POLITICO Brussels Playbook Plus: EU fights fake news machine — Culture wars — Separated at birth

EU FIGHTS FAKE NEWS MACHINE FROM SHADOWS: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Playbook he does not believe in “fighting propaganda with propaganda.” The EU also stays out of the propaganda game (mostly) but has created a team called “East StratCom” in the External Action Service to catalogue and expose disinformation it says comes from the Russian state. So far it claims to have found nearly 2,500 examples of Russian disinformation.

You can imagine Playbook’s surprise when journalists were invited to a briefing Monday on said disinformation, only to be told they couldn’t quote the
diplomats giving the briefing. Reporters were, in other words, asked to expose disinformation from shadowy sources via non-quotes from another faceless source.

To be fair, the team has a slick “EU vs Disinformation” Facebook page and a Twitter account (@EUvsDisinfo), so it’s not completely in the shadows. But Playbook can’t help wondering if Brussels should put the “face” back into Facebook.

Here’s some context we can give you: The “EU source” is part of a team of about a dozen people, with no discretionary budget. They have uncovered false stories such as one about the Ukrainian army crucifying a three-year-old boy in a former rebel stronghold. Angela Merkel is a new target of Russian disinformation, says the “EU source,” and is regularly implicated as a cause of terrorist attacks.

CULTURE WARS AT THE COLLEGE OF EUROPE: The Bruges home of future Eurocrats, a beacon of the European peace project, is the site of a brewing culture war. None other than Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered the opening speech of the current academic year at the College of Europe, telling students “Now is not the time for division.” It seems some of them forgot to take notes as things started to get nasty when groups of students from different European countries took turns to create national displays in the college canteen.

The Benelux delegation is said to have promised “Belgian chocolate, Dutch drinking games, Luxembourgish potatoes and a speech from Paul Magnette,” according to Beata Thor, a Swedish student. However, their display included King Leopold II, the “Butcher of Congo,” without explanation. The college’s student newspaper called them out on this, leading to an apology of sorts.

“Millions of people were killed, injured or saw their living conditions severely worsened. The reason for all this human misery was a never-ending imperialistic quest for power and money,” admitted the Benelux contingent. Still, Leopold is a significant historical figure, so they included him anyway. Next up: nasty messages on the college’s Facebook group. Stayed tuned for more.

OVER THE TOP: Playbook was alarmed to read a trade union press release this week suggesting Europe is not only burning, but burning while the Committee of the Regions fiddles. The CoR has never
before been accorded such importance, so we decided to investigate.

According to Unite Syndicale we are “in turmoil” (a very Trumpian phrase) as “southern Europe borders on war zones” and the European idea is challenged like never before (excluding the World Wars, presumably). And through it all “the Committee of the Regions fiddles around with jobs for the boys!”

“As Europe struggles to survive, the CoR struggles to rush through a bogus internal ‘competition’ exclusively reserved for its Mexican army of political appointees,” the union raged. No, that’s not another Trump insult, but a French expression to describe a team with an abundance of administrators. On the wider point, Playbook agrees that job vacancies ought to be advertised. But surely the wider question is: Why does the EU spend tens of millions on the Committee of the Regions, without really listening to it?

SEPARATED AT BIRTH: Commission spokesperson Mina Andreeva, and pop superstar Britney Spears.

BY THE NUMBERS:

357,000,000,000: The bill European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi says he’ll present Italy if it leaves the euro.

25: The number of MEPs who agreed in the International Trade Committee to approve the EU-Canada trade deal.

15: The number of trade committee MEPs against the Canada deal.

46: Days until the Dutch general election.

WHO’S UP:

Martin Schulz: He is expected to be announced as the Socialist challenger to Angela Merkel in Germany’s national election in September.

Benoît Hamon: The French Socialist won the first round of the center-left presidential primary and is likely to clinch the nomination this Sunday.

WHO’S DOWN:

François Fillon: The news that his wife Pénélope was on the payroll of his office between 1992 and 2002 might not help his poll numbers for the French presidential bid.

Sean Spicer: Managed to anger and confuse nearly everyone with his first briefing as the U.S. presidential spokesperson.

BREXITOMETER: Now that Britain’s PM Theresa May has indicated her desire to leave the single market, there’s no looking back. But there have been bumps in the road to a hard Brexit, as May’s government lost the Article 50 court case and she bowed to demands from MPs to set out her Brexit strategy in a white paper.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “He was using alternative facts.” — President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway explaining how presidential spokesman Sean Spicer came to believe that crowds for Trump’s inauguration were the biggest ever.

GAFFES AND LAUGHS

No gender equality for bees: The Parliament’s women’s rights committee this week voted on a resolution calling for EU funds to be spent promoting gender equality, which triggered a backlash from those who think EU funds could be better spent elsewhere. Beatrix von Storch, a senior member of the far-right Alternative for Germany, who, on being appointed to the committee in 2014, swiftly called for it to be scrapped, proposed an amendment that didn’t make the final cut: “Not all EU policy areas can be gender mainstreamed, as, for example, the EU policy on honey bees, because there is only one female bee queen per colony and not two.”

Maltese bird hunting is no laughing matter: Here’s what Vicky Ford MEP said when Malta’s Economy Minister Christian Cardona started sniggering when she flagged the plight of the birds that Maltese hunters shoot: “Minister, please stop shooting the birds in the spring … Don’t laugh. Stop it. Stop it. Do not do it. Do not do it when you’re holding the presidency of the European Council. Please. Thank you.”