The selective hearing of Ylva Johansson
Isn’t it cool that Eurocommissioner Johansson came to receive the people’s choice award of the Big Brother Awards in person? On her birthday, nonetheless. However, it stings a bit, because she is very selective about when and with whom she enters in discussion.
Invited several times
The bill for which Commissioner Johansson was nominated, was launched by her in May. That did not come as a surprise. The proposal had been announced long before, but the launch was pushed forward repeatedly. In the run-up to the launch we, together with our European colleagues, invited Commissioner Johansson several times for a brief discussion about the proposal. That is important, because a golden rule for anyone who wants to get something done in Brussels is: the earlier in the process you can have a say, the greater your impact. But each time she turned down the invitation.
If you want good quality legislation, you have to talk to all those directly involved.
Selective hearing
Painfully enough, the Eurocommissioner did talk to the companies building the technology that can search for child sexual abuse in big heaps of messages people sent to each other. More so, she put a lot of effort into it; she even traveled to Silicon Valley to speak with those companies. She also spoke with all the big technology companies, such as Google, Twitter, Meta and Microsoft. But for organizations that stand up for a common good, like ours, the door remained closed. Even more so, as far as we can tell, the Eurocommissioner also barely spoke to organizations involved in combating sexual violence.
Poor quality legislation
This is problematic. Why? It causes legislation to be of lower quality. Because if you want good quality legislation, you have to talk to all those directly involved or their representatives. Because only then do you know what each of those involved run into. Only then will you understand the exact nature of their problems. These are things you cannot learn from companies that build technologies. If you do not talk to all stakeholders, the legislation does not meet the needs of the very groups of people you want to help. That friction is clearly visible now by the huge gap between the recommendations of experts in the fight against sexual violence and the proposal of the European Commissioner.
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And if you are not informed by all relevant experts, you may well overlook harmful side effects or wrongly consider them trivial. This is also detrimental to the quality of the interventions themselves, because in doing so, the Eurocommissioner is expressing her faith in technology that does not actually exist yet. She has never spoken with experts who can shed a light on the other side of that technology. And by not also asking critics for their views, she comes up with a particularly lousy justification for the proposal.
Finally, the arrogant attitude also undermines support for legislation. Someone who is affected by that legislation, but does not feel heard, will not easily accept the far-reaching consequences of those rules.
Through the heart
That the Eurocommissioner seems to be able to get away with this anyway is not very surprising. The Eurocommissioner’s speech upon receiving the people’s choice award was, fair is fair, incredibly powerful. Humor combined with the cited example of the brutal rape of a defenseless child touched everyone deeply. There you are with your reasonable arguments as they no longer count. What is at stake here is so intense. Therefore, everyone’s reflex immediately is: this has to stop, at any cost.
Arrogance of the legislator also undermines support for legislation.
The English translation of this article was drafted by Martin van Veen.
The sad part of all this, of course, is that the protection of that vulnerable child is not as good as it could have been. In other words, by not striving for high-quality legislation, for measures that fit the situation of victims (and perpetrators), and by not listening to everyone directly involved, those we want to protect have not been served best. And that, we really cannot afford.