The European Commission’s Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, visited half of the EU Member States between January and June 2024, as part of a “democracy tour” in preparation for the elections to the European Parliament which will be held from June 6 to 9. 2024. She discussed key aspects of the Commission’s recommendation on inclusive and resilient elections with national authorities responsible for the conduct and integrity of elections and with representatives of civil society.
The Democracy Tour focused on the resilience of the online information space, and four key areas of particular threat emerged from discussions with stakeholders: disinformation, foreign interference, use of digital artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity risks.
The memo attached here brings together incidents recorded during the election period in relation to the four threat zones, based on data available at the time of writing. It focuses exclusively on aspects related to the online information space and does not cover other aspects such as the organization of elections or physical threats.
This is a working document prepared to support discussions within the framework of the European Cooperation Network on the elections of 11 October 2024 on the 2024 European Parliament elections and the closing of the “Democracy Tour”. Prepared under the authority of the Vice-President, it is proposed as a contribution to the ongoing preparatory work on the Commission’s wider post-election report, as announced in the Defending Democracy package published by the Commission in December 2023.
Based on currently available information, no major information interference operations likely to disrupt the elections have been recorded. At the same time, it is widely recognized that threat levels to information integrity during the elections were high, as confirmed by the European Council’s activation of the Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) arrangements ) to combat foreign interference.
source link eu news
