Actually not Fake News We Guess...
Produced By Leipzig 2019 Media Team
LEIPZIG 2019
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JURI ENVI LIBE I LIBE II TERR I TERR II SEDE IMCO ECON
JURI An article produced by
Stating certain rules in the preamble of a declaration shows the significance of the same in a very unique way. It expresses their universality and importance, not only for their own sake, but for all rules and laws coming thereafter. The rule of law, written in the preamble of the Statue of the Council of Europe, is one of these core principles, ensuring the judicial independence and separation of powers within the member states of the European Union However, controlling this core principle is a difficult task and the recent reforms introduced by the Polish government put the Unions control mechanisms and measures to a test. Quickly after their electoral victory in 2015 the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS)-party seek to reduce Poland’s dependency on the European Union and shifted the country away from the liberal and western trajectory associa-
Elias Eulig (DE)
ted with the European Union. Besides massive intrusions into the sovereignty of the public media, this includes two important changes affecting the countries judicial independence. Firstly, the Supreme Court judges should be assigned by Officials of the PiS-party rather than by judges through the National Council for the Judiciary, and secondly, the government forced more than 20 judges of the Supreme Court into early retirement by lowering their retirement age (a law which later was scrapped after heavy critics by the European Court of Justice and the European Commission). With respect to these attempts of gaining political control over the Supreme Court several measures have been taken by the European Union against the Polish government; the major one of them being the activation of Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union. This procedure allows the European Union to suspend certain rights (including voting rights wi-
thin the council) from a member state under the condition that a “serious and persistent breach” against the values and core principles of the EU (one of them being the aforementioned rule of law) is being detected. That being said, actually imposing sanctions such as the deprivation of voting rights against Poland has to be approved unanimously by the member states within the European Council and there is significant concern that Hungary and Romania would exercise their vetoes in Poland’s favor. Therefore, the question arises, how the European Union can intervene in cases of persistent breaches against its core values and principles, and whether the existing measures are sufficient to guarantee compliance of its member states to these values.
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The definition of cyber-bullying given by the European Commission is “verbal or psychological harassment carried out via electronic means of communication, usually repetitively and mostly via social media”. It can take various forms such as insults, threats and intimidation, gossip, exclusion, stalking or identity theft. Unfortunately, the EU Member States haven’t agreed upon a common definition on this term yet, and for this reason, cyber-bullying becomes even more difficult to counter. Despite differences among definitions, the following elements have been identified as common features of cyberbullying: the use of electronic or digital means; the intention to cause harm; a sense of anonymity and lack of accountability of abusers as well as the publicity of actions. Keeping in mind the fact that cyber crimes and cyber-bullying take on so different forms, in any place and at any time, this problem becomes very challenging to tackle on many levels, especially because the availability of new technologies and the growth of social media are increasing, thus giving the victims lower chances to escape. For these reasons, this issue is getting more and more dangerous, up to the point in which almost half of the young people have experienced threatening, intimidating or abusive messages on social media, with 62 of respondents being under 18 and three-quarters being female.
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By Francesca Romano (IT)
ENVI Also, as previously stated, cyber-bullying is usually perpetrated among young people, which means that, first of all, the problem becomes invisible to adults, due to the fact that victims usually don’t tell adults about this kind of attacks, both because they might feel ashamed or because they might underestimate the act if compared to more “physical” forms of bullying. Furthermore, the victims might suffer from major emotional traumas because of their young age and lack of experience, which may lead to worse consequences such as depression or even suicide attempts. Because of the fragility and vulnerability of the stakeholders, a preventive approach to cyber-bullying should be preferred to a punitive one, especially if carried out through educational programs. So far, various educational programmes have been adopted inside and outside the school context. These programmes aim to prevent bullying and cyberbullying by informing children about the dangers of the internet, encouraging victims to report incidents and helping perpetrators to understand the effects of their behaviour. Specific initiatives to promote online safety and helplines for victims of violence including cyberbullying have also been established. On the other hand, it is necessary to achieve cooperation with social media companies, so that for example reports and complaints are taken more seriously, and offensive contents are removed right away, also taking into consideration the fact that - as mentioned in the topic overview - there’s a thin line between free speech and hate speech. In fact, since the Internet and social media are used by so many people, and at such a young age, it should be a priority that it becomes a safe space for everyone to use.
LIBE I Written By Elisabeth Yalcin (DE)
The Schengen Agreement is an idea functioning towards the goal of a border-free European Union. The agreement is signed by most of the EU member states countries. The main idea is to make it possible to travel anywhere within the Schegen zone without passport/security control at the borders. Not all the EU member states are part of it, for example, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania have not signed the agreement for various reasons e.g. Bulgaria and Romania dreads to lack the facilities to incorporate such security systems. Another fear is that immigrants from Turkey or Ukraine may manage to surpass the borders and as a consequence, immigrants could move inside the Schegen zone without facing any obstacles.
country. This concludes that the European Union has a possibility to turn Europe into a safer place by breaking down the barriers and even out the laws and agreements in each country. Carrying through this Agreement would not only simplify travelling for Europeans but also make sure every citizen could live without any threat posed by refugees or illegal immigrants.
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Subsequently, once a non-EU citizen enters a country through bad border security, they have been given the possibility to travel everywhere inside that zone. Obviously, they will not be able to travel very far due to the lack of serious income. However, once refugees enter Europe in times of need, it is not possible to locate them in any sort of way as they have no data e.g. passports on them. Last but not least, illegal actions like money-laundry or human trafficking are going to be way more
easy to be executed by criminals. Crimes, as aforementioned, are already being committed for example 16000 people are victims of human trafficking in the European Union each year. The typical method of criminals from e.g. Turkey is to lock young women by tricking them into believing that they will get a job and safety if they simply follow the criminals faced as saviours. They eventually will get abducted and forced into prostitution or forced marriages in other countries. Hence, judicial cooperations such as the European Arrest Warrant are profound actors in the Schengen Agreement. The EAW is an arrest warrant for the purpose of prosecuting or executing different penalties. A warrant issued by one EU country’s judicial authority is valid in the entire territory of the EU. Because of this cooperation, many criminal actions have been stopped. Nevertheless, there are differences in the EWAs depending on each country. For example: if French policemen find out that a criminal hides in Belgium they can send the Belgian police to catch him and turn him into France but because each country executes different penalties Belgium would charge five years but French would charge seven. Meaning the European Union is not as united as it should be on the count of the separation of each individual
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LIBE II An article produced by Jana-Sophie Heumader (AT) The main goal of the European Commission is to harmonize the judicial standards in the European Union since every member state can have their own interpretation of copyright law. Judicial equality should be achieved by a directive of the European Parliament and of the council on copyright in the Digital Single Market which consists of 24 articles. Especially, article 11 and article 13 lead to controversy and international discussion concerning the topic. While one regulates the for-profit use of journalistic online publications, the other one regulates the judicial situation regarding unlicensed use of copyright material on social media platforms. The regulation concerning online publications like articles states that for-profit platforms must pay for using the link. Problematic about this is the fact that the directive does not define the components links, news- and commercial platforms. Therefore, the commission fails the goal
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of clear, equal judicial standards once more and member states have a quite wide range of interpretation when it comes to the dispensation of justice. Article 13 contains the restriction of unlicensed use of copyright material on (social media) platforms. Content-matching technology (filters) are taken into consideration to protect the author’s creations by sorting out unauthorized online reuse. Unfortunately for meme lovers, these programs are not able to distinguish parody (memes) from pirated content. So where do content pirating end and freedom of speech begin? Opponents of the directive state that it could be the end of the internet as we know it and call it the “meme ban”. Following their argumentation, the reform is censorship and an attack on artistic freedom which would imply an attack on democracy. Wyclef Jean, the founding member of the hip hop group The Fugees, for example, fears a restriction, because he thinks artists should
be free to react to technical progress, however, they want and be free to find new ways themselves. He does not think the value gap which means the difference between the actual income and what the creator gets paid for it is the real struggle. Meanwhile supporters are fond of the directive because they see a chance to support author’s and to give them the credits they deserve. For them, the value gap is the real problem because YouTube can make a large profit by using and providing cheap content. After all, YouTube would have to change radically, because the unfiltered upload policy which exists at the moment is not suitable for the reform. Therefore, YouTube would have to filter content before the upload in order to check the copyright. About 84 music organizations have formed an ally to have a bigger impact and put pressure on the European Parliament to pass the directive.
Since 2006 the threat of jihadist terror in Europe has grown tremendously, resulting in huge attacks as for example in Paris and Nice in 2015. The majority of this terror is executed by individuals born and raised on EU soil, which leads to its identification as ‘homegrown’ or ‘domestic’ terrorism. Thus the terroristic actions are mostly performed by a citizen of the victim country itself, or at other times by citizens of nearby European countries. To get to the point of an actual attack, there undoubtedly has to happen some kind of radicalisation of the subjects. One of the general types of radicalisation is called the ‘echo-chamber’; in this case, an individual’s ideas and beliefs are reinforced through their repetition. This may occur through other people, the individual itself or in the setting of the internet through personalised algorithms used by many websites. Another general type is the ‘self-radicalisation’, which describes the process of individuals becoming radicalised in isolation. In this scenario, the root of radical ideas may have started on the internet, but the following process shows no contact to any other terrorists/extremists of any kind, neither online nor physically.
Nowadays nearly every terrorism case has a ‘digital footprint’. Attackers are often found to watch IS propaganda videos or have some kind of IS material on their phone. The internet contributes a ‘new, cheap and easy to integrate medium’, that is not limited by any borders. While the internet is not the root cause of radicalisation, it clearly has altered the entire nature of terrorism. The obvious solution for online radicalisation is certainly identifying and deleting violating content, but as usual, the easy solution does not cover the whole problem. One of the difficulties is the increasing number of artificial intelligence as context moderators instead of humans. The identification of actual harmful material is not always possible using current AI. Another disadvantage is the temporality of this solution as the critical individuals and groups will change to other platforms and eventually end up deeper in the underground each time. As experts suggest as well, in the end, the best way to stop radicalisation and therefore domestic terrorism is most likely to prevent the spreading of radical thoughts in its early stages, which leads to a very hard task in terms of timing these measures correctly.
By Veronika Attenkofer (DE)
TERR I
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TERR II An article produced by Narmin Huseynova (AZE) Cybercrime has become one of Europe ’s biggest problems in the last few years, a problem that is steadily increasing. But what is cybercrime? Cybercrimes are crimes that are committed on the world wide web using electronic communication networks and information systems. There are 3 different kinds of cyber crimes: 1) cyber attacks: One of the biggest cyber attacks in recent years was the Atlanta cyber attack in 2018. Ransomware (a malicious software from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim’s data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid) attacked the cities connected systems. The attack was so harsh that people couldn’t even pay their parking tickets due to it directly being linked to the cities connected systems. In the end, the city had to spend 2.7million $ on recovering services, which all could have been avoided if they had just updated their IT- structures like experts had suggested them to 2) cyber crimes: Cybercrimes often revolve around illegal onli-
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ne content or actions, e.g. child Sexual Abuse Online was founporn, identity theft, terrorism, ded in 2012 and is a joined proetc. (can often be found on the ject by the EU and the US dark web) Neither of those institutions 3) disinformation campaigns: has yet managed to contain the Fake News, etc. Fake News es- growing problem though. pecially became important in The percentage of cyber crimes cybersecurity during the 2016 concerning ransomware worlpresidential election in the US dwide increased by 36% in 2017 with 34% of the people globally The EU has already started to being willing to actually pay the take on some measure to effec- ransoms. (Average amount: tively protect itself from cybercri- 1,077$) minals: According to data from Juniper The European Cybercrime Centre Research, the average cost of was founded in 2013 to enhance a data breach will exceed $150 Europe’s ability to persecute the million by 2020 — and by 2019, culprits and protect the victims. cybercrime will cost businesses The General Data Protection over $2 trillion — a four-fold inRegulation came into effect in crease from 2015. 2018, it’s main aim is to protect the personal data of its’ users by Cybersecurity poses as the biperforming regular cyber security ggest threat to our future and checks we still don’t know how to properly fight it, but that’s why it is The European Union Agency for important to give young people Network and Information Securi- the opportunity to think and talk ty, which supports National Go- about it. vernments with everything regar- That’s where EYP comes to play. ding cybersecurity. Sadly it’s not very effective due to its small size and the small area of application The Global Alliance against Child
SEDE An article produced by Emily Usner (AT) Do you, as a European citizen, feel safe within the borders of the European Union? More and more European citizens have had difficulties answering this question in the last couple of years due to a variety of factors including but not limited to the rising number of terrorist attacks in major European cities such as the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France in 2015, the Brussels bombings in 2016, the London Bridge knife attack in 2017 or the Strasbourg Christmas market mass shooting in 2018, as well as uncontrolled migration and cyber attacks. Therefore the prevention of further radicalisation and terrorism on European soil has become an urgent matter to the EU. Even though the EU recognises the threat posed by terrorism and cybercrime certain difficulties arise when trying to combat those problems. Firstly the need for more control and security must be correlated with the individual’s personal right to privacy because for example heightened surveillance may lead to innocent citizens feeling impaired in their daily life or their right to freedom and privacy is being violated. Secondly, the fact that most terrorist attacks are executed by solitary individuals and therefore
very hard to foresee and prevent especially as EU member states differ in their willingness to share data and some still fail to adopt national legislation on data interoperability put into place by the European Commission. In part, this is because the Member States have different levels of resources, expertise and also priorities relating to antiterrorism measures. In order to answer the call for more security both in the physical and the digital world the EU is required to work closely with its member states and their citizens for example by improving information exchanges and fostering interoperability between EU member state databases as effective information sharing is a key element of the fight against terrorism and organised crime. In order to do so the European Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker proposed the creation of a Security Union. In addition, the EU plans to enhance border management and tighten security law. As for now, it has not only set up a special committee to investigate deficiencies in the fight against terrorism and propose improvements but also enforced the external border and firearm controls and secured additional funding for the fight
against terrorism. Important stakeholders in the EU’s work for increased security are the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) who are responsible for managing and protecting the Schengen Area’s external borders, the European Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (EU-LISA) who manage the three main IT systems dealing with visas (VIS), asylum requests (Eurodac) and exchanging data to ensure the security of the Schengen Area (SIS II), the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME) and the European Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King. To conclude, one can point out that although some people might feel like there are not enough measures in place to protect European citizens from terrorist acts such as bombings or cyber attacks the EU is slowly, but surely, implementing initiatives that both protect and respect the privacy of citizens.
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IMCO An article produced by João Matos (PT) When the European Union General Data Protection Regulation was passed into law, and subsequently implemented, media outlets and tech gurus were fast to announce the end of the ad-driven Internet business model. Despite all the doom and gloom, in most cases, we see that businesses have been able to adapt perfectly well to the new rules. What’s more, it seems that the regulation is allowing Tech Giants to cement their position of hegemony in their market, and enabling a new kind of hybrid business model that gives consumers the choice between paying for services with money or data, and being sure that the second option has increased privacy and security. With increased limitations on the collection and processing of personal data, it is not surprising to find that one of the business practices hit hardest by the GDPR is targeted advertising. That might be the reason why some publishing houses, most notably The New York Times, have reduced their focus on this form of advertising and switched back to con-
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textual and geographically based marketing strategies, all while still experiencing a growth in ad revenue. While it is very much too early to extrapolate any trends, one can still predict that reducing the stranglehold of targeted advertising might not prove to be so negative after all, and might even help companies reach consumers they had not reached before just because they so happened to not fit their original filter. In any case, old school campaigning is back in the publishing business, and might soon expand to others as well. Another (sometimes unforeseen) effect of such regulations comes from the increased fixed cost of running a business, owing to the amount of effort needed to implement all data protection practices. Therefore, it is no surprise to find that giants such as Google and Facebook are fielding an army of lawyers and positioning themselves as data controllers, standing to gain even more control of the targeted advertising market. Furthermore, it is not unrealistic to expect that by making data harder to collect, especially for smaller and inherently less trusted companies, the incumbents in the market are presented with a competitive advantage that enables them to cement their posi-
tion as the top dogs of the Web. Considering this, it is hard to forecast any rainy days stemming from the GDPR for these companies. On the contrary, it seems that the future is bright for them. More Choice is More Efficiency Finally, there is also something to be said about the proposition that Web services need to be cost-free, or that paid services somehow threaten democracy and independence in the Web. On the contrary, I would argue that the spread of paid services means that consumers have more choice in how they will use them in their lives, picking the combination of cost, privacy, and effort that works best for them. In the end, no one really expects prices to go so high that they disrupt the flow of information, and we can always provide those services to those that need them and can’t afford them, thus ensuring a standard of equal opportunity. While we can expect some disruption from the GDPR, it is certainly not the David to the Goliaths of the Web, and we might even see a more competitive and more innovative market emerging, enabled by the taming of the practices that used the excessive and unwarranted processing of data to provide services at costs that could nearly be considered dumping.
ECON
It is clear that fair taxation is vital for the social contract between citizens and their national governments. Tax evasion and tax avoidance results in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are the main source of employment in Europe, paying proportionately more taxes than MNCs due to the aggressive tax planning MNCs engage in. This puts SMEs in a position where they are at an unfair disadvantage, risking innovation and competitiveness. The EU has implemented several measures in order to tackle the problem at hand, with an example being the implementation of the EU tax haven ‘blacklist’, which is a list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, which currently face sanctions from the EU and individual Member States. However, a lot of scepticism has been raised about the EU’s transparency to the issue, due to the fact that it has not addressed the fact that some of its’ Member States fulfil the criteria of being tax havens.
One of the most controversial, yet substantial measures that could address the problem of corporate tax avoidance is the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), which is a proposed single set of rules to calculate companies’ taxable profits in the EU. The CCCTB has raised a lot of concerns in several Member States, with six Member States objecting to the CCCTB’s proposals. One of the main concerns related to the CCCTB is the fact that substantial changes in tax collection would occur which vary from country to country, with countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland and Germany losing at least 5% of their revenues, while according to Ibac, the CCCTB would cost Ireland more than €4bn a year in tax revenues. However, it could be a major step forward towards a more coordinated approach when it comes to taxation within the EU. Considering the magnitude of the problem, uncoordinated measures at a national level to tackle tax abuse cannot be effective as this would result in new loopholes to be exploited by aggressive tax planners, while potentially creating more tax burdens for citizens. Therefore, the importance of a coordinated approach towards combating tax avoidance is significant.
WRITTEN BY Thetis Georgiou (CY)
LEIPZIG 2019
On the 3rd April 2016, the Panama Papers were released, resulting in the leak of 11.5 million files from one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, revealing the exploitation of secretive offshore tax regimes by public figures and Multinational Corporations (MNCs). The leak of these papers was a major push when it came to the need for fairer taxation policies within the EU, as it revealed the enormous dimensions of tax avoidance, which refers to the exploitation of the tax regime in a single territory in order to minimize the amount of tax that is payable by means within the law. It is estimated that corporate tax avoidance, causes the EU an annual loss of €160-190bn.
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