The SUNY MEUsState University of New York Model European Union

Issue 1, SUNY MEU 2018 January 12, 2018

Page 4 SUNY MEUs January 12, 2018

In last year and a half, the issue of fake news and disinformation being spread on the internet has become a topic that has gained prominence since the 2016 US presidential election. The problem extends beyond the U.S., as it affects Europe, and in particular the European Union. However, how to deal with the issue of fake news differs widely among member states of the EU. In the proposal put forward by the European Council is strengthening the cybersecurity of the EU.

The section on fake news, which orig-inally constituted of just one segment (part 2) of the proposal, and split up into three sub-clauses which were labeled as a,b and c, took most of the day to amend.

Mentioned early on in the Council’s proposal, the issue of fake news caused some divide among the council mem-bers. Most of the division was rooted in what really constituted as fake news, and if implementing laws and regulations of fake news could lead to censorship.

Hungary was one such state that had concerns about this issue, and in partic-ular their definition of what fake news actually was.

According to Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, fake news was “from foreign billionaires and bankers, mostly from western countries, trying to promote a liberal agenda in a fairly con-servative state,” whereas, “in the western world, thiers is focused on far right groups, and possible Russian influence.”

It was because of this, and what Mr. Orban perceived to be vague wording in the proposal, that led him to originally vote no on the passing of it.

The alleged Russian interference by fake news and disinformation was briefly mentioned in today’s discussion about fake news. Russia is one of the main suspects behind the spread of fake news. When asked if the EU thought that Russia was the main force behind the spread of fake news, EU Council President Donald Tusk responded “I

think there was some mention of Russia in our discussions, but I don’t think it was at the forefront of our discussion as some might expect it to be, and at the same time we don’t like to name call certain countries.”

After some debate on the issue, the proposal was amended to address those issues more in depth, and in broader terms that could apply to both western and eastern Europe, Hungary voted in favor of the proposal.

Despite the divisiveness on the pro-posal, there is still confidence that each side will be able to reach a compromise in dealing with the issue. Already, sec-tion two has been amended, as per the negotiations and compromises of other EU members.

As said by Mr. Tusk, “I think we’re making significant progress on amending the other parts as well but we hope by noon or shortly after lunch break tomor-row we can finalize our own agenda.”

Fake News remains a concern for the EU

ZAK HAYNES European Union leadership addressing the simulation at a press conference yesterday afternoon

Later, Stropnický was explicitly asked by Schiavo Leonardo, Di-rector-General of Foreign Affairs, Enlargement, and Civil Protec-tion, if he would like to rescind the current European Asylum policy. To this, Stropnický simply replied: yes.

There was, however, no state-ment as explicit and dismissive as that by Péter Szijjártó, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“We are not going to accept anyone coming in ...we will help by providing funds and also encouraging the distribution of occupational knowledge for

migrants and asylum seekers to help them benefit the European economies more. Frankly, any-thing else we will vote no to,” said Szijjártó.

Polish Minister of Foreign Af-fairs Jacek Czaputowicz. later fol-lowed along this ideological path, stating that “[Poland is] potential-ly willing to accept refugees, but on [its] own terms.”

Though these statements explic-itly disregard the 1951 Geneva Convention, they are also contra-dictory to statements released by the head powers of the FAC. In a press conference held on Friday afternoon, Bulgarian Foreign

Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva claimed that “no EU state in any way would ever violate the 1951 Geneva Convention. That’s a fact.”

In order to make progress tomorrow, the FAC must follow previous legal obligations regard-ing their role as a patron of justice and ensure that they are reaching a consensus with their current committee members. If they do not uphold these ideals of soli-darity and responsibility, the EU will, as said by German Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel, most likely not continue to work at all.

Continued from page 3

Photo Gallery

Page 2 SUNY MEUSs January 12, 2018 Page 3 SUNY MEUs January 12, 2018

Our StaffDan Orzechowski, Editor

Elise Bauernfeind, Asst Editor

Avery Sirwatka, Reporter

Zak Haynes, Reporter

Frank Langer, Photographer

Elmer Ploetz, Adviser

Follow us on Twitter:@SUNYMEU2018

The Economic and Financial Coun-cil (ECOFIN) spent much of yester-day’s afternoon session discussing a proposal to increase financial aid to Greece to help resolve its debt crisis, as well as to assist in dealing with the refugee crisis.

After tabling the issue in the morning session, the Council, which had already passed most of their other agenda items, resumed debate about the controversial topic. While a final resolution was not passed, the Council had said that it hopes to pass the agenda item during tomorrow’s session.

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said that Greece is look-ing forward to finalizing negotiations tomorrow, and believes that assisting Greece in the refugee crisis will be beneficial to all EU member states.

Tsakalotos said that because Greece is in debt, it is difficult for them to finance the refugee crisis as well as pay off their debts, which is why he

believes that aid from the EU is so important.

“We being in debt and not able to pay it fully … it is quite hard to accommodate both of those things, so I believe the financial aid will be good,” Tsakalotos said.

While almost every country that spoke had differing opinions on how best to handle the refugee crisis, Slovakia and Poland had two of the most extreme.

Slovakia’s foreign minister, Peter Kažimír, made it clear that Slovakia is not willing to accept refugees, nor are they willing to give financial aid to Greece. Kažimír cited excessive spending that had already occurred on Slovakia’s behalf to aid the refu-gee crisis.

When asked what Slovakia be-lieved would be the best solution to the refugee crisis, Kažimír respond-ed, “That is not for the ECOFIN council to decide as it does not deal directly with financial support.”

Poland took an even more extreme stance on the immigration crisis, and suggested that the EU should abide by a quota system, which would only allow “a handful of children” to immigrate into the EU. Poland’s financial minister called allowing immigrants into the EU “a cultural screw up.”

The minister did however, ac-knowledge that the debate went more smoothly than he had anticipated it would.

“It went better than expected, however I don’t think Greece fully understood that the majority of the EU supports extending any more aid to Greece,” he said.

At the end of the afternoon session on Friday, the ECOFIN Council still had much to discuss, and based on how that session went, ECOFIN’s continuation of negotiation tomorrow is a discussion to pay attention to.

ECOFIN continues to negotiate on migrant crisisELISE BAUERNFEIND

The Republic of Malta was dubbed “irrelevant” during one of yesterday’s COREPER II sessions by Slovakian repre-sentatives.

According to multiple COREPERs, Peter Javorčik, the Slovakian COREPER, was removed from the room while other Slovakian representatives replaced him. This was right before the Slovakian repre-sentatives expressed dissatisfaction with procedure from the COREPER Chair.

Marlene Bonnici, the COREPER from the Republic of Malta, then defended their chair by pointing out that sever-al people in the room are new to their positions.

“At the end of the day here, we’re all adults in this room,” said Robert De Groot, the COREPER from the Nether-lands. “I think the more effective way of [addressing the chair] would’ve been to approach the chair … you know … like not in the middle of the room.”

When asked if Malta was being heard

enough, Bonnici said Malta was being heard “more than usual.”

At a press conference later that after-noon, President of the European Council Donald Tusk assured that “every member is actively participating in all of our dis-cussions. Again, we to unanimously eval-uate the agenda. Of course, everyone has to vote for this summit to be successful. He also mentioned that some countries will inevitably take leads in certain situa-tions. That’s because certain agenda items matter more to certain member states.

At the same press conference, the leadership quickly denied any tension amongst COREPERs. The leadership also denied to comment on why Javorčik had been removed from the room.

“I think that internally within the EU, what happens in our discussion cham-bers, these kind of events can be resolved through diplomacy,” said Tusk. “We won’t give out too many details and unneces-sary words on events like these.”

Malta is ‘irrelevant’ in Slovakian eyesDAN ORZECHOWSKI

In this first meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC), the delegates and representatives were faced with some of the most controversial and tangibly dead-ly topics: addressing regional security, migration patterns, and human trafficking in the Mediterranean and beyond.

Early on in the meeting, the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, reminded the FAC of the importance of these topics. In order to achieve the European Union goal of common unanimity and to effectively deal with the aforementioned problems, Santos stated that, “[it] is important to come together toward a common goal, because these are people’s lives that we must be treating with respect.”

Yet on Friday, the FAC was instead plagued with internal dissent and incon-sistent discussion regarding the agenda items presented.

It was clear from the initial presenta-tions that delegations put priority on a wide range on issues within the frame-work presented by the High Represen-tative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Vice-President of the European Commission to the FAC, Federica Mogherini, including restricting humanitarian aid, increasing commitment to stop human trafficking within EU member states and setting up strategies to combat the perceived threat posed by asylum seekers.

While the range of issues was narrowed during the preliminary proceedings, the gap was never fully reconciled. And due to this persistence, the FAC found itself achieving limited progress.

In the morning session, the FAC dis-cussed only one topic item: the adoption of a long-term strategy to address the root causes of migration. While this is one of the most complex items included in the elaborate proposal, only a scarce amount of amendments were approved, such as including concern regarding terroristic control of digital currency and removing an amendment more suited for discus-sion within the Economic and Financial Council.

Despite this, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said that, while not explicitly answering questions regarding a satisfactory morning session, the FAC was achieving “slow but diligent

progress.” After lunch, all of this progress was lost.

In a vote seeking to adopt the first clause in its entirety, the United King-dom was the sole nation that refused the proposal. While initially thought of as an accidental rejection due to confusion re-garding parliamentary procedure and the UK’s role in the discussion, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson later claimed that the decision was fully intentional. John-son said that “[he] think[s] the problem was that [they] decided to vote [on] the whole proposal at once instead of doing points by points. So, what was confusing was that we hadn’t really finished talking

about some of those points, so [he] had to make a decision: either vote for the few things [he] agrees with or just disagree as a whole.”

Though the UK is soon scheduled to leave the EU, Johnson is committed to ensuring that action is achieved through the approved proposals. He later stated in regards to the security of EU nations, that “it’s nice to have engagement with some of the organizations of the Northern Af-rican countries or Middle East countries, but the problem was that just talking with them is not enough.

The UK firmly believes that just saying we are going to talk and then when something bad happens, disagrees with the EU’s opinion, we’re not going to do anything about it, so, it’s very well to talk about it, but if no actions are taken further, there’s no point to it. So, the UK firmly believes that the whole problem of the whole proposal to address the root causes of immigration should be by taking action, not just talking about it and staying aloof about it.”

As Portugal asked people to speak up

if they had any concerns in regards to the unanimity of the clause, the deci-sion came as a surprise to both the EU representatives and the delegates. Despite this, Schiavo Leonardo, Direct-General of Foreign Affairs, Enlargement, and Civil Protection, continued to plan for further diligent progress regarding the topic, suggesting that “this does not mean that the ideas in the article cannot be reviewed and cannot be, you know, cannot be amended eventually in the long term.”

But through this blockade, all of the FAC’s diligent work achieved in the morning session was lost.

Though the remainder of the afternoon session was also beset with national dissent when the priority agenda item regarding the Common European Asylum System was eventually tabled to be discussed on Saturday. The discussions were permeated with inconsistencies from both the EU representatives and national delegates.

The EU recognizes asylum as a funda-mental right, first acknowledged during the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees. The EU has since stated that “in the EU … countries share the same fundamental values and states need to have a joint approach to guarantee high standards of protection for refugees. Procedures must at the same time be fair and effective throughout the EU and im-pervious to abuse. With this in mind, the EU States have committed to establishing a Common European Asylum System.”

Yet delegations seemed to disregard these legal and moral obligations, with a variety of countries dismissing the com-mitment to establish a Common European Asylum System.

Miroslav Lajčá, Slovak Minister of For-eign Affairs, stated that “the Common Eu-ropean Asylum plan dictates the country’s ability to accept or choose who comes in and out of their country, and that’s a matter of each state.” This sentiment was furthered upon later in the session.

Martin Stropnický, Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that “the Czech Republic and a number of other Eastern European states will not vote yes [to finalize the reform of the Common Euro-pean Asylum System] unless there is not a Common European Asylum System in place. We do not support that.”

Dissent, inconsistency rule in first FAC meetingAVERY SIRWATKA

EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.Photo courtesy of LeonYaakov.