Sophie IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), rapporteur and Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), chair of the PEGA committee, hold a press conference in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Strasbourg

plenary session

press conference

LENAERS, Jeroen (EPP, NL)

IN 'T VELD, Sophia (Renew, NL)

Committee of inquiry to investigate the use of the Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware

Press conference by Sophie IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), rapporteur and Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), chair of the PEGA committee on the adoption of its report and recommendations in committee

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), Thank you very much and welcome. All, as you will have seen, we did indeed have the votes yesterday in the PEGA committee on the final report and the recommendations. I would like to first really express my gratitude to all the Vice-Chairs, the rapporteur, the shadow rapporteurs, all the coordinators, all the staff and advisors, also from the PEGA Secretariat, the interpreters, the technical teams who made our work possible over the past 14 months.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), It's been a hectic 14 months and without all the support, we would never have been able to manage what we managed in the end. So, I just wanted to start with that. Because we were established by a planning decision in March 2022. We have been active since April the 19th of 2022, which was our constitutive meeting.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), And in the meantime, we have organised about 40 meetings, including now in addition also to missions to Israel, to Poland, to Hungary, to Greece, to Cyprus and to Spain. And we engage with well over 200 interlocutors in the past 14 months, which is a very impressive number.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), Now, yesterday we had the votes on the report and on the recommendation. Both were adopted with a huge majority at 30 of 37 votes in favour, which is more than 80% majority on both, the recommendation and the report, with only the colleagues from the ECR, the ID group and others not supporting the report and the recommendations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), The report is the final report as it was adopted in the committee and it will be also its final version. The recommendations we will bring, we will present to the plenary in June. There will be debates and votes on the recommendation, and then we expect the European Commission to respond without delay to all the recommendations that we have made together on the content.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), And I will leave to the Rapporteur to present the main findings of the report and the recommendations. I just wanted to underline once more that we started this work over a year ago, very much from the perspective of the victims, victims of the abuse of very invasive spyware that can take over your phone completely. And we know we live in a time where our whole lives are in our phones. So, it's basically taking over your whole lives.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), In an ideal situation, I would have to say, our committee would have never existed. In an ideal situation, there would be no abuse of spyware within the European Union and where such abuse were to take place, it would be counteracted by the European Commission and the Council with vigour. We have to conclude, unfortunately this was not the case and it does show that our committee definitely was necessary.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), And, even though, we experienced a lack of cooperation from the Member States in general and also from the other European institutions, we were lucky in that we could rely on the support of many, many others investigative journalists without whom we would still be in the dark about many of the issues that we address in the report civil society, academics, tech experts... All those people who have supported and helped us over the past year.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), We are very grateful to, and I think it has led to a very impressive report and are the mandate of our committee comes to an end now. But our work is far from over and I will count on this Parliament and all those who have been so active in our committee in the past 14 months to continue our work, to continue our work based on the recommendations that we do to make sure, that the recommendations, that the plenary of this Parliament will adopt next month, will be more than just a wish list from the European Parliament.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), But it will actually make a difference in practice. That it will make a difference. It will mean something in practice so we can make sure that abuse of spyware against European citizens will disappear from the European Union in the future. Thank you very much for your attention. And I happily pass the floor to our Rapporteur Sophie In T' Veld , who will read out all 240 pages of the report and the recommendations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), So, thank you very much. I'll be very brief and leave sufficient time for the Q&A. Just a couple of remarks. We embarked on this road a year ago, 14 months ago, but let us not forget that it was the Pegasus projects that brought to light the massive abuse of spyware already in July 2021, almost two years ago.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), Jeroen rightfully said that we focussed very much on the victims or, let's say the targets of illegitimate spying. And we have to realise that they were chosen not at random. We are looking here not just at the problem of the individual privacy being violated.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), We are talking about people who have been targeted very deliberately because for political reasons they may have been critical journalists, they may have been lawyers, activists, even public officials who were very independently doing their job and trying to bring to light wrongdoing. These people were targeted.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), And then you have to ask yourself, why were they targeted? They were targeted by, let's say, the powers that be by government parties who want to secure their own power position or who were trying to cover up other wrongdoing, corruption, what have you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), So, it's it's not just about the damage done to individuals. It's about the damage done to democracy and to the rule of law. Because let's face it, if there is no more public scrutiny, if there is no dissent, opposition criticism, then there's no democracy. It's that simple.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), So, those forces who are abusing spyware, whether it's in the European Union or outside the European Union, because make no mistake about it, it's not as if we have outside the European Union, they're terrible autocratic governments or even dictatorships abusing spyware. And within the European Union, it was just accidentally abused. No. They have the same purpose. It is a tool for power and it is a tool against democracy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), And this has been very much on my mind. And it became more and more clear as we were progressing with this work. Now, I reminded you of the Pegasus Project, and when this all was brought to light, almost two years ago. What has happened since? I think the European Parliament is probably the only parliament that has done such an in-depth inquiry of the phenomenon.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), We have seen that in particular in the countries where there is, let's say, problematic use of spyware, that it was near to impossible for a parliamentary inquiry or a judicial inquiry or any other kind of scrutiny to be effectuated. We see countries where we see public officials leading independent bodies that are supposed to exercise oversight and they are being obstructed, intimidated, harassed, verbally attacked, etc..

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), Now, two years down the road, there's a big report now containing a lot of information, but there's still a lot more out there. We know that there is still a lot more that will surface. And the question is, what is it going to lead to? I know that we cannot force the European Commission, but I do think that the European Commission and the European Council have a moral duty here. They have an obligation to the citizens.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), I mean, we are talking about, for example, you know, we have a democracy action plan for the European Union. That's fine and dandy. But if they let this pass, if they allow this to happen in the European Union, then they are complicit in the destruction of democracy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN 'T VELD (Renew, NL), And that is why we will indeed, even if the inquiry itself has been concluded, we will stay on top of this issue. We will pursue, we will monitor, we will ask questions, we will continue to put spotlight on it and we will continue. And this, for me, is very important to support the people who are out there in the Member States, who are diligently, very courageously, in many cases investigating. We will be by their side. We will not rest before justice is done. Thank you.

Q&A, Question regarding on possible evidences of illegal use and export of spyware from Cyprus.

Q&A, Question regarding on talks with the Greek government on the report and with other Member States.

Q&A, Question regarding on the case of Hungary in the PEGA report.

Q&A, Question regarding on a possible link between the use of the spyware and the Greek Prime Minister. Second question on parties which vote against the report and recommendations. .

Q&A, Question regarding on third countries, especially in the case of Morocco.

Q&A, Question on the case of Poland regarding on a special system built to keep government in power .

Q&A, Question regarding on possible infringement proceedings against Member States if the reports into the use of spyware kind of fell short of standards of independence.