Commission says disinformation efforts failed to sway EU election

Despite waves of fake news and foreign interference campaigns, the European parliamentary election proved resilient against disinformation threats.
The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) recorded the highest-ever level of European Union-related disinformation on online platforms in May, the month before Europeans headed to the polls, according to an assessment memo drafted by the Commission and seen by POLITICO.
But that wave of shady activity didn’t produce a “major incident … capable of disrupting the elections,” European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said ahead of the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
She will present the findings of her so-called democracy tour this past spring, when she visited a dozen EU countries to raise awareness of election manipulation by rogue actors, meeting with officials, regulators and experts. “I felt the pressure to ring the bell of the election integrity and to protect them against Putin’s and others’ manipulation and interference,” she said.
At the start of this big election year, fears were rampant that artificial intelligence — more specifically, highly manipulative deepfakes — could destabilize the process.
These concerns didn’t materialize and the technology has not been used “to a large extent,” the EU analysis says, despite some cases of unlabeled AI-generated content use by parties, such as France’s National Rally and Italy’s League.
“We were predicting, you know, more problems this year than there has been,” said Elsa Pilichowski, the OECD’s public governance director, confirming that AI hadn’t been a “game-changer” in the election.
Europe dodged the bullet this year, but that doesn’t mean it will have similar luck next time.
Currently, governments are not ready to deal with the risk of generative AI hijacking ballots, Pilichowski warned. Officials “are discussing policy options,” she said. “They are in the process of getting ready. But I don’t think we are ready yet for the risks that are coming up.”
The Commission’s assessment — a “snapshot,” as Jourová called it — can help identify the shortcomings. It will give “a sense of tactics, techniques and evolving risks so it can serve as an example for any vote in future to address these threats,” she stressed.
Social media platforms, for instance, could have cracked down more actively on disinformation, as the analysis highlights.
Of the 1,321 online posts fact-checked and identified as disinformation by the Elections24Check network, 45 percent weren’t addressed by platforms, with response rates varying. Meta acted on 80 percent of flagged posts, TikTok on 40 percent, X on 30 percent and YouTube on 25 percent.
According to Jourová, a “whole-of-society approach” is needed, which includes “strategic communication, pre-bunking of the disinformation narratives, effective law enforcement for the digital space, strong independent media as well as the research, fact-checking and critical thinking.”
This article has been updated.