some level of serious crime, and then maybe you would allow to look into it to do house searches, something like that. So now in the digital environment, what precisely does it mean to have lawful access to data? I also would like again to ask the question on encrypted data because whether we talk about backdoor, frontdoor, a window, or whatever, whenever you can look into encrypted data, everybody will have a chance to look into it. So do we really think that having access to encrypted data is a solution? And if so, under which conditions? Or are we having instruments to look into cases before things are encrypted? And what precisely would be the most effective thing? Then I also have a third question, importance of collaboration with the private sector. In principle, I agree. On the other hand, looking into the big platforms, many of them coming from The US, to some extent, I'm sorry to say, I'm not happy to state this, they are complicit with crimes. We have several experiences where we told them that something is wrong on their side. We gave them the page, the person who is doing something totally wrong, illegal on the page, but they do not react. So to what extent can cooperation help? Maybe there is something else we should do, like, for example, take their service down for a while because, obviously, they are not always willing to cooperate. They are not willing to react even if we prove them that something illegal is taking place. So are we really willing? That's my question. To cooperate, ask them nicely, please do something, or are we willing to take a stronger stance in case we find out these things? Thank you.”
  Privacy & law enforcement
• “(17:44:15 – 17:45:28): Thank you very much for giving me another chance. I'm not sure if I understood this correctly. When talking about the big platforms, you said they refer to their terms of reference, and they cannot deliver the information, the data, because there is no law. And according to their terms of reference, they are not allowed. I personally believe they are not willing to deliver the data because if something is illegal and that illegal content is on their page, it should be a normal reaction if I tell them there is illegal content on your page that they have to delete it. Whether there is a law saying you have to delete, yes or no. So I have the impression they are playing on time because many people are looking at those criminal content. We heard it today in different ways, and they make profit out of it. So is it really that we play their game waiting for a new legislation instead of saying you have to follow our rules. You have to respect our legislation. And if you don't do it, please get away. Why are we doing their game? It's just a simple question, maybe.”
  Digital platforms liability for harmful and illegal content
• “(16:24:57 – 16:27:23): Thank you very much. And I would like to say that I feel a little bit sorry about the title only focusing on 1 form of extremism. And I would like to thank mister Schieffer who indicated clearly that there is a number of, violent extremism in Europe, and I just heard the data from Germany on other forms that are increasing. I'm also thanking mister Magnus Renstorp who indicated that talking about this form of extremism, Muslims themselves, the broad majority of them, is a victim of this form of violence. And I would like to know knowing or stating this, what can we do to bring different groups in society closer together to fight the real enemy and not fight to each other and split our societies. I also heard both Martin Schiffer and Peter Neumann talking about self radicalization. This was coming from Martin Schiffer and Internet enablers. This sounds a little bit vague saying, oh, the individual is the person we have to look to because the individual is radicalizing itself or the Internet, very vague, the Internet is responsible. But that's not true. The truth is that the Internet, many platforms are in the hand of only a few people, and those people don't take care for any kind of way of life, only for their own. They are interested in profit, and they are basing their business model on a very simple truth, only bad news are good news because they are spreading much faster than good news. And we see it again and again that those platforms are not even ready to delete content if they are clearly told this is illegal content. But instead of finding a way to deal with that, we are creating additional legislation, new procedures, giving them time to even increase their profit. So could you please explain us how can we be effective in prevention if we allow those big players to continue their very negative business? Thank you.”
  EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination
• “I think the main question to everybody is if civil society is able to raise more awareness and to also indicate the challenges that are there for suspected and accused persons and for our democracy in whole.”
  EU engagement with civil society
• “Many thanks. Um, what we are doing, talking about drugs, is that we divide them in two groups. The ones are called illegal, and the others are called legal, which also leads to different challenges. So-called illegal drugs are produced and distributed by criminal gangs. And beyond the normal effects of taking too much drugs, very often the quality ending up in the hands of users is so bad that people even can die simply because of the quality and not the normal effects of drugs. And of course, the criminal environment is also affecting our community. So that's the one element on legal drugs. Of course, they also have an impact on the life of people, on health. And very often the history of users taking drugs starts already when being a child, maybe not with alcohol or other drugs, but with other things. So prevention also is very important. And whether we talk about legal or illegal drugs, we have to help people first, hopefully with prevention, but also later with access to health and other services. My question to you would be, beyond dealing with criminal gangs and working together with other agencies in the EU. To what extent can the agency have an impact or work on good practices to work on prevention and support of the users?”
  Cannabis consumption
• “Thank you very much. And I will speak in German. Thank you very much for your presentation. Obviously, there are a lot of legal issues here. There are very, very different environmental legislation in different countries. But the key problem seems to be that you've got, on the one hand, a places where you have a dangerous waste that's created and people want to get rid of it as cheaply as possible. But then on the other side, you've got places who are happy to take this waste because they're paid to take it. So I have two questions for you upon that basis. So which which kind of knowledge has Europol, uh, gathered in the past with regard to where this waste comes from? What kind of how is it produced? What are the causes of it? Which industries does it come from as well? And then a question, uh, for Eurojust, given we know all of this, how come we're not in a situation to bring not only those who are involved in criminality to justice, but also those who create the waste and don't dispose of it appropriately? Thank you.”
  EU law enforcement cooperation in criminal matters
• “Thank you very much. And I think I can make it very short. I would have hoped that after many years in the year 2026, no debate would be needed to declare that conversion therapy should not take place. We have decades where some actors try to say this needs to be healed and it never worked. And I really wonder, what are people afraid of to talk about this and to accept that we are different. And sexual orientation and identity and differences that we see and we are talking about in this meeting is not a fashion show, sorry to say. It's something that we could realize throughout all the centuries. It was always there for some people. And I think it's time really for a ban. It's time not to spend money for those, be it European money or national money who are working with conversion therapy. And we also should make sure that there is public awareness that this is a crime to human beings, to the health and to their dignity. Thank you very much.”
  LGBTIQ+
• “Thank you very much, chair. And thank you to our colleague. And for everybody in the eye working group who are doing their very best to follow up. I think implementing what we have decided is always of most importance. I just would like to take this possibility to raise two points, because I think there are two areas where we need to speed up. The one is that when talking about digitization and artificial intelligence, we have to speed up to make sure that fundamental rights and democracy are protected whenever we are using these technologies. On the other hand. Having in mind all the developments we are talking about, we also need more speed to become more autonomous when using digital and AI measures. So to that extent, thanks for the reporting back. Good luck for ongoing work, and I hope that not only this working group, but also commission and council are working on these different aspects. Thank you.”
  Artificial Intelligence