The European Union’s foreign policy chief has rejected allegations that a report on Chinese disinformation and the global coronavirus pandemic was watered down in response to pressure from Beijing.
Speaking at a specially convened meeting of the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Josep Borrell said the content and the timing of the European External Action Service’s public assessment on disinformation and the pandemic had been determined by the EEAS alone. “We have not bowed to anyone,” he said. “There was no watering down of our findings, however uncomfortable it could be.”
A brewing row deepened last week after the New York Times reported that EU officials had delayed, and then rewritten, a report after China tried to block its release. “The Chinese are already threatening with reactions if the report comes out,” a senior official told colleagues in an email seen by the paper.
Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, suggested there was confusion about two separate reports – a confidential one intended for diplomats, and a second for the public that was released on Friday by the EU’s monitoring website, EU vs Disinfo. “There are two different publications,” he said. “Don’t make the mistake that the second one is the first one with a little bit of change.”
His initial explanation did not convince all MEPs. Belgian liberal Hilde Vautmans said his first statement had not been complete and called on Borrell to release earlier drafts of the disinformation report.
Nathalie Loiseau, a former career diplomat and now one of Emmanuel Macron’s closest allies in the European parliament, gave her backing to Borrell. She said the EEAS public report had been “impactful” and did not mince words. But she wanted to know why it failed to mention Chinese diplomats’ false claims about France, a key element thought to have been left out of the public report. A Chinese embassy website had claimed falsely that 80 French politicians had signed a statement using a racist slur to denigrate the head of the World Health Organization.
Borrell replied that this case was not included because it was considered to fall into a different category, “bullying by a diplomatic mission”, rather than disinformation in open sources. He added that the case had been very widely reported by the media, “so we were not trying to hide anything”.
The EU’s chief diplomat also told MEPs he first knew of the row when he read the newspapers last Friday. He criticised MEPs for attaching more weight to an apparently disgruntled member of staff who had leaked emails to the New York Times.
“Please be serious … why a single leak of a single member of the staff presenting their own impressions is more important than the whole work of the people there and my personal political commitment. Don’t weak[en] the institution,” Borrell said.
The EU’s counter-propaganda unit, the East StratCom taskforce, was created in 2015 to counter Kremlin-backed disinformation after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It has since expanded to cover disinformation targeted at the western Balkans and neighbouring countries. The coronavirus pandemic has given it a global focus, with reporting on China and Iran.
While declining to reveal the extent of EU contacts with China, Borrell did not hide Beijing’s discontent, saying: “The Chinese were not happy. They were not happy at the beginning and they are still not happy now.”