LIBE II

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs II

Introduction 

Our honest sincere thoughts comprise the cornerstone of a democratic society. Attempts to manipulate our opinions distort these thoughts, bias our perceptions and ultimately threaten our ability to productively discuss political matters and ensure our elected officials are justly chosen. This concern is widespread, with 81% of Europeans believing that news which misrepresents reality is a problem for democracy according to the latest Eurobarometer.⁶

So, what is election interference and what are its dangers? Election interference encapsulates foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). This may range from presenting disinformation, attempting to manipulate and polarise opinions on a topic (notably migration or the russian war in Ukraine) or threatening the legitimacy of certain institutions/processes.⁷ FIMI also works to eradicate the trust and spaces European electorates need to have sincere political discussion.⁸

Since 2019, the European Parliament has noted concerted efforts from Russia, among other foreign actors who seeked to influence the European electorate; Russian propaganda is the most frequently detected form of propaganda, with cases doubling from 434 in 2018 to 998 in 2019.⁹ Beyond propaganda posts, there were also attempts to undermine the democratic process as whole; both by seeking to use legislative loopholes to fund political parties and by efforts to financially seduce elected officials to uphold their desired beliefs by, for instance, spreading FIMI.¹⁰

However, this is a global phenomenon and our attention must be directed beyond Europe. Upon Jair Bolsannaro’s election in Brazil 2018, a crowd of his supporters shouted “Facebook” demonstrating their belief that the platform helped him win the election. Since then, a network of accounts engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour to bolster his political support was uncovered.¹¹ Moreover, in America there is currently much discussion concerning the requests the United States government made to META to police political content in the run up to the 2020 US election.¹² These events demonstrate the global  significance and complexity of the topic.

“We cannot allow this destructive narrative, propaganda and disinformation to spread without countering it.” 

Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament

Fundamental Challenges 

Justice vs. Freedom

On one hand, the right to freely express oneself, including present alternative perspectives, is a fundamental right enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.¹³ By contrast, ensuring that electorates are receiving sincere and accurate information is fundamental to the democratic process and is simultaneously enshrined as democracy being a  core value of the EU.¹⁴

Thus, the challenge in ensuring European electorates and democratic exercises are free from ill influence lies in providing European citizens the freedom to fully engage in the democratic process (presenting, discussing opinions) whilst justly ensuring that such freedom is not exploited by  those with a desire to manipulate a certain electorate in a certain fashion. This challenge has been heightened by the rise of the internet, which enables disinformation to proliferate at a much faster rate, compared to in-person communication channels, demonstrated by the fact that on X it takes six times as long for a real story to reach 1,500 people as opposed to a fake story.¹⁵

At one end of the spectrum, full freedom would allow the electorate (and any other motivated actors) an uninhibited ability to present, share and discuss whatever they wish regardless of the factual content. In stark contrast, the other end of the spectrum would mean only allowing information to be shared once it has been verified by multiple sources and vetting individuals as having a legitimate reason to participate in political discussions before permitting them to enter such discussions.

What role do you see these values playing in our topic and how would you balance them together to work towards a resolution?

Practical implementation

Whilst the importance of defending democracy is clear, doing so in an increasingly digitised world can be more challenging. Social media companies have emerged as key actors in this space due to how many European citizens receive and exchange their political views in these spaces. However, cyberattacks as well as conflicting approaches to mitigate FIMI adopted by said social media companies means there is much to refine in terms of  how to uphold democracy on their platforms. For example, META (who own Facebook, as well as Instagram and other social media platforms) have thus far applied a centralised “fact checking” approach Conversely, X has taken a decentralised “crowdsourcing” approach.

Cyberattacks, such as the attacks against government departments in Estonia, represent another threat both to users’ data on social media companies and towards the EU institutions themselves as targets.¹⁶ As the EU institutions are highly interconnected and represent a high value target for hackers due to the sensitive information they hold, this poses a growing concern. It has been noted that there has been a sharp increase in cyberattacks as evidenced by the European Court of Auditors publishing an opinion in 2023 which affirmed the need to strengthen the cyber-resilience of the EU institutions.¹⁷

Technological Developments and their FIMI Potential

There are constant changes in the way in which we communicate and the potential to hijack such processes. From TikTok’s inception in 2016 it took only seven years before the main EU institutions banned their staff from using it due to concerns over data being collected over high value political and security targets.¹⁸ Moreover, concerns over how data may be mined to achieve political ends are well founded. The 2018 Action Plan Against Disinformation highlights the Cambridge Analytica Scandal and how misinformation can be targeted towards specific targets on the basis of illegally accessed data.¹⁹ Furthermore, the astronomical development of AI poses its own risks as the European Parliament Research Service noted that due to AI, FIMI is growing both more prevalent and more effective.²⁰ Finally, Meta recently announced that it would switch away from its third party fact checkers (initially only in the US) in view of having less false positives and syphoning real conversations.²¹ These recent events show the challenge of our topic lies in the complex and dynamic nature of the problem.

Key Stakeholders 

Social media companies such as X, Meta, Reddit –  seek to increase their profit and engage users on their platforms for as much time as possible. They have implemented (varying) policies such as community notes and fact checks, moreover they bear legal responsibilities to assess and mitigate risk pertaining to electoral processes from the EU Digital Services Act.  

European Institutions  such as the European Commission are responsible for drafting relevant legislation such as the Digital Services Act and Democracy Action Plan. Whilst the European Parliament discusses the topic, produces various press releases on the basis of parliamentary discussions and through the European Parliament Research Service produces reports on the topic.

European External Action Service (EEAS) was launched in 2011 after being agreed upon in the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. It acts as the diplomatic service of the EU  and collaborates with various other EU institutions. They launched the  East StratCom Task Force in 2015, discussed in ‘Measures in place’.

European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) is an association of fact checking organisations who follow a collaboratively formed code of practice, drawn up in 2022 by 45 fact checking organisations from 30 European countries. They implemented the Election24 Check project which sought to ensure the European electorate were properly informed to vote in the recent European elections.²²

Political Parties seek to enact their policies in government and represent the citizens who elected them so as to be elected once more and hold political influence. Political parties may enact or be subject to policies guiding their funding, campaigning and members behaviour (particularly in the run up to elections)

Citizens wish to express their political beliefs freely and to receive well intentioned information concerning political candidates and processes so that they may engaged in the democratic process

Foreign actors have explicit yet unnamed goals (i.e., to allow as much foreign funding into elections) which they often seek to enact by means of FIMI. Such actors often pursue their goals with substantial financial backing and collaborate with groups who will engage in FIMI for profit.²³ Russia is often the primary foreign actor discussed when it comes to FIMI, but it is by no means the only actor.

Measures in place 

European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) is a project run by the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. It serves as  a hub for fact checkers to collate information and is managed by a consortium led by the European University Institute

EU Digital Services act is a piece of legislation which entered into force in November 2022. As of 2024 it applies to all digital platforms and places obligations on intermediary services to apply a single set of rules across the EU. There are different (yet cumulative) obligations placed on websites depending on whether they are classified as an intermediary, hosting, online or very large sagittal service. These obligations are best expressed through this table.

East StratCom Task Force (ESTF) falls under the remit of the EEAS Strategic Communication Division and has a mandate to inform EU foreign policy on the basis of analysing the digital information environment. However, ESTF goes beyond monitoring and combating FIMI but also develops and implements strategies to communicate engagingly with those in geographically important areas within the EU as well as collaborating with other institutions such as NATO to achieve its goals.  

Democracy Action Plan was adopted in 2020 to make European democracies more resilient by: promoting free and fair elections, countering FIMI and strengthening media freedom. Thus  building on the 2018 Action Plan against Disinformation which focused on: raising awareness, detecting and analysing FIMI better, involving the private sector and bolstering inter-EU coordination. 

Projects such as the Election24 Check (EFCSN), EU and I, (European University Institute), EUvsDisinfo (ESTF) seek to combat disinformation and provide tools to the electorate to facilitate them accessing just information freely so as to promote democracy through accurate information.   

Footnotes

1. European Parliament (2023). TV still main source for news but social media is gaining ground. Link ↩︎
2.  EU vs Disinfo (2024). Building a False Facade. Link ↩︎
3.  European Commission (2024). Commission, online platforms and civil society increase monitoring during Romanian elections. Link ↩︎
4.  European Commission (2024). European elections: EU institutions prepared to counter disinformation. Link  ↩︎
5.  Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Institutions (2023). Foreign Electoral Interference Affecting EU Democratic Processes. Link ↩︎
6.  Eurobarometer (2024). European elections: EU institutions prepared to counter disinformation. Link  ↩︎
7.  European Commission (2024). European elections: EU institutions prepared to counter disinformation. Link  ↩︎
8.  Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Institutions (2023). Foreign Electoral Interference Affecting EU Democratic Processes. Link ↩︎
9.  European Parliament (2019). EU to take action against fake news and foreign electoral interference. Link ↩︎
10.  European Parliament (2024). New allegations of Russian interference in the European Parliament, in the upcoming EU elections and the impact on the European Union. Link ↩︎
11.  Julia Betts Lotufo, Stanford International Policy Review (2023). Who are they? Why are they here? Link ↩︎
12.  British Broadcasting Company (2022). Zuckerberg tells Rogan FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship. Link ↩︎
13.  The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union 1.12.2009. Link ↩︎
14.  European Union. Aims and Values. Link ↩︎
15.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology News Office (2018). Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories. Link ↩︎
16.  Council of the EU (2025). Cyber-attacks: three individuals added to EU sanctions list for malicious cyber activities against Estonia. Link ↩︎
17.  European Court of Auditors (2024).  Disinformation and cybersecurity ahead of the EU elections. Link  ↩︎
18.  Politico (2023). EU Parliament bans staff from using TikTok over ‘cybersecurity concerns’. Link ↩︎
19.  European Commission (2018). Action Plan Against Disinformation. Link  ↩︎
20.  European Parliament Research Service (2024). Combatting Foreign Interference in Elections. Link ↩︎
21.  Meta (2025). More Speech and Fewer Errors. Link  ↩︎
22.  Elections 24 Check (2024). A website launched as an initiative of the European Fact Checking Standards Network. Link ↩︎
23.  European Parliament (2023). Foreign Interference: MEPs call for urgent protection of 2024 European elections. Link ↩︎