Debate contributions by Fidias PANAYIOTOU

Madam President, hello friends, I'm quite proud to say that the European Parliament is very transparent. And you can all, all the people, the European citizens and everyone in the world, they can go in the website and they can find our salaries, they can find how much budget we are allowed to use, how much money we can spend, and this is very good. It builds trust and it's transparent. And it also builds expectations for the citizens. But I'm unhappy because the European Commission doesn't have the same procedure. When you go to the Commissioners, you cannot see the salaries of the staff, how much budget they have and all this stuff. So this is not as transparent the European Commission. So I encourage the European Commission to be like the European Parliament, a lot more transparent, because this will build a lot of trust. I love you all.

Madam President, it's time for Palestinians to have their own state. Most countries around the world support a two‑state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the biggest obstacle for this to really happen is the United States. The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council dozens of time to block resolutions to recognise a Palestinian state. Alongside the United States, only eight other countries have refused to recognise Palestine. On the other hand, 143 countries around the world recognise Palestine, many of them represented here in the European Parliament. I believe the EU should push for a two‑state solution and challenge its biggest ally. Now, more than ever, we should act independently from the United States in order to stop the genocide of Palestinians and finally achieve a two‑state solution.

Madam President, AI will replace most jobs and we are not ready for it. Self-driving cars are replacing drivers. AI models are replacing software developers. Robots are replacing factory workers. Jobs will be disappearing, and the hard part is that we cannot really predict which ones will disappear and when. Europe needs to prepare for these big changes, and the way to do it is to fundamentally transform education. Our current education systems were created long ago, mainly to turn children into obedient factory workers. But now times are changing. Soon factories will not need human workers anymore. Even though we refuse to acknowledge it, today children mostly learn online by themselves. Perhaps the solution to fix education is to listen to them carefully and embrace their ways. Let me finish with a quote from Isaac Asimov: 'Self-education is the only kind of education there is.'

Mr President, my uncle has been missing since the Turkish invasion of my country, Cyprus, in 1974. This had a huge impact on my family. My father was seven years old when he witnessed a suicide attempt by my grandmother because she couldn't handle it. My uncle is one of the 2 000 Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots who had disappeared, mainly during the Turkish invasion in 1974 and the intercommunal fighting of 1964. The remains of these communities' people are being searched for by communal committee, and by today half of them have been identified and returned to their relatives, who, unlike my grandmother, were lucky enough to live until that day of relief. I want to thank the European Union because it is the biggest funder of this committee, giving so far EUR 35 million. Please continue to fund this project, which not only brings peace to families like mine, but also encourages cooperation between the two communities of the island, increasing the chance of a potential solution to the Cyprus problem.

I will keep saying the same thing here. Please answer me not with a personal attack this time, but with an answer. Where do you draw the line on misinformation and truth? And who is judging? Thank you. I love you all!

I'm not saying that everything is being censored. I'm just saying there are things that have been censored in the past, and it's proven in the U.S. that the government was interfering to censor stuff. So we need to have a proper discussion and understand what is censored in Europe, because this accusation from these people that own these platforms, that we institutionalise censorship, are very important.

Madam President, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently accused the European Union of institutionalising censorship. Similar comments have also been made in the past by the owner of platform X, Elon Musk. Dear friends, if these accusations are true, then we will have a problem, as millions of posts being censored across Europe under the label of misinformation might be systemically unfair. Many times in the past, posts that were labelled as misinformation finally have turned out to be factually correct. We cannot have a proper democracy if we censor only one side of the story. According to Mark Zuckerberg, this happened with the US Government during the COVID pandemic, as they forced Meta to censor things that were factually correct. The accusations of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are very serious, and I believe we should take them into consideration. That's why I propose to invite them here to come in the European Parliament for a deep discussion on how we should moderate content.

Madam President, our education system sucks. International studies, like the famous Pisa Test, show that Europe is – and our students are – struggling more than ever. In this education system, the kids and teenagers in most EU countries, including my country Cyprus, hate school and, as a consequence, they hate learning. Studies show that when you don't like something and you are forced to do it, you can't do it well. My dear friends, let's stop ruining stupidly the happiness and the childhood of our children. Instead of kids falling in love with learning, the way the education system works makes them hate it. Is that what we really want? For a start, let's find the cooler school systems in Europe, like the one in Finland, and try to bridge the gap between the outdated ones like the one in my country, Cyprus. I believe we are really committing a crime against our children.

I think you are making a mistake because X has a part of the algorithm as open source. So you can see what is actually happening. And I think this is what social media needs to look like, because we need to understand how the algorithm is working. They need to be transparent on how the algorithm is working so we, the citizens and everyone, or the coders would tell us if something was misused. So we will know. Having transparency over the coding I think is very important and I agree with you. But some of the platforms are doing that already and we need to encourage them to do more. I love you all again.

We agree on this, first of all, but also, Mr Ștefănuță said before that in the polls it was not showing the president of Romania. The polls one week before my elections were also showing me 2 % and I received 20 % of the votes. So the new methods that we have doing polls and all this stuff is kind of in the old-fashioned way and it doesn't represent the current state of all social media. So I think democracy needs to evolve to the new state of this online social media. I love you all again, it's very exciting to have two blue cards.

By the way, thank you – it's my first blue card, I'm very excited to answer it. Social media, I think like every evolution, it takes some adaption. So we need to adapt to the new current system. This is what I'm doing, adapting to the new system. But I think yes there are some problems, we need to find different tools. Labelling everything as disinformation - where do you draw the line on disinformation and truth? Because a lot of the times in the past, we assumed something was disinformation, it was wrong. But maybe some new techniques of AI advancements and all this stuff to use on social media to, in a way, explore all the content and label something as wrong, but not to be able not to say something. But thank you, I love you all.

Madam President, perhaps I'm one of the most qualified Members of the European Parliament to talk about the use of social media platforms in elections, as they were the only tool I used to get elected and be here today. Throughout the history of representative democracy, the people that were running for office were usually the ones that had access to the traditional media of their time. Now, for the first time in history, everybody has the power to convince the people about their ideas and become a politician only by using their phone. And of course, if anyone can use social media, there will be some voices we will not like, but freedom of speech is about allowing all voices to be heard. And sometimes here in Europe, we censor voices we don't like just by labelling them disinformation. Freedom of speech is the bedrock of the integrity of elections and of democracy itself, and we need to fight to preserve it. Let's return to Voltaire's idea: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Mr President, my country, Cyprus, has two communities: Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Both communities made mistakes in the past that led us where we are now in a completely divided country. It's been 41 years since the illegal declaration of independence by the Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus. I condemn this act and any attempts to legalise it, to legitimise it. After years of negotiation between Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots, Turkey, Greece and the UK, today, 95 % of the solution to the problem has already been agreed, but the negotiations have stagnated. I ask the European Union to strengthen its efforts to encourage Turkey to join the negotiations and put an end to this long-lasting problem.

Mr President, what Israel's government is doing in Gaza is a genocide. Since the start of the war in Gaza, 43 000 Palestinians have died, from which 16 000 were children. Not only lives have been lost, but also more than 80 % of the infrastructure, like houses and schools, have been damaged, making the Palestinians of Gaza live in really terrible conditions. Of course, we should not forget the terrorist attack of Hamas on 7 October and the 1 200 Israelis that were killed. We should also condemn this attack and accept Israel's right to defend itself. But the response they actually did was completely disproportionate. We need a ceasefire right now and start immediately a conversation on the basis of a two-state solution, where Palestinians and Israelis can finally live in peace.

Mr President, my country Cyprus is mentioned in your 2024 Annual Rule of law report. From your assessment, Cyprus's justice system is lacking behind the European Union standard and I agree. In your assessment, you specifically refer to the case of the Auditor-General who was eventually fired by the Supreme Constitutional Court. I am here to express the anger of most Cypriots at this particular situation. A large majority of Cypriots believed that his firing was due to his effort to expose corruption, because those involved in corruption influenced the decision of firing. The fight against corruption always comes with a great vulnerability. Therefore, I call on the Commission to closely monitor the situation in Cyprus and help my country to overcome these vulnerabilities.

Mr President, perhaps I'm one of the most qualified members of the European Parliament to talk about social media platforms as I myself am a social media influencer by profession. I believe that the Digital Services Act is a positive step forwards, but I want to focus more on an important aspect of it. I strongly believe the way to fight hate speech and disinformation is definitely not censorship. Instead, I will propose that we encourage the platforms to create organic fact-checking systems to inform their users about the validity of the information they receive. A good example of this is Twitter's Community Node, which allows its users to highlight information when they believe that it is factually incorrect. Now, in an era of artificial intelligence, more than ever, we need to focus on what is actually true – not by censoring but by letting people know the facts and freely deciding.