The Special Committee on Foreign Interference (INGE 2) holds it constitutive session to elect its chair and four vice-chairs. The committee is tasked with screening existing and planned EU legislation for loopholes that could be exploited by non-EU countries for malicious purposes.

Special Committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation (INGE 2): atmosphere shots of the constitutive meeting and statement by Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), new elected Chair

Election by acclamation of the new Chair of the new INGE 2 committee, Raphael GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR) 7 shots

SOUNDBITE (French), Rapha&#235;l GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR), Chair INGE 2, I would like to thank you for the trust you have renewed in me today and it is an immense honour and with a profound sense of responsibility that I will chair our special committee INGE 2, with the constant concern to work in a cross-party way. the defense of our democracy is a mission that goes well beyond traditional partisan divisions. The current times are obviously serious. The war in Ukraine launched by the regime of Vladimir Putin is plunging our union into a new era, an era of confrontation and power relations in which the Union can only survive if it knows how to defend itself.

SOUNDBITE (EN), Rapha&euml;l GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR), new Chair INGE 2, So now we have ahead of us one year of hard work to make our democracy safer because the interferences in our democratic process will not stop. We have seen with the brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine that the Putin regime is that we are not only against the Ukrainian people, but against principles and interests, core interests of the European Union as a whole. And we need to make our democracy stronger. We need to stop these interferences. We need to equip our democracies with the means to defend themselves when it comes to disinformation, covert funding of political parties, elite capture or cyber attack.

SOUNDBITE (EN), Rapha&euml;l GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR), New Chair INGE 2, Our first task, will be to check if all the requests we have formulated in the Canete report of the first INGE committee session, iff these requests are implemented by the Commission and by Member States, and we will be checking if the files are ongoing and if progress is made. The second thing is we need to constantly adapt to the threats. So we will have a new analysis of what is the Russian strategy to penetrate into our public debate and our democratic process and the decision making process. And the third thing is we want to prepare the 2024 European elections to make sure that they are safe from foreign interference and that the European public debate and the European citizens can make their choice without any form of foreign interference.

SOUNDBITE (French), Rapha&euml;l GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR), New Chair INGE 2, First, what we need to guarantee to our citizens is an access to information and to real information. And for that to happen, we need to protect sources of information. We need to protect the independent media. We need to make sure that social platforms are not being the tools used by foreign regimes to destabilise our democracies. And second, what we need to do is to make sure that European political parties that are going to ask voters to vote for them will not be financed or used by foreign or hostile regimes. And the third thing that we need is to make sure that we have a now harmonisation across Europe of political rules and electoral rules, because actually, if we want to have real European elections, which is the wish of this House, of the European Parliament, then we need to be able to have a common secure ground for public debates across Europe.

Special Committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation (INGE 2): atmosphere shots of the constitutive meeting and statement by Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), new elected Chair

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