Скачать или смотреть Andrey Kovatchev debates with Commissioner Schinas the reconstruction of Ukraine with Russian assets

Andrey Kovatchev (PPE). – I am going directly to the two questions which I have. It is common sense that a perpetrator who is guilty of destroying infrastructure and making a lot of casualties needs to pay for this destruction.

We talked a lot about the assets of the Russian Federation – state and local authority assets – in the territory of the European Union, but also the assets of the Russian National Bank. And when we talk with High Representative Borrell, who was answering that the EU is looking for a possibility to seize or use these assets for the restoration of the damages in Ukraine.

Where is the stage now? What we are going to do in this direction? And many of these assets, the properties are used for espionage in the territory of the European Union, pretending this is cultural or educational entities where they are using them for espionage. And I will ask my second question on the on the Internet.

Margaritis Schinas, Vice-President of the Commission. – Thank you, Mr Kovatchev. Let me start by reiterating that I am personally very much in favour of using the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank for the reconstruction of Ukraine. I think this is morally, politically and, yes, also legally, right, because we could have doubts if we were in a different situation. But we are in a situation of an all-out war where the Russian army is bombing schools, maternity wards, hospitals, churches, monasteries, households, apartment blocks. So this is the type this is the type of war we are obliged to deal with and to use these frozen reserves of the Russian Central Bank for the reconstruction of this damage. It makes perfect sense.

But, you know, we do not live in a world of politics. We live also in a world of lawyers and insurance brokers and experts and international arbitrators. So when my colleague Josep Borrell told you that we have to get it right, this is what he has in mind. So let us distinguish between what is politically, morally, legally, ethically correct and how we can best organise it.

Let me remind this House that there is a precedent. The Americans used frozen assets from the central Bank of Afghanistan to finance the restoration and reconstruction of Afghanistan. So this has happened before. It’s not something that is totally alien in the world of international relations.

Andrey Kovatchev (PPE). – Thank you very much, Vice-President, for this answer. One second issue on the responsibility of big platforms, Internet platforms. We have now the DSA and the DMA, but we see that these big platforms, especially private companies, US companies, are monetarising disinformation. Democracy cannot fall victim to a business model of a private company.

We see that the fact—checkers, content moderators and trusted flaggers, especially in small—language markets, are not good enough to fight against disinformation campaigns started by the Russian Federation. Especially in small—language markets like in central and eastern Europe, we see a lot of spread and visibility of such Russian propaganda on the Internet platforms, especially on Meta, on their platform Facebook.

So, the implementation of DSA/DMA: how can we push these companies that they do their best to demonetarise the visibility of disinformation?

Margaritis Schinas, Vice-President of the Commission. – Thank you for this question.

Let me tell you that as Vice-President in charge of promoting our European way of life, I feel very proud that in this political cycle, we managed to have this agreement on the DSA and DMA, which is the European way of digital governance. This is something that we should be collectively proud of, this House, the Commission and the Member States. This was not given and it was done. In Europe, through the DSA and the DMA, we were able to ask questions that have not been properly answered in certain parts of the world and have never been even asked in another part of the world. We found the right balance, and I think this would be the answer to the problems you raise.
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Until then, I also want to be fair with the platforms. I have met many of them and I also attended a plenary debate here in the last plenary session. I think the platforms are increasingly aware of the need to deliver on Russian propaganda and disinformation. They know, and they know that we are watching them, and I think that they are making a considerable effort to live up to the expectations bestowed on them. But I would agree with you that their ever—increasing fact—checking capacity and rebuttal capacity should cover all linguistic sections, and especially some of our lesser spoken words on the continent, where the battle of narratives is even more acute. So I fully agree with you on the need for them to do more in these particular settings.

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