Could Europe shield elections from bots, deepfakes, and foreign interference?
The EU needs a security update to tackle foreign influence campaigns during elections.
- European Parliament backs proposals to strengthen defenses against foreign interference and election manipulation.
- Lawmakers want platforms to tackle malicious bots, deepfakes, and fraudulent political advertising used to influence elections.
- One report identifies Russia as the primary foreign interference threat, while also citing threats from Belarus, China, Iran, and North Korea
- MEPs propose tracking donors behind cryptocurrency political contributions to make covert foreign financing harder.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The European Parliament has backed a package of proposals aimed at defending the EU’s political institutions and news outlets from foreign interference and disinformation campaigns during elections.
With 420 votes in favor, 220 against, and 26 abstentions, the European Parliament adopted a report from a special committee on the European Democracy Shield.
The committee was set up in December 2024 and tasked with identifying ways to protect democratic institutions in the EU against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), disinformation campaigns, and election manipulation.
Members of the committee found that the EU’s current approach is fragmented, leaving Member States unable to counter these threats on their own.
According to the report, Russia is the EU’s greatest external threat to its democratic integrity due to the country’s frequent hybrid attacks on European democratic institutions, including cyberattacks, espionage, signal jamming, physical sabotage, and arson. These kinds of threats also originate from Belarus, China, Iran, and North Korea.
“As these attacks are happening largely in the digital sphere, MEPs demand rigorous enforcement of existing digital rules (such as the Digital Services and AI Acts), rather than new legislation,”the report says.
In addition, social media and other online platforms should do more to thwart automated accounts, or bots, from being used to interfere with elections. Therefore, measures against malicious deepfakes and fraudulent political advertising have to be implemented.
To protect elections from foreign influence, the report proposes a “know your donor” principle for cryptocurrency-based political donations. The goal is to stop secretive financing campaigns by political adversaries.
Lastly, to make sure the EU will continue to function in times of crisis, the report recommends regular large-scale exercises, the development of an EU-wide crisis alert app, and the designation of an annual “European Preparedness Day.”
Tomas Tobé, a Swedish MEP from the European People’s Party and rapporteur of the special committee on the European Democracy Shield, said that the objective of the report was to protect democracy rather than regulate political opinions.
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“Russian bots are not free speech. Foreign interference is not free speech. And manipulating our elections is certainly not free speech,” he said during the parliamentary debate on Tuesday.
The proposals are part of wider European efforts to make democratic institutions more resilient as cyberattacks, AI-generated content, and coordinated online influence campaigns become increasingly sophisticated.
The European Parliament’s vote adds political weight to a more coordinated European response.
