Ms Vra Jourov?:

Thank you very much Acting Chairman and the honourable members for having me here. I am always very honoured when I can visit a member state and have a chance to speak to the member about rule of law issues but also other things which might be of interest for the members of the parliaments. I am responsible for the rule of law principle and strengthening the principle for media, for the fight against disinformation and for digital regulation. I am also responsible for fundamental rights matters and electoral integrity. It is a very broad portfolio.

Let me start by expressing my deepest sympathy with the families of those who died in Donegal because I know this is a terrible tragedy for Ireland.

Coming to the agenda, I am sure members know of the Rule of Law Report recommendations for Ireland. For the first time this year, we issued the recommendations. In the previous two reports, it was more or less descriptive. We described how we saw the situation in the spheres of judiciary, media, anti-corruption and the institutional checks and balances.

We started this Rule of Law Report annual exercise because we were asked by several member states to focus on all member states. You can imagine there were strong calls from Malta, Poland and Hungary and several other mainly eastern European countries that we should do this overall mapping and I was very much for that. I was previously the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality,so I have lived this for many years. I was in favour of this because it is good to have the overall picture of the whole system. We have 27 unique systems in our 27 member states. That is why when I sometimes hear arguments from some countries that the European Commission is criticising them for having some elements of the system and when they say other states also have them, I always say we have to look at the whole system with all the elements and then make a judgment or make an assessment that there are some gaps in the rule of law system. I am sure members know the recommendations for Ireland. There are recommendations regarding judicial appointments, the number of judges, the efficiency of the Judiciary, the cost of litigation, and the prospect for more efficient Judiciary functioning, including digitalisation, which I will not go into further here. In the anti-corruption sphere, we have some very positive assessments, such as strengthening the existing ethics framework and so on.

Regarding media freedom and pluralism, we note that preparatory work is ongoing for the establishment of a new media regulatory authority. The general scheme of the defamation Bill to update aspects of the defamation law is expected to be published in the first quarter of this year.

These are very important matters for me because as members might know, we are working on the media freedom Act and I would like to receive support from the Irish authorities. We have also proposed the anti-SLAPP legislation, which is very close to what Ireland is doing.

I have just spoken to the Minister for Justice and I believe we are on the same page with the plan that there should be stronger protection for journalists. We have also included in our proposal human rights defenders when they are facing litigation.

We are very much convinced that our Rule of Law Report reflected Ireland as a country with many positive features and this is why I am very glad that today we can discuss the situation. I want to clarify that this is not an inspection trip to Ireland. This is a very welcome opportunity for a discussion. The Rule of Law Report is meant to be a preventative tool and an invitation for well-informed and thorough debate with the national authorities, including the parliaments.

Today I discussed with the Minister for Justice the European arrest warrant and I understand the European Arrest Warrant (Amendment) Bill 2022 completed its passage through the Lower House of the Oireachtas in June this year. I was given the assurance from the Minister that the legislators have given it high priority and will prioritise this process to ensure the concerns as set out in the infringement proceedings will be addressed as soon as possible.

I would also like to hear the committee's views on European Public Prosecutor's Office, EPPO. I have a history with this institution because I inherited this file from my predecessor in 2014, Viviane Reding, who I replaced in the position as the European Commissioner for Justice. We had to modify the model of EPPO from a centralised one into a decentralised one, because otherwise it would not gain support from the member states. At this moment we have 23 member states on board. Sweden is signalling it will join. Ireland and Denmark are out due to the opt out. Hungary and Poland are out due to their own reasons, which is they simply did not want to join the EPPO. I have one comment in this regard. I am convinced that if Poland Hungary had joined the EPPO, it would not have come with the conditionality regulation, which gives us the possibility to freeze the money of a country that does not respect the rule of law principle. There is a connection between the EPPO and the conditionality regulation, which we triggered for the first time in the case of Hungary.

I will speak on the electoral package but I will not go into details as I am aware I had five minutes to speak here. We have a deep conviction that we must do much more to protect elections as a strong pillar of European democracy. Before the elections in 2019 we established the European electoral network. We invited representatives of all member states and we discussed risks we had identified. These risks included cybersecurity risks and the stealing of private data from people for the purpose of hidden manipulation - we recall the Cambridge Analytica case - which we believe is a clear risk because this information is a problem for free and fair elections. Other risks discussed were the lack of rules that reflect the fact that advertising has shifted to the online sphere. Since 2017 and over time, we have developed stronger instruments to protect elections and protect the autonomous vote of voters.

We have proposed, among other things, regulation on political advertising as specific to the Digital Services Act. By this law we want to increase transparency so that when people read some content, they know it is fake content that has the purpose of influencing the political preference and voting preference of the individual. We want more transparency in that regard. The second thing we did was to prohibit micro-targeting on the basis of sensitive data such as race, sexual orientation, religion and political opinions. This is very much consistent with the general data protection regulation, GDPR, because GDPR defines the sensitive data. We also proposed new rules for European political parties and for better possibilities for mobile citizens to cast their vote. These are our contributions to strengthen the electoral system in the EU. Of course, this is not an easy field because the regulation of electoral regimes stays mainly with the member states. This is why we identified the layer where we can do our part of the job to strengthen the electoral systems. This is it. All of these three things I have mentioned, the political advertising, the European political parties and the voting rights of mobile citizens, are now in the legislative process. On the first element especially, I believe the Irish contribution will be interesting and useful within the Council because Ireland is advanced in many aspects we govern in the legislation.

That is the contribution from my side. I went quickly through all of the items I had prepared for the committee, but of course I am also available for any questions the members may have. I came first of all for the committee feedback and information, and especially on how the committee members see the relevance and opportunity of our Rule of Law Report. It is always important for us to understand, from donations of parliaments, whether they find it useful and whether they think the Commission came with relevant and trustworthy assessment.