In recent years, newspapers have been full of critical stories about Chinese spying equipment, Russian disinformation and bribery of European politicians by Qatar. In March this year, investigations by Follow the Money, Knack and Le Soir revealed that Huawei is also suspected of bribing members of the European Parliament with all sorts of favours and gifts.
Meanwhile, we smoothly exchanged plenty of sensitive information with the United States and struck tech deals with Israel. Now that the European criminal court is demanding Netanyahu's arrest and Trump has set his sights on the EU, the question arises: will these double standards around foreign interference cost us dearly?
What can and should Europe do better to combat foreign interference, especially in times of trade war and military tensions? Where do Flanders and the Netherlands stand on this?
We will discuss this with, among others, Simon Van Dorpe (journalist Follow the Money), Lousewies van der Laan (director of Transparency International, the Netherlands) and MEP Thijs Reuten (Socialisten & Democraten/GroenLinks-PvdA). Moderator is Piet Ruig (journalist, researcher at FairFin and participant in Nieuw Geluid).
More info and registration: deBuren.eu
