During the plenary session (22-25/10/2018) of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs are expected to urge Facebook to allow EU bodies to carry out a full audit assessing data protection and security of users’ personal data. They are also set to call for election manipulation to be prevented on social platforms and for action to update EU competition rules to reflect the digital reality. Statements by Vĕra JOUROVÁ, Member of the EC in charge of Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Paulo RANGEL (EPP, PT), Udo BULLMANN (S&D, DE), Sophia IN'T VELD (ALDE, NL) and Claude MORAES (S&D, UK), Rapporteur.

Strasbourg

debate

plenary session

MORAES, Claude (S&D, UK)

JOUROVÁ, Věra (EC)

IN 'T VELD, Sophia (Renew, NL)

RANGEL, Paulo (EPP, PT)

BULLMANN, Udo (S&D, DE)

protection of personal data (T)

The use of Facebook users’ data by Cambridge Analytica and the impact on data protection: extracts from the debate

SOUNDBITE (English), V&#277;ra JOUROV&#193;, Member of the EC in charge of Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, All the off-line rules must be enforced online in the digital world. One thing is clear, the upcoming elections won't be business as usual and we cannot treat them as if they were. We cannot be naive and we have very little time to act. The Commission therefore, encourages member states to establish and support a national elections network. The idea is that such a network would be able to quickly detect potential threats and swiftly enforce existing rules including available financial sanctions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vĕra JOUROV&Aacute;, Member of the EC in charge of Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, This is not as such as such about politicians. This is the right of European people to make their choice as freely as possible. Free from illegal manipulation. free from disinformation and free from foreign interference. The Parliament's support for this package is crucial.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Paulo RANGEL (EPP, PT), We're not just talking about electoral campaigns. We're talking about civic rights as a general concept. And therefore, what I'm trying to say is that it's not just about manipulation or interference in this particular case. It's broader than that. We need to talk about our democratic societies and how we want to safeguard them in the future, bearing in mind that social networks will still have a role to play in those societies. So we need to see how we can regulate this.

SOUNDBITE (German), Udo BULLMANN (S&amp;D, DE), We have to say, dear colleagues, that the forthcoming European elections will be decisive as to whether we win this fight for freedom and democracy or whether we lose it. When we started with the general data protection regulation (GDPR), that was an important step forward but we need to go further in reforming our national electoral acts and to protect electronic data security and privacy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN&apos;T VELD (ALDE, NL), Where do you draw the line between the political view and fake news? We need a proper legal definition before we take any measures against fake news because otherwise it becomes arbitrary and we're undermining our democracy for real.

SOUNDBITE (English), Claude MORAES (S&amp;D, UK), Rapporteur, We have a whole range of issues that we have to fix here in the European Union. Applying conventional offline electoral safeguards such as rules and transparency and limits, to spending respect for silent periods, making it easy to recognise online political paid advertisements, banning profiling for electoral purposes, social media platforms should label content shared by bots and speed up their process of removing fake accounts, compulsory post campaign audits to ensure personal data deleted and the Commission should look with us at updating competition rules and increasing algorithmic transparency.