The meeting between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and elected representatives of Europe's ~500 million citizens will be live-streamed after all, it was confirmed today.

MEPs had been angered by the original closed door format of the meeting, which was announced by the EU parliament's president last week. But yesterday a majority of the political groups in the parliament had pushed for it to be broadcast online.

This morning president Antonio Tajani confirmed that Facebook had agreed to the 1hr 15 minute hearing being livestreamed.

https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/998473764772950016

A Facebook spokesperson also sent us this short statement today: “We’re looking forward to the meeting and happy for it to be live streamed.”

Tajani’s announcement last week said it would start earlier, at 17.45CET, so the meeting appears to have been bumped on by half an hour. We have asked Facebook whether Zuckerberg will meet in private with the parliament's Conference of Presidents before the livestream will be turned on and update this story with any response. Update: The EU parliament confirms that Facebook founder will meet Tajani one-on-one for about 20 minutes -- before the livestreamed session with COP.
Where to watch it online?

According to Tajani's spokesman, the session will be streamed live on the EU parliament's website. As yet it doesn't appear in the EPTV schedule — but we expect to carry it here.

Update: The webstream link has now been confirmed — watch the session here.

Who is going to meet with Zuckerberg?

He will meet EU parliament president Tajani, plus the leaders of the parliament's eight political groups, and with Claude Moraes, who chairs the EU parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee, plus Jan Philipp Albrecht, Green MEP and data protection rapporteur.

It's also worth noting: This is not a formal hearing, like the ones Zuckerberg sat through in the US Senate and Congress last month. It's also not a full Libe committee hearing, where ongoing discussions remain for Facebook representatives to meet with the full Libe committee at a later date.

What will Zuckerberg be asked about?

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, MEPs are eager to discuss concerns related to social media's impact on election processes with Zuckerberg.

Indeed, online disinformation that spreads through social media is the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the UK parliament's DCMS committee which spent some five hours grilling Facebook's CTO last month. While the Facebook CEO has thrice refused to heed the committee's summons — preferring instead to meet with parliamentarians from the EU.

Other items on the agenda include privacy and data protection. Moraes is likely to ask about how Facebook's business model impacts citizens' basic rights in the EU and what could happen as a result in terms of reforms to EU regulation, as he told us Friday.

https://twitter.com/Claude_Moraes/status/997936095722688514

Politicians who will raise freedom of expression concerns are also some of the political group leaders, even as pressure in the region picked up pace on online platforms to get at policing hate speech faster.