The EU Parliament is considering opening another special committee investigation into spyware use in the bloc. The chamber held an initial debate on the topic on Thursday. The move follows a lukewarm response from the Commission to the recommendations of the parliament’s Pegasus and Equivalent Surveillance Spyware (PEGA) committee.
The parliament only recently completed an almost two-year-long investigation into the spyware industry and use of the software by the Spanish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, and Cypriot governments, delivering its final report with a recommendation for tight regulatory frameworks for spyware to the Commission in May.
Four months later, many MEPs on the PEGA committee are dissatisfied, considering the responses from the Commission and the Council inadequate.
The Commission sent a 15-page-long answer to the committee that, according to Renew MEP Sophie in ’t Veld, who was a rapporteur of the PEGA committee, “does not qualify as a response,” adding that “the Commission is just saying: we’re not going to do anything.”
She made her comments to Euractiv, which also saw the Commission’s response.
MEPs were most dissatisfied with the Commission’s claim that it has no power to propose regulations of a legislative nature on the issue, though it had recently proposed a sweeping pornography directive that would have included mass surveillance of citizen emails and chats. Fortunately, the parliament has agreed to a negotiating stance that removes the Commission’s surveillance measures.
To the chagrin of MEPs, on the issue of spyware, the Commission offered only to draw up proposals that were ‘non-legislative’ in nature.
“This is obviously not enough in our view,” Green MEP Saskia Bricmont told Euractiv, arguing as well that the Commission has the competence to act but “there is a lack of political will.”
Though in ’t Veld said she hopes parliament will establish a new spyware committee before EU elections next June, not all MEPs from the PEGA committee are in favor of another special investigation. Jeroen Leaners (EPP), chair of the PEGA committee, and several other members told Euractiv they preferred to continue to pressure the Commission to follow through on their recommendations rather than open another committee.
Establishing a special committee requires support only from one-quarter of the parliament, and this would not be the first time that a second special committee has been created on the same issue.
At the same time, spyware use linked to European governments continues.
Amnesty International made public earlier in October that between February and June, the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) had been the stage for targeting dozens of institutions, journalists, and government officials with Predator, a product of the Greek-based firm Intellexa. Among those targeted were EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola and French MEP Pierre Karleskind, whom Amnesty International believes were targeted by Vietnamese authorities.
“Yet again, we have evidence of powerful surveillance tools being used in brazen attacks. The targets this time around are journalists in exile, public figures, and intergovernmental officials. But let’s make no mistake: the victims are all of us, our societies, good governance, and everyone’s human rights,” Agnes Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
Greece’s independent data protection authority also announced in July that an investigation had found that 92 people had been targeted with Predator spyware. This is not the first spyware episode for the conservative government, which denied any involvement with Predator spyware or its use outside of legal secret service channels. A spyware scandal almost toppled in 2022.
The watchdog groups Access Now and Citizen Lab also reported in September that Latvia-based dissident Russian journalist Galina Timchenko had been targeted with Pegasus spyware, which is made by the Israeli NSO Group. Timchencko heads the Russian independent media outlet Meduza.
Some governments are showing themselves reticent about the use of foreign spyware. The U.S. blacklisted the Intellexa group in July. In September, the Polish senate announced the findings of an 18-month investigation into the use of spyware by the government, declaring its use “illegal and unlawful” under Polish law and accusing the government of targeting its political opposition with spyware, as well as using spyware to influence the 2019 elections in its favor.
In ’t Veld contends that a new spyware committee would allow the parliament to continue to monitor possible misuse of spyware.
