 Good afternoon, and you are very welcome to today's IEA event, which takes part as part of the Global Europe Project, which is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs. This project aims to analyze and communicate to the wider public, the debate on the future of Europe, and on the European Union's role in the world, and on Ireland's role in the multilateral order. We are delighted to be joined today by Vera Girova, the European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency, who's been generous enough to take time out of her busy schedule to speak to us today. Vice President Girova will speak to us for about 20 to 25 minutes, and then we will move on to a question and answer session with our audience. Please feel free to join the discussion using your Q&A function on Zoom, which you should be able to see on your screens. Please feel free to send in your questions throughout the session as those questions occur to you, and we will come to them once Commissioner Girova has concluded her presentation. Please feel free to request that you keep your questions as brief as possible so that we can get as many as possible in during the event that would be great. And we would ask also guests to identify themselves and their affiliation before asking the speaker a question. Today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record, and please feel free also to join the discussion on Twitter should you feel so inclined, the handle is at IIEA. We're also live streaming this afternoon's discussion, so a very warm welcome to all of you tuning in via YouTube and indeed what we have to say will be uploaded to the Institute's website and to YouTube later on as well. I would like to formally introduce Vice President Girova, and then I will hand the floor over to her. And very Girova is currently Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency and she deals with democracy, the rule of law and media pluralism, and the fight against disinformation which are all areas that would keep anyone, I think very well divided in this, in this day and age. From 2014 to 2019 she served as the EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. In 2014, before arriving to the European Commission, Mrs. Girova held the position of Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic. And prior to this, from 2016 to 2013, she worked in her own company as an international consultant on European Union funding, and was also involved in consultancy activities in the Western Balkans, relating to European Union accession. She holds a master's degree in law and a master's degree in the theory of culture from the Charles University pride, which is a place I've been very privileged to visit myself, and in the past, and we are delighted to have her here with us today so without further ado, if I may, I will hand the floor over to you now. Dear Professor Barrett, thank you very much for your not only warm welcome now and but also for the invitation, which is a great honor for me and pleasure and of course I would not like to speak too long, and rather to listen and to be able to react and so my plea to you just and you think it's too long because when I get into the turbulence of my own speech. I sometimes don't know when to when to finish. And thank you for not killing more than three minutes by my CV because I indeed I have a long CV, but it was it was enough. I will discuss the issues relating to the media freedom and media pluralism. And these, this topic is so much connected with the EU values field that I think that it's, it's a very important topic and when I compare it is the previous commission and previous I didn't hear too much about us at the European level dealing with the with the media sector. And I always found it appropriate thing not to do it not to engage too much not to interfere. And in the meantime, we received every year more and more varying data, showing that the media in the EU are under extreme pressure, and the pressure is economic very unfair business model when the money of advertisers have shifted in a relatively short time to the digital systems and big digital players are the enormous economic pressure, which also might lead into some kind of vulnerability of media and then the easier target for politicization and getting payments from the national budget which also means that the, there should be some kind of editorial gratitude from the media expected. And we see that what is also worrying trend is worsened situation of security of journalists. We have murdered journalists we have many injured journalists, we have a lack of protection of media, especially during the protests which are very frequent now in the EU. So, over years we saw that we should do more, because we cannot rely on media anymore as on one of the pillars of democracy and not being able to protect the media better. This does this will not work. That's why the Commission decided to come with several initiatives, so which are now in the making or already should be somewhat somehow implemented in the member states, and I know that you are not curious about my analysis you are better in that yourself, but you want to hear which solutions and which, which measures which methods we invented to protect the media better. Before I will get into this this topic of solutions or methods or measures. I want to say that covered time. Even worsened the situation rapidly for the media, especially the economic situation but also the security of journalists so it is only another argument for for doing something. And that's something is outlined in our democracy European democracy action plan where we foresee concrete measures legislation and non legislative measures to protect the media to protect elections in the EU and to do more against this information. And if you have not read it, you know, we are not always producers of very exciting literature as the Commission or European legislators, but we tried in this European democracy action plan to come with a very well thought through and on data, analysis of where we are today in Europe. Also when it comes to the freedom of speech and organization of the information space. I know it sounds rather worrying that somebody wants to organize the information space, but when you look at what's happening online then you realize that we we should look at the, the ways the channels, how trustworthy information are getting the are reaching as well. And so in this European democracy action plan we are coming with busy with the set off of different initiatives which we are fulfilling. The first is the safety of journalists. Yesterday I had an honor to open a conference with me to Muratov, the editor in chief of Nova Gazeta, one of the very few independent media left in in Russia. And for a very strong reason, Dimitri Muratov and Maria Reza got the Nobel Prize for Peace, because they are the heroes of these days, and they are not alone. We have hundreds, thousands of of courageous people working in media, who are bringing their skin on the market, and who are permanent targets of especially online attacks, but very often the online attacks then result in attacks in real life. The Slovak journalist, Jarkutsiak, was receiving threat attacks and threats through internet, through his online channels. It was announced to the police, the police didn't do anything, and then he was murdered. Well, we came with the set of recommendations to the member states with the warning. Look, you are obliged to guarantee the security of people in your country, and the journalists are working in public interest. We deserve strong security measures guaranteed by the state. And we issued this recommendation, we, I am engaging in bilateral talks with member states where we see increased threats or increased security risks for the journalists. We are really pushing that the member states implement in full our recommendations, which are very concrete, very concrete, legal aid, shelters, protection of the, of the, of the PCs and technologies of journalists, I will not go into more details, but we expect the member states to take action. And we need to see in decreasing numbers, because last year it was a really cool, I think, hopefully the peak because we had 900 inter-journalists in 20 member states, physically injured. So this, this cannot, cannot continue. We expect the member states to vigorously investigate and prosecute all criminal acts against journalists, and we also encourage them to work with Europe or Europe just because the attacks against the journalists are always based on organized crime which has no borders in the EU. That's why the European response is also needed. We also see that the attempt to silence journalists, to impose pressure on them so that they stop doing what they are doing, can be done through justice system. It sounds strange. And as the former justice commissioner, it's not easy for me to say it, but I don't want to see the courts abused and stand on the side of those who are rich and powerful and can launch the procedures against the journalists, which are very long, which are very costly, and which have the potential to stop the journalist in their work. And the journalists working for big media houses, of course, they can stand it maybe because the houses have some buffer, financial buffer, and the lawyers to defend the journalists. We have a plenty of freelancers, we have a plenty of small media outlets who can, can through the justice procedures or judiciary procedures be forced to stop, stop the work. I want to propose at the end of April, the legislation, we call it anti-slap legislation, which should make it more difficult to win the cases, which will ask the judges to check first whether the procedure or whether the complaint they receive is not of pure abusive nature, whether it is, it's a substantiated. And of course we have to balance the access to justice for those who might be harmed by journalists. So we cannot disbalance the system and to create some kind of privileged cast of journalists, but we have to stop the trend because more and more these judicial proceedings are abused against the journalists in a very manifestly clear way. So, this is the anti-slap, we will recommend the member states to introduce the changes in the civil and administrative procedures, law procedures, we will compass the legislation for cross-border cases. What initiated this action of the commission? I am sure you know that Daphne Karona-Garizia, the multi-journalist who was murdered for what she was doing as a journalist at the time of her assassination, there were 47 litigations running, mainly in the United Kingdom. And her family is still facing these litigations, still now after several years. And I am in constant contact with her sons. I met her parents at the cemetery in Malta and I promised that we will protect the journalists better, also against these abusive litigations. The main jewel on the crown of what the commission wants to do to protect the journalists and the media is the media freedom act which we planned for July this year. And here we would like to come with a set of standards which have to be guaranteed by all member states, the safeguards and the standards which will guarantee the independence and pluralism in media sector. When we see some burning trends in some member states, when we saw the crisis of TVN in Poland, when we saw the situation of Klu Pradio in Hungary and the attempts to increase the pressure on both public and private media in some other member states, we realized that at the European level, we do not have any protection, any special protection for the media in our EU rules. And I was heavily asked by many, what will you do? You are responsible for that. And I had to say we have competition rules. We have the rules for the European single market and here the media are protected the same way as any other producer of something on our market, the producers of shoes, for instance. So this media freedom act should bring a difference to upgrade the protection of media and to set the procedure which will enable Europe to act also. But first of all what we want is to strengthen the competencies of the national regulatory bodies and their ability to act. I can imagine on Freedom Act you might have questions so I will now continue to fight against this information. Here of course we are looking at the platforms and the digital sources, digital channels. We have a very strong principle in the EU that we protect the freedom of speech. Even the speech of those who have different opinions from us, that's our obligation. At the same time, I would not like us to abandon the principle that truth matters in Europe. We have to uphold both. And so when we look at the content which we see on internet, we see a lot of crime being distributed through the channels, through the social media and through the websites. It's hate speech, which is defined as the speech which has the potential to incite violence in real life, that's the definition. It's hate speech which is defined in all EU member states criminal laws. Then we have terrorism and then we have child pornography and child abuse materials. This is a especially disgusting checks and disgusting thing which we have to put an end to so we are preparing also measures against this. This is prohibited content. This is not a prohibited content for online only. This is prohibited content for real life in Europe and what's illegal offline has to be treated as illegal online. We have applied in the digital services act which we adopted already last year, and which is now in a very mature stage of legislative procedure, which has the chance to be adopted soon. We have to take these forms to take proactive measures to remove such content to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to increase their responsibility and accountability when it comes to setting up our algorithms. The algorithms themselves should not drive the production of crime. This information is another story. That's why you would not find it in the digital services act, which is very hard, legally binding set of rules. We work on this information through the code of practice, which should be finalized in March, where we want the platforms and the administrators of the websites and the media and advertising industry to consolidate or somehow accumulate or coordinate the work against this information. It's not about removing content, but more about fact checking. Here comes again the topic of the financial distress on media. We impose pressure on the platforms to pay the fact checkers, especially the journalists, for their work, for the fact checking. So, this is one of the methods how we want to ensure that some money collected by big platforms will come back to where the proper job is done. This is copyright, but I will not go into that. But through this code of practice, we want to decrease the impact of this information on a European society. We work with Joseph Borrell on a sanction method against the foreign actors and foreign interference, which is heavily needed, when we look at the disinformation over flooding the European information space being produced by prokremlin sources, either directly in Russia or by their European proxies, 40% of the pieces of disinformation which we caught through our networks were targeted against Ukraine. And this is Pan-European propagandist effort of Russia. This is not only spread through the center and Eastern European countries, which used to be the case in the past. So, Ukraine and anti-vaccine COVID-related disinformation, all that is so dangerous and so harmful that we have to trigger some self-dependent measures and mechanisms and how to do it without demolishing the principle of freedom of speech. This is what we try to do through the code of practice against disinformation. I think I should stop already, but maybe on financing, one more thing on on media. Our plan is to strengthen the position of media in Europe, which means, especially through the media freedom, to decrease the influence of the states and decrease the influence of the economic players. It is logical because what the data shows, what the data from the media pluralism monitor suggests is that there is an increased pressure, political and economic pressure. So our effort will be to decrease it and to protect the journalists better through the anti-slop. To do that, we need to see that there is the bottom-up effort from the media sector itself to guarantee professionalism and responsibility, which is adequate to the power of media, which we want to strengthen. So logically, if we want to strengthen the media power, we want to see the responsibility increased and there are very important initiatives already known, which we fully support, which is especially the Global Journalism Trust Initiative, where, as far as I know, last year, Ireland's national television and radio broadcaster announced it would be the first Irish media organization to sign up to this initiative. And we are encouraging this initiative and others because we need to, by strengthening the role of media and increasing the protection, we need to be sure that the media will go hand in hand with us and will guarantee the highest possible trust worthiness of the work of the media. So that's from my side on what we plan as new rules and new measures. Also, this might be about the money. So last summer, the Commission launched the first ever call for journalism partnerships under the Creative Euro program. It was a call for 7.6 million euro. We will soon announce the results. We are also working on a new equity pilot project, collaborating with philanthropic foundations to join forces to support the media sector. The project would come as a boost to the financial independence of media outlets. I strongly believe that by working together across borders media may be stronger, so we are also promoting and funding the cross-border investigative projects such as the recent Pandora papers. We are not supporting this concrete investigative action, but we want to promote the cooperation of the media in the future because we see incredible results such as Pandora papers. So this is a tricky thing when I say that the EU will be funding the media. Of course, there is always a quick question. What do you want for it? What are you buying? And I want to say we want to buy the certainty that the media will be stronger and will do good work. Our special attention goes to the cross-border cooperation, which I think is appropriate angle of perspective for the Commission to look into that. So, Mr. Barrett, I am at the end of my contribution, but of course starting to concentrate for the questions. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Madam Vice President. That was fascinating and it's very interesting to see all of the activities that the European Union and the initiatives that the European Union and the Commission in particular are taking in this regard. So just to remind everyone that it is possible to put questions using the question and answer function on the Zoom function and look forward to getting as many questions as possible for you. It's a wonderful opportunity having the Commission Vice President here with us today, so hopefully we'll be able to use that as much as possible. We have, just to begin here, a question from Seamus Allen, who is an IEA digital researcher. Seamus has asked him, how can protection of freedom of speech and free protection of free media be balanced with, at the same time, countering disinformation and hate speech. So essentially, the question of freedom of speech, to what extent is this going to be protected and balanced with the other interests that you mentioned? May I immediately answer? Yes, of course. Okay, two ways how I'm looking at it. I will start by maybe saying something which is not very popular, but we let the disinformation to flourish, because we are not sufficiently protecting the truth. We saw the information, we saw it in COVID time, the health authorities in many member states were not able to provide the public the information which was needed. So it was an obvious call and invitation for the producers of disinformation to occupy the space. I will never say that we will get rid of disinformation and fake news, by the way, they were with us over the whole history. When you read Harari and his chapter about the importance of rumors in the old tribes life, this has always been with us. We neglected something important that we have to pay attention and take care of the information which has to be delivered to the people. And I think that we have to adapt to this new era, which enables us to use the digital tools to inform and to fact check and to add our opinions. We can use the tools and we should use the tools better, because on the other hand there are those who abuse these tools. And so I would like all of us and when I see us I mainly speak about the establishment about the political sphere about the scientists about the media about culture for people. We have obligation to uphold the truth and we have the tools available as well as those who are abusing them. So and it's not that uneasy to predict what will be the subject for disinformation. Yeah. Now with the Green Deal, of course, it's already here increased of prices of gas and energy. This is the Green Deal fault. Yeah, increased prices of food. It will be the Green Deal fault in the future. Migration, minorities, these are the topics which are extremely targeted by disinformation. So we have to occupy the space better. On the negative side, the fight against disinformation, the active fight, we need the media for the fact checking and for bringing into the information space, the trustworthy information. I had some period in the past when I spoke to the journalists, I remember it was in Paris, I think two years ago they said that I am instrumentalizing them in the fight against media against disinformation. And I said, if you want to read it like that, yes, I am. We need you. We need you. These are two ways and I'm afraid that for this occupying the space with the narratives which are based on the facts. I think that here we have a horrible gap. Interesting. Thank you very much indeed for that. And some certain definitely some some thoughts that need to be thought about very deeply they're all right. And we have a question in from Eileen Colotti who is a postgraduate researcher in Dublin City University. And she says that you mentioned getting platforms to pay fact checkers. And would you elaborate on that, please, and how the independence of such fact checkers would be, would be assured and currently fact checkers. Eileen Colotti says are financially dependent on Facebook and are bound to Facebook moves. So, for instance, they're not free to speak freely to researchers. So that's Eileen Colotti was a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Future Media. Okay. Yes, but may I may I jump for a while back. We are also facing now the new phenomenon that lying is winning elections. And that's that's bad. What is worse, lying by anonymous is winning elections. That's why I like to attract your attention to something I didn't mention. We came with rather tough regulation, which is coming with the strict rules for online political campaigning. Yeah, which, which is one of the initiatives under the European democracy action plan. And we want to come back to old good times. Political campaigns have always contained manipulation. Yeah. Even when I knocked the door of my hopefully future voter, I tried to manipulate the lady at the doorstep, telling her that I'm the best choice. But you see the magnitude of manipulation of of of electoral choices and electoral behavior of the potential voters. I think that we are doing the right thing. This is a very strict rule strict rules. Everything has to be signed who paid for it. The people must see that is is paid for advertisement and no micro targeting on the basis of sensitive data. We are not sheep, which go to the slaughter. We are the voters who want to cast our autonomous vote. So I just wanted to attract your attention to this. How the fact checkers should be paid. First of all, fact checking is a highly professional work, which requires experience and responsibility and trust, trust, and that's why we are really pushing those who are offering the space. For this information and monetizing it to hire the cleaning service. And I don't mean cleaning in the sense of removing content. I have to emphasize it again. We want the facts to be placed next to the disinformation so that the people can make their choice. Unfortunately, something something very natural against us that the people have a tendency to believe what they want to believe. And it's my case I have the algorithm in my stomach and the author of the algorithm is my granny and my father. I know very well at my age, why I react how I react these are these first hand and first second emotional reactions. This information is not addressing our brain, it's addressing our basic instincts and emotions. But for those who do not want to be driven and chased by their emotions, we need the fact checkers to provide them with the facts so that they can switch on the brains. And this work has to be paid. So the EU is paying the several projects under the headline of Edmonds that's the European observatory, which is now going to different member states. And these Edmonds or the national Edmonds are collecting gathering the people who are doing the fact checking. So this is paid from public money. I will not give you the figures now. It's not much but we are supporting it financially. And so if you want to join the those who are working under these organizations, you can find it and somehow express your interest. But for the Google and others, there is a very strong push from our side. You have to pay the cleaning service. You have to hire the people. You have to work with them. You have to work with them in all member states in all 24 national languages. Nobody should be left behind. There are no small and big languages in the EU. And I don't want to, I don't have to remind us of the fact that if the disinformers will win in one member state or two. And what is the the victory about? It's about the demolition of democracy, which might be caused by influencing more than 40% of citizens. Count with me. You are the academics. You know better these figures, but 40% is the critical mass. Then the whole Europe will have a horrible problem. That's why we are pushing the platforms to pay the fact checkers in all the member states, all the languages. The problem is what is being announced to me several times already that they are confronted with a set reality that some of the fact checkers who are offering the services are the activists who want to push their own opinions into this. Let them do it, but for their own money. I am rather cruel on that one, but we need to check the facts to be corrected by the opinions. They belong to each of us. And unless these are the opinions which have the potential to incite violence or killing no mercy, it has to be removed. It doesn't have to be checked, fact checked. But here we really need people who can work with the data and with the evidence. Thank you very much indeed for that, Vice President. And we have a question in from Peter Gunning, who thanks you for the very thorough overview you've given. And he notes that you said that the media freedom act will contain both legislative and non legislative measures and he wants to ask what the most prominent legislative measures are that the commission is likely to propose. I think I said it for anti slap, or maybe more, more broadly, for the media freedom act, we will come with communication, which will describe the broader context. And in my view, the broader context which should be explained and described and clarified is the information space on the whole. Yeah, because we need to be consistent with what we propose through the digital services act, but we propose through that regulation on the political advertising and the media. We have the audio visual media services directive, which remains fully valid. It has to be implemented. And we are coming with the media freedom act. And where I want to see consistency is the philosophy which goes through that we need media for two big reasons, the freedom of speech and the access to information. This goes through everything. But more maybe concrete reason why we need to be consistent and having always the broad picture in front of us is how the enforcement of all that will be organized in the member states. Yeah, because the media, the digital services act suggests that in the member state will be established a new body, which will have the power to oversight the digital space. Some wanted to establish a digital police, can you imagine, we are not going there. But the enforcers will be in each member state. And my nightmare is that some member states by my took it as an invitation that they will create one body which will oversight the digital space, the media space, the political advertising rules. And that that will be some some monsters regulator created in a member state, which, in case it would not be fully independent from the state, you can imagine what might happen. Yes, so this is, I have to say, maybe something I am obsessed about that. This is half of my life in the totalitarian regime. And I remember how strong body was the Ministry of Information. And it is something which we must not establish. And we know that the good intention are paving the way to hell. So that's why I speak about the consistency and the broader picture, we have to have in mind and it should be in the communication accompanying the media freedom act, which will be, however, purely legally binding set of rules. So that won't be any non legislative part. Okay. And Seamus Dooley has asked a question he said in the National Union, journalists here and I know that, and that is by ensuring diversity in the media is part and parcel of what you are interested in. And Seamus Dooley has a slightly different question. It's how do you protect public service broadcasting a cornerstone. He knows the public interest journalism and he argues that political failure to adequately fund can and is damaging public service broadcasting. And he feels that PSP values public service broadcasting values are vital to contract and fake news. So in other words, the question is, how do you protect public service. If I expect a big battle around or in the process of promoting media freedom act, it will be about the public media. Because, legally speaking, we have the abstract protocol which is just setting rather general standards and we see that to have public media, public service media of high quality as the, as is the main source or guaranteed or just versus source of effect check of public information and, and, and, and, and opinions, and, and, and arena for everybody who has something to say, but arena which has some objective rules. This is about the public service media, but we see that the member states have very different systems. In some member states we do not see the public media anymore we see state media. And we have a proverb in Czech language something like, who's bread you eat his song you sing. I don't know if you have it in Irish language. But yeah, he who pays the piper. I think close the tune I think we have as an expression. And, and when, when this happens, and when the, the power of the national public money is, is engaged in this. It's wrong, then we cannot speak about independent public media anymore. Yeah, because it is always represented by some state strong figures who as the owners of the money will find themselves obliged or authorized to influence the editorial content. So, if you ask me what we want to do in the media freedom act. The short, the short answer is, I don't know yet, but I will try to be more precise. We are now analyzing all member states systems, and especially two factors, the way the public media are financed. So how close or distant they are from the national budgets and the influence connected with the national budget from the political side. And the second factor, how independent are the boards, which are established to deal with the public media matters, and how independent is the management of the public media. So, so again we will look at the distance between the state and the public slash state media, and we will try to make the distance as long as possible. That will be the vector in the media freedom act. And whenever I say this, I receive, not me, but my colleagues receive a lot of phone calls. How did you mean it, our system works, especially in Berlin, there is a lot of and Munich, there is a lot of nervousness now. Because in Germany, what I see and what I hear from them from from our partners in Germany, they have a functioning system of public media. And they fear that by media freedom act we will tend to decrease the standards or prescribe how the system should work. And it's not what we want to do. It's not, rather to, to look at the functioning systems and to calibrate the standards, which should be applied in all the member states, and especially looking at the distance between the state and the public media and those factors of money and, and, and people. Wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. And now we have a question from Sarah Taff McGuire here who is a journalist with the Sunday business post. And you mentioned anti slap legislation that's been been something that has been quite prominent in the media here, both here and in the United Kingdom, actually, as present. And of course, part and parcel of that activity, if you like is deployment or the use or the instrumentalization of defamation law. And that forms the focus of Sarah's question because she asks, and you may not want to get into this now but but she asks, does Vice President Yoruba have an opinion on Ireland's defamation laws which have been described by reporters without borders as presenting significant threats to press freedom. So that's, I suppose, maybe, you know, I suppose the relevance in general of defamation laws and to 200. Yeah, it is our long lasting position that the defamation should disappear from the member states criminal laws. And so, this is our opinion but it's for the member states to decide. There are not many member states at this moment, who have the possibility to sue or to to launch the criminal procedure against a journalist on the basis of the defamation articles in the criminal criminal codexies but it is that recently some member states with through it only reduced these possibilities for the civil procedure or administrative law procedure. So we, this is this is the long lasting opinion of the Commission but it is the competence of the member states yeah so I have to be careful, careful here. I think in fairness, she's probably referring to civil definition rather than criminal definition. Even worse in civil procedures we have even weaker competencies. We just want to see in the member states the possibility to defend against unprofessional or unscrupulous so called journalists who do not work with data who even can work in somebody's T-shirt to cause harm or to disregard somebody, we know that there are such cases but of course we promote the system where there will be equality of the arms for both sides. And it is not at this moment because we see the too rich and too powerful ones to use this instrument. That's why in the anti-slab legislation we want to embed into the process the possibility for the judges to dismiss the case very soon after they receive it on their tables. And the judges have thousands of questions we are now consulting with them, rightly so because it will be in their everyday practice to work with this. And this is a very frequent question or comment that it's sometimes not visible at first sight that it is this abusive kind of litigation. And thank you very much indeed for that. Now on the topic of financial imbalance, and I'm afraid we'd probably have to make this the last question because I think we're about to run out of time and my apologies to those of you. There's not quite a number of questions here and it hasn't been possible to reach all of them, but does the commission envisage further steps beyond the copyright directive to address the financial imbalance between traditional media and large online platforms which now dominate the advertising market. Not on copyright. I tell you what must be done on copyright to see on the proper implementation of this heavily fought for legislation if you remember the dramas, especially in the European Parliament. We have it now there is a legal possibility for the media to negotiate hopefully favorable conditions. I myself I still give it some time but I want to have some do some some check in in the member states where where it is because it was meant to radically improve the situation of media and push for the money to shift back to where the job is done. Yeah. So it is in the remit of Terry Breton it's not mine directly but I will speak to him soon to that we should do some some reality check and so so no upgrade of the copyright directive is foreseen. But there could be more done to improve the situation of media through the recovery money which we distribute to the member states. That is the invest EU program which could be used for for by media as well. And some some instruments such as such as the the loans for innovations and digitalization. So that there is a blend of money. And now already in the hands of the ministers of culture mainly and I will speak to the ministers of culture on the seventh and age of March, and I will ask how they use the funding in the media sector. Because what I hear from the media, especially from regional and local ones, it's all fine that you are funding from the commission, the cross border investigative teams and, and I don't know technology developments but we are starving. We don't have money for salaries and for for renting the office so I am I'm aware of this. This is about bread and butter and when you don't have bread you don't have to place the butter on where to place the butter on so we are really encouraging the states to support, but this big but because there should not be expectations that the media will pay back by editorial How to say nice face. Listen, thank you very much indeed for that. My apologies to the many of you who have pushed and questions that we simply haven't been able to to reach but it's been wonderful to get such detailed answers from the commission vice president. I would really like to thank you on all of your house for taking time out of your very busy and show you today it's been a great honor to have you with us and we hope that perhaps when things have moved a little bit further down the line in relation to these various initiatives that we might see you again. And, and, and find out how things. Let me thank you as well. Thank you also for the questions. If you have ideas. Send me an email. Because I am really a good big mushroom, just swallowing the, the, the rain. So you're open to further ideas, I think. If somebody will not be able to sleep tonight, without having the question or the comment please help yourself. That's very much appreciated. Thank you very much indeed. President and we, as I said we hope to welcome you back at some stage in the future. Thank you to all of you who've made the time to join us here today we hope you will join us on further and institute developments and in the meantime, have a good weekend. Have a good weekend.