The European Union is facing hybrid warfare. Cyberattacks and disinformation and propaganda campaigns carried out by foreign agents – largely Russia – with the aim of destabilizing and creating chaos are constant. “Our democratic system and its institutions are under attack,” declared the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Thursday in her speech to the European Parliament, which re-elected her for a new five-year term. The Community Executive is already preparing what the German conservative called a “European shield for democracy,” a toolbox to combat disinformation that will include a European network of fact-checkers, available in the official languages of the Member States. The project, according to community sources, will reinforce the work of the strategic communication unit against disinformation that the External Action Service (the diplomatic service) has been carrying out since 2014, after the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. The announcement comes in the midst of a debate in countries such as Spain on how to combat hoaxes.
The basis for addressing this issue at European level exists. There is also a definition of what is to be combated: foreign interference in the form of disinformation or manipulation of information to create chaos and destabilise. “We look at behaviour, not narrative,” says a European official in charge of strategic communication. As an internal rule, European officials and technicians who counter disinformation do not give their first and last names. For 10 years, the EU has developed an entire network to detect the flood of disinformation and manipulation of foreign agents towards the community club, coming mainly from Russia, the Balkans and the Sahel. Much of the work is located on the EUvsDisinfo website, which seeks to anticipate these false narratives and communicate in a “proactive” manner, explains the cited source. But more resources are needed. The Strategic Communication Unit has 16 people.
There are already legal mechanisms to combat this type of interference, such as sanctions – such as those imposed on Russian propaganda media after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine – which Brussels is now considering reinforcing in the Digital Services Regulation. This regulation allows the removal of digital content when the information is illegal. However, the definition of what is legal or not is left to each Member State. Community sources say that this tool has already been used to remove harmful and illegal content in the campaign for the European elections on June 9.
The number one enemy that Von der Leyen is targeting in this plan is very clear: Russia. She says so herself. The Commission President explains in her programme that technological development allows for methods of disinformation that are “harder to track, more damaging and easier to deploy”. “This allows for new freedoms, but it also reduces the cost of manipulating information and makes it easier for Russia and others to escalate the information war,” she argues.
In addition to these elements, the Commission wants to strengthen its early warning system, where it exchanges information with Member States (and where there is collaboration with NATO and G-7 partners). It also plans to deepen collaboration with national agencies dedicated to detecting this element of hybrid warfare in its European interpretation. Such as the French Viginum, created three years ago, a cyber surveillance centre that detected in October 2023, weeks after the Hamas attacks in Israel, a Russian campaign to promote anti-Semitism by spreading and magnifying on the internet the appearance of some Stars of David painted in a Paris neighbourhood.
Von der Leyen wants to build something similar to Viginum. Or to the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency, created in 2022. An organisation of around 60 people, which has detected Russian campaigns that tried to magnify the burning of Korans that took place in the Nordic country; and which coordinates the different government agencies on disinformation. The agency advises local and regional administrations, and the private sector to combat hoaxes that go against “Swedish interests”.
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“It is urgent to equip the European Union with powerful cyber defence tools, to impose transparency in the foreign financing of our public life as a common rule, but also to guarantee a reliable information framework,” said the President of the European Commission.
The newly re-elected head of the European Executive is also focusing on the hoaxes that have affected electoral processes “throughout Europe”. “We will ensure that the transparency requirements of the artificial intelligence regulation are applied and that we reinforce the approach to the content produced by this tool,” adds the document of political intentions. The document concludes this section with a note that seeks to reassure the most critical voices about whether this type of mechanism can curtail freedom of communication. The text assures that the objective is to “respect and promote freedom of expression.”