EU Parliament wants common strategy against disinformation
Malicious foreign actors find it easy to interfere and manipulate information in the European Union because of lack of awareness and counter measures, concludes an inquiry made by the European Parliament. Separately, the Parliament has set up three new committees to look into the use of spyware by EU governments, malicious foreign interference, and lessons from the pandemic.
A conclusion is that is that EU needs to create a common strategy to face the challenge of disinformation, including by putting in place specific sanctions related to foreign interference and disinformation campaigns. The report was adopted with 552 votes, 81 against and 60 abstentions.
The 38-member “Committee of inquiry to investigate the use of the Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware” will investigate alleged breaches of EU law in the use of the surveillance software by, among others, Hungary and Poland, the Parliament says in a press release.
The committee is going to look into existing national laws regulating surveillance, and whether Pegasus spyware was used for political purposes against, for example, journalists, politicians and lawyers. The vote to establish the committee of inquiry was carried 635 in favour, 36 against and 20 abstentions.
Foreign powers’ manipulation
The Parliament’s inquiry into mapping how malicious foreign powers manipulate information and interfere in the EU to undermine democratic processes concludes that malicious actors can, without fear of consequences, influence elections, carry out cyber-attacks, recruit former senior politicians and advance polarisation in public debate.
Lack of awareness a major issue
The report by the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation (INGE) says that a general lack of awareness of the severity of foreign interference and information manipulation, overwhelmingly carried out by Russia and China, is exacerbated by loopholes in legislation and insufficient coordination between EU countries.
”In the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian government has demonstrated that “even information can be weaponised” as Russia spreads “disinformation of an unparalleled malice and magnitude” to deceive its citizens and the international community about the war. Parliament welcomes the recently-introduced EU-wide ban on Russian propaganda outlets such as Sputnik TV and RT”, the Parliament says in a statement.
Measures recommended
The Parliament recommends the following measures:
- broadly distributed, pluralistic, independent media, journalists, fact checkers and researchers should receive public funding;
- consideration given to revoking the licenses of organisations distributing foreign state propaganda;
- forcing social media platforms, which serve as vehicles for foreign interference, to stop boosting inauthentic accounts that drive the spread of harmful foreign interference, including in languages other than English;
- European universities should reconsider their cooperation with Confucius Institutes, which are Chinese lobby platforms;
- seek clarification on “highly inappropriate” relations between certain European political parties and Russia;
- ban foreign funding of European and national political parties;
- urgently improve cybersecurity, list surveillance software such as Pegasus as illegal; and
- make it harder for foreign actors to recruit former top politicians after they have left their job.
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