This week I was mainly working in Strasbourg, where the European Parliament’s final plenary session of the session took place.
The Radio Maximum programme ‘10 Minutes with Jana Toom’ on Monday at 9.30 am caught me on the train, so I spoke to the host over the phone, explaining why prices vary so much across different EU countries, to the extent that Estonian products are cheaper in Finland than they are here.
On Monday, at the plenary session, I gave a short speech on the directive on the coordination of social security systems. The vote on it was scheduled for Tuesday, and the European Parliament adopted it by an absolute majority (511 in favour!). This is a major victory, not least for Estonian citizens working abroad.
On Tuesday, I also had a meeting with the European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen. The European Parliament has extended the mandate of the temporary Committee on the Housing Crisis by six months. We discussed the plan for future work and cooperation with the European Commission. In addition, on Tuesday I met with Katrin Juhandi, Estonia’s envoy to Brussels, who works in COREPER I. Katrin and I discussed the reports that will be worked on in the near future and Estonia’s position on them.
We also voted in the plenary session that day on a resolution recognising and condemning sexualised violence during the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus. I was the shadow rapporteur for this resolution. Resolutions, although they have no legal effect in themselves, are an expression of the European Parliament’s position. This particular resolution is directly relevant to women’s rights, because sexualised violence during armed conflict, alas, is still very much a reality today, and the resolution also addresses this.
On Tuesday, there was a Renew Europe meeting, where I presented a report on the coordination of social security systems. We also spent a long time discussing the situation regarding the so-called chat control law. In short, the situation is as follows. There is a draft directive to combat child sexual abuse material, or CSAM (child sexual abuse material). Whilst this entirely reasonable and potentially effective directive was being drafted, online platforms were temporarily granted permission to carry out chat control. In effect, this means that, since 2021, platforms have had access to users’ private messages in order to search for child pornography. Not long ago, we voted against extending this authorisation. That should have been the end of the matter, but the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, was able to put it to a vote once again by invoking rarely used procedural details. Moreover, the timing and procedure were chosen in such a way as to ensure the decision would be adopted. And indeed, it was adopted on Thursday. Of the seven Estonian MEPs, five, including myself, voted against it. The reasons are clear: on the one hand, the platforms love having access to chat rooms and messaging services; on the other, Brussels can now sidestep the first directive. All of this, in my view, is utterly outrageous. The only thing we managed to defend was the ban on access to messages with end-to-end encryption.
On Wednesday morning, we recorded an Estonian podcast with Jüri Ratas; you can watch it here. We discussed the Estonian presidential candidates, our reports to the European Parliament and the conflict between Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. The plenary session then continued until late in the evening. It concluded on Thursday. On that day, I recorded the last ‘Brussels Diary’ of the summer, covering the European Parliament’s latest decisions.
Now we have a week of committee work ahead of us, and then we’ll be on holiday until September.
Photo: Alain ROLLAND / European Parliament