The Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, visited half of the EU Member States between January and June 2024, in a ‘Democracy Tour’ in preparation of the elections for the European Parliament held on 6 to 9 June 2024. She discussed key aspects of the Commission recommendation on inclusive and resilient elections with national authorities responsible for conduct and integrity of elections and with representatives of civil society.
The ‘Democracy Tour’ focused on the resilience of the informational space online, and four key areas of particular threat emerged from the discussions with stakeholders: disinformation, foreign interference, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, and cybersecurity risks.
The Memo annexed here gathers the incidents recorded during the electoral period in connection to the four threat areas, based on data available at the time of writing. It focuses exclusively on aspects related to the information space online and does not cover other aspects such as the organisation of elections or physical threats.
It is a working document prepared to support discussions in the framework of the European Cooperation Network on Elections on 11th October 2024 on the 2024 elections for the European Parliament and closing the ‘Democracy Tour’. Prepared under the authority of the Vice-President, it is offered as input to the ongoing preparatory work on the Commission’s broader post-election report, as announced in the Defence of Democracy Package issued by the Commission in December 2023.
Based on currently available information, no major information interference operation capable of disrupting the elections was recorded. At the same time, it is widely recognised that the threat levels for information integrity during elections were high, as confirmed by the activation by the European Council of the Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) arrangements for addressing foreign interference.
———-
First published in this link of The European Times.
