“There has been a communication on [spyware] already,” said EU Commission’s Executive Vice-president Henna Virkkunen.

Only this wasn’t true – the European Commission has never published a communication on spyware.

“If I may correct you, there has only been an announcement about a [forthcoming]  communication,” said Saskia Bricmont MEP (Belgium Greens) challenging the Finnish top EU executive about the lack of legislative follow-up to the European Parliament’s adopted resolution and PEGA inquiry findings and recommendations, a committee of which she was a member of.

“We really expect the Commission to come up with at least a communication or strategy or –even better– proposals to implement our recommendations and to put an end to this kind of illegal spyware,” added Bricmont.

Virkkunen, whose portfolio covers technological sovereignty, security and democracy was appearing before the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on Tuesday, during a session where MEPs had already stated their intentions to question her on spyware.

The LIBE hearing was taking place while a major spyware scandal is shaking Italy, as revelations emerge of journalists, activists, and NGOs have been targeted with Israeli-made spyware by Paragon Solutions.

“The use of Paragon, presenting itself as the transparent version of Pegasus and is apparently not the case. In Italy, it has been disclosed in the last weeks… adding new victims to the list and bringing rather confused or confusing answers from a Meloni government,” said Bricmont.

“Unfortunately, we know that it will not stop there. We established [during the last parliamentary term] an inquiry committee, it led to many important recommendations both for the European Commission, for the Council to circumvent the use of spyware and prevent illegitimate uses.”

“We have seen very little if no follow-up on recommendations. I also see that it disappeared from the working programmes of the Commission, although a communication was announced m in June 2024.”

Virkkunen defended that stance of the EU executive. “This is very serious. [We need] to make sure that illegal spyware is not used against [EU citizens]. In the European Union, we want to make sure that our digital rules and our societies are very much based on privacy and safety and democracy and also fair environment,” she said.

“This kind of violations, if spyware is used illegally against our citizens, of course, this is something that we can’t accept… When technologies are playing very important role in our security, it’s also very easy to threaten our security and destabilise and create distrust among our citizens by using technology’s illegal way in our society.”

However, she did not offer a specific timeframe for EU Commission’s follow-up. “I will come back to that and we will now look at what will be the next steps from the Commission side.”

Source: Euractiv.com