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With the announcement of its latest investigation of a global social media company this time, Meta the European Union is providing an illuminating lesson on how to regulate tech behemoths without threatening free speech. One would like to think that U.S. politicians and policymakers are taking notes. Unfortunately, thats probably a fanciful hope.

On April 30 the European Commission, the E.U.s executive arm, said in a press release that it has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Metas Facebook and Instagram platforms have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), a Europe-wide law that took full effect in February 2024 and is designed to deter online manipulation and force tech companies to take greater responsibility for their impact on elections and other aspects of civic life.

Specifically, the Commission said it is investigating suspected infringements related to deceptive advertising and political content on Metas platforms, as well as the companys diminishment of CrowdTangle a tool that formerly provided outsiders, including journalists and researchers with insight into how content spreads on those services. The Commission added that, based on preliminary assessments, it suspects that Metas external and internal mechanisms for flagging illegal content are not compliant with the requirements of the Digital Services Act and that there are shortcomings in Metas provision of access to publicly available data to [outside] researchers.

European regulators are clearly trying to pressure Meta to invigorate its self-policing of disinformation, including content generated by artificial intelligence. The timing is no accident. In early June, the E.U.s 27 member States will hold elections for representatives serving in the European Parliament. The Kremlin has been targeting many of those countries with political disinformation and is expected to step up its online propaganda efforts in an attempt to discourage support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russian President Vladimir Putins forces.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyens written statement about the investigation is worth quoting at length:

This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries. If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act. This is true at all times, but especially in times of democratic elections. Big digital platforms must live up to their obligations to put enough resources into this and todays decision shows that we are serious about compliance.

The DSA has teeth. The Commission can fine companies up to 6 percent of their global revenue and has the authority to interview company officials and even raid corporate offices. E.U. regulators are already investigating the content policies and practices of TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.

In its response to the Commissions announcement, Meta said in a statement that: We have a well established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms. It added: We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.

In contrast to their European counterparts, U.S. lawmakers, with one striking exception, have failed for over a half-dozen years to pass any of the myriad laws that have been proposed to rein in major tech companies in this country. The exception is the bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law on April 25 that requires ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, to sell the short-video platform within nine months under threat of a sweeping ban of the service in the United States.

The highly unusual TikTok sale-or-ban law reflects heightened geopolitical tension between Beijing and Washington, as well as the Chinese governments practice of exerting influence over tech companies operating in China. The U.S. State Department issued a reportlast year finding that China employs a variety of deceptive and coercive methods, including propaganda, disinformation and censorship, to influence the international information environment.

TikTok has vowed to challenge the new U.S. law as an unconstitutional government restraint on free speech under the First Amendment. That argument is at least plausible, if not necessarily one that the U.S. judiciary will embrace when it weighs the governments claim that China could use the platform to try to interfere in U.S. elections. Past attempts to ban TikTok by the Trump administration and the state of Montana have been blocked by federal courts.

But setting aside the rather unique dispute over TikTok, the striking thing about U.S. regulation of social media at the national level is its absence. This regulatory vacuum is typically ascribed to two conditions: the extreme political polarization that renders the U.S. Congress dysfunctional on so many fronts and the First Amendments instruction that Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom of speech.

European nations do not operate under as rigid a prohibition of government regulation of speech, an important factor explaining how the E.U. managed to enact the DSA. But the newly unveiled investigation of Meta illustrates that, possibly with modest modification, European-style regulation could pass muster under the First Amendment.

Forming the foundation of the DSA are a range of provisions requiring that social media platforms disclose how they address problems like deceptive political advertising and other kinds of misleading or hateful content. The European Commission noted in its Meta investigation announcement that the opening of the probe was based on a risk assessment report that Meta (and all other large social media companies) were required to file in 2023, as well as on the companys responses to the Commissions follow-up requests for additional information.

First Amendment absolutists might be skeptical of this sort of mandatory disclosure, seeing it as a precursor to intrusive regulatory action. But theres a strong argument under existing free speech doctrine that requiring businesses to reveal factual information about how they operate does not constitute censorship or anything close to it. Companies in numerous regulated industries from airlines to chemicals are routinely subjected to disclosure requirements, so using this approach would not be novel.

In fact, from what we know so far, nothing about the E.U. investigation of Meta would violate First Amendment strictures. The regional bodys regulators are not dictating that Meta or other social media companies adopt particular policies, let alone specific content practices or decisions. Instead, the E.U. appears to be interested in whether these companies, in general, are providing the kind of resources, personnel, and digital tools that are needed to mount a vigorous defense against manipulation by the likes of Russia or China.

It may be that one or another E.U. demand might turn out to stray over the First Amendment line if it were examined in a U.S. court. But in the main, the European authorities seem concerned about whether powerful social media companies are providing procedurally adequate protections against disinformation and other harmful content that the companies themselves profess not to want on their platforms.

In this sense, early efforts to enforce the DSA shed light on what is at least theoretically possible in the U.S. The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, where I work, has advocated for Congress to enhance the consumer protection authority and resources of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission so that the FTC could demand procedurally adequate safeguards by social media companies, based on a disclosure regime roughly similar to that imposed by the DSA. If the FTC were restrained from dictating substantive policies or content decisions, this approach ought to be able to survive First Amendment scrutiny. Full disclosure: Less ambitious versions of this idea have appeared in some proposed U.S. legislation, but havent made much progress toward passage.

Under our approach, the U.S. government would not tell platforms what content they could host. Instead, it would require them to institute procedures that follow through on promises they have made in their terms of service and community standards to protect users and society at large.

It is too soon to tell whether the DSA will prove to be a successful experiment in regulation. Meta, TikTok, and X doubtless will push back and appeal any adverse findings. Its not clear whether in this process the European Commission will demonstrate the courage of its convictions. Keeping 27 member States on board wont be easy. But the Commission seems to be trying to make the DSA meaningful, and that alone is something policymakers in Washington could learn from.

Congress, Democracy, Digital Services Act, Disinformation, elections, European Commission, European Union, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Misinformation, Russia, Social Media Platforms, Technology, TikTok, Twitter, United States

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What U.S. Policymakers Can Learn from the European Union's Probe of Meta - Just Security

The EU has achieved much in the last term and faces big challenges in the next. Its citizens can set the priorities in June.

Twenty twenty-four is being billed as the ultimate election year, with almost half the worlds population having the chance to vote. When it comes to the European Parliament elections this Junethe second largest democratic exercise in the worldwhat will motivate Europes citizens to take to the polls?

Some say the European Union should sell itselfbe proud of what it has managed to achieve in the face of numerous crises. Others say that lauding the key achievements of the EU over the last five years is not the way to go.

What should spur voters is a belief that a united Europe can achieve remarkable results, focused on a desire to tackle the very real challenges it faces. Policies at EU level have far greater potential than national measures to tackle common crises, in line with values we all share, making the union stronger.

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What follow are five social-policy successes of the past five-year EU term and five key challenges that only a strong Europe, supported by an active electorate, can hope to solve.

First, the SURE instrument(Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) kept employment rates high during the pandemic. With resources borrowed from the financial markets and channelled to the member states, some 31.5 million workers and self-employed and 2.5 million businesses received support during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Sustained employment served as a macro-economic anchor and economic recovery took less than two years.

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Compare the six years of austerity implemented after the financial crisis of 2007-08. Recovery then was slow and unstable, marked by declining EU gross domestic product in three out of the five years between 2009 and 2013, with a 4.3 per cent fall in 2009 alone. Yet the record 5.6 per cent fall in GDP in 2020 was compensated in just over a year, with rapid recovery in 2021 and 2022. The lesson is simple: preserving jobs pays offaccelerating recovery, reducing potential poverty and preventing deep negative economic and social consequences.

Secondly, the 2022 minimum-wages directive now safeguards workers with a wage floor. A few years back, it would have been unthinkable to address minimum wages and wage setting at EU level. The directive leaves sufficient room for adaptation to the national context during transposition while bringing union-wide benefits: it increases transparency, levels the playing field in a competitive cross-border labour market, stimulates a more prominent role for social partners and limits the precarious jobs that restrain EU competitiveness.

Thirdly, the new platform-work directive will protect workers in a context, particularly after the pandemic, of evolving digital tools and new forms of work, including platforms. Innovation and flexibility in labour markets should be welcomed but there are risks: of circumventing labour regulation, disadvantaging existing businesses, depriving a large number of workers of adequate social protection and decent working conditions, and challenging social systems and the integrity of societies. These motivated the EU legislature to forge a directive, striking a balance between digital development and preservation of basic rules, principles and rights in labour markets.

Fourthly, the 2023 pay-transparency directive addresses the fact that, still, women in the EU are paid on average 13 per cent less than men. There are of course countries where the gap is much smallerincluding most of the central- and eastern-European member states, where women and men have worked and been paid equally for decades. But there are also countries where this flagrantly unjust differentiation is even greater. After years of consultations and negotiations, the directive provides much stronger instruments to defend the rights of all workers.

Fifthly, a new, enhanced mechanism to boost social partners participation at national and EU level is unfolding. Social dialogue ensures accountability in decision-making: any key decisions for the future of the economy are sustainable as long as the social partners are involved. Amid deep transformation in the world of workcaused by digitalisation, demographic trends, geopolitical developments and the green transitionemployers and workers have to be part of the decision-making process at corporate, sectoral, national and EU levels.

Social partners can however only participate as far as legislation allows. Over the last few years, the European Commission and the Council of the EU have made substantial efforts to promote social dialogue, to increase the capacity of the social partners and to involve them in important discussions, such as over the National Recovery and Resilience Plans and achieving the collective-bargaining coverage required to uphold minimum wages.

These are not the only success stories of the EU over the last five years but they are landmark achievements. Social policies are mainly the competence of the member states, yet in many cases the European public looks to Brussels for solutions: the EU has far greater potential to generate resources quickly and to apply measures, avoiding the disastrous race to the bottom where labour-market regulation is lax. This is beneficial for businesses, for workers and for economies and societies across Europe.

Of course, there are also challenges where the EU is expected to do more. But these expectations are often not matched by adequate budgetary resources or decision-making powers. If the EU is to do more, it needs to be equipped with more than todays budgetthe sum of member states budgets is about 40 times as big. But these challenges represent another five reasons for voters to make their voice heard at EU level.

First, the future of work is very much to the fore. While the EU is an attractive place to work and live, which helps in the global competition for talent, these advantages should be enhanced. Job quality is critical. Not just wages but the balance between demands (work intensity, physical and psychological risks, job insecurity, irregular working hours and so on) and resources (including autonomy, possibilities for training and promotion, work-life balance and support from managers and colleagues) is what makes a job attractive. Focusing on job quality can provide tools to address labour shortages, promote mobility, improve productivity and make the EU labour market even more competitive, as well as boosting quality of life more generally.

Of course, the new world of work must also address the challenges associated withhuman-machine interaction, including the role of algorithms and artificial intelligence. The rapid development of digital technologies does not only necessitate rapid and large-scale upskilling and reskilling but also clear rules in terms of ethics, data protection and individual and collective rights. To reap the benefits from these technologies requires human-centric regulation.

Secondly, unaffordable and inadequate housing is a hot political issue in almost all member states, while careformal and informalis an issue in almost every family. On the former, at this point there is not much that can be done at EU level beyond sharing experience and best practices. But as the negative impacts on demography, labour mobility and work-life balance emerge, a common EU approach will almost certainly be foreseen. On the latter, today in Europe we have about six million official and 60 million unofficial domestic carers. Addressing their conditions is of wide European interest and could also affect demography, labour supply and quality of life.

Thirdly, ensuring access to these and other public services will be a critical element in trying to address the variousinequalities in our societies. These encompass those between rich and poor, young and old, men and women, and urban and rural.

This will in turn be fundamental, fourthly, to a truly just transition. The ambitious climate goals of the EU are timely and relevant. Still, a constant analysis and swift response should guarantee that the public benefits it brings are balanced by affordable efforts on the part of different social groups, in terms of age, income, location and so on. The green transition is a top-down policy that will be realised only if society consciously supports the political decisions. It should not lead to widening gaps in society.

All of these, not least the last, will be best addressed in a context, finally, of improvedtrust in institutions across the EU: between people, in their legal systems, the police, the media, their governments and the EU itself. Without trust social cohesion crumbles and efforts, at EU or national level, to implement the goals set out above are severely hampered. (Re)building trust is a crucial challenge in its own right.

The European Union has created one of the worlds largest economiesa leader in areas such as the environment and attractive working and living conditions. These achievements cannot be ignored. But of course, we all want more, and better. That is why the elections for the European Parliament are so critical. This is one of these pivotal moments, where EU citizens can have a direct say on the priorities to be addressed and the solutions to be expected. The union can and does add value, above and beyond national specificities, and works for the benefit of all European citizens.

It is for these ten reasons (though there are many more) that everyone should use their vote come June.

Additional resources related to this article are available ateurofound.europa.eu

Ivailo Kalfin is executive director of Eurofound. A qualified economist, he has served twice as deputy prime minister of Bulgaria and is a former MEP.

More:
Ten reasons to vote in the European elections - Social Europe

Over the past 20 years, the EU has invested substantially in infrastructure to make Europe a better place to live and work - from highways to pipelines, public transport, connectivity, data centres and cross-border infrastructure.

Our integrated energy market has helped us to weather crises, for instance when Russia cut gas deliveries. EU countries have worked together to source more secure and sustainable energy supplies, driving the clean energy transition and reducing our dependence on Russian fossil fuels.With substantial EU investments, coverage of high-speed broadband networks and internet access have surged across the EU. Digital leaders such as Estonia, are helping to pioneer e-government services. In all parts of Europe, millions of people have gained access to the 5G network.

Today, we are taking things further with NextGenerationEU. Worth 800 billion, it is funding hundreds of projects, from offshore wind farms to electric trains, from top-notch digital services to world-class medical centres, creating quality jobs in all 27 Member States.

As the strategic environment around us continues to change and Europe needs to step up on defence, all Member States are taking part in the effort - from Estonian defence research to Swedish aircraft development and Polish ammunition production.

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20 years together: Facts and figures about the benefits of the enlargement for the EU - European Union

Foreign Ministers concluded two days of talks in Brussels on Thursday (4 April 2024) with a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, and another meeting with Indo-Pacific partners and the European Union. Thursday marked 75 years since NATOs founding. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the landmark, saying: "since 1949, we have been the strongest and most successful Alliance in history."

Speaking at the end of the ministerial, Mr Stoltenberg welcomed that Allies continue to step up with new support to Ukraine. In recent days, this includes nearly 600 million euros from Germany for the Czech-led artillery initiative; as well as 10,000 drones from the United Kingdom; more missiles and armoured vehicles from France; and just yesterday, a new package of aid from Finland worth 188 million euros, he said. He added: we need to do even more, and we need to put our support on an even firmer and more enduring basis. Allies have now agreed to move forward with planning for a greater NATO role in coordinating necessary security assistance and training for Ukraine.

Foreign Ministers also discussed the global implications of Russias war against Ukraine, including support for Moscow from China, North Korea and Iran. Allies were joined by Indo-Pacific partners Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea, as well as the European Union. Together, ministers discussed how to enhance cooperation in responding to cyber and hybrid threats, as well as new technologies and defence industrial production. As authoritarian powers increasingly align, NATO and its partners must stand united to defend a global order governed by law, not by force, said the Secretary General.

On Wednesday, NATO Foreign Ministers met to address NATOs support to Ukraine, as well as security challenges in the Alliances southern neighbourhood.

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Foreign Ministers mark NATO's 75th anniversary, meet with Ukraine, Indo-Pacific partners, European Union - NATO HQ

Prime Minister Pashinyan,

Dear Secretary Blinken,

I am very glad to host this meeting together with the HR/VP Josep Borrell here in the Berlaymont in support of Armenia. We are delivering on a promise we made last October: The promise to stand shoulder to shoulder with Armenia, and at the same time, the promise to set a vision for the future of our partnership. This is what we are going to be discussing today.

This vision will be underpinned on the European Union side by a Resilience and Growth Plan for Armenia, EUR 270 million in grants over the next 4 years. We will invest in making the Armenian economy and society more robust and resistant to shocks. We will support your businesses, your talents, in particular your small and medium enterprises, so that we can help them to grow, to innovate and to access new markets. And we will invest in key infrastructure projects. For example in the Black Sea electricity cable that is a new transmission route full of opportunities. It can notably bring clean, renewable energy into Europe. We are ready to support it. In parallel, we will continue investing in Armenia's renewable energy production and in better interconnections with Georgia. We will also be exploring cross-border transport, if and when conditions allow. In this context, I welcome your Crossroads of Peace initiative Prime Minister. Finally, we come today with new measures for aviation and nuclear safety, and for trade diversification.

This support package we are presenting today builds on the success of an existing Economic and Investment Plan from the European Union for Armenia. It has already mobilised over half a billion in investments. I think this is great news. And now we can do even more with a fresh investment perspective. This is why we have recently launched an Investment Coordination Platform. So that we can jointly identify new projects, accelerate the pace and maximise the potential of our investments on the ground. Of course, the European Union will continue to support reforms in Armenia through advice, technical support and funding.

In this context, Prime Minister, I want to congratulate you for your efforts to carry out democratic reforms. And this, despite the challenges faced. I also welcome the measures that Armenia has taken against the circumvention of our sanctions against Russia. In particular, to make sure that lethal equipment and technologies do not end up in the hands of the Russian military. This shows that the European Union and Armenia are increasingly aligned in values and interests. Now, we are going to look today at the broader partnership. And let us take it forward with a new and ambitious Partnership Agenda between the European Union and Armenia. This is what we will be discussing in more detail in a moment.

We are not forgetting, Prime Minister, about the plight of the displaced Karabakh Armenians. The humanitarian situation of refugees in Armenia remains a priority. We have provided over EUR 30 million in support for the refugees since last September. We are ready to do more to support the long-term integration of refugees.

To conclude, I want to say how happy I am to receive both of you here in the Berlaymont. Because Europe and Armenia share a long and common history. The time has come to write now a new chapter. And I am very glad, Secretary Blinken, to count on the United States as a committed and like-minded partner in these efforts. We will continue to work all together for the future of Armenia, in a stable and prosperous South Caucasus region.

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Press statement by President von der Leyen on a Resilience and Growth Plan for Armenia - European Union