156th CoR Plenary Session (5-6 July 2023)

Rapporteur: BRZEZIN Gustaw Marek
Commission: CIVEX
"Local and regional media play important role in countering disinformation and therefore they should be supported by local and regional authorities. Only by working together, European, national, local and regional level, we can prevent, detect and expose manipulation of information. We must broaden the knowledge of representatives of local and regional authorities in raising public awareness to the mechanisms of disinformation."
-Gustaw Marek Brzezin (PL/EPP)

-This is a revised EPRS version of an ‘at a glance’ infographic published in March 2017-
More than 85 % of Europeans see 'fake news' as a problem in their own country, and 83 % view it as a problem for democracy in general. This compass will help you navigate the ocean of information, and find your way through waves of lies and disinformation.

The report, prepared by the second Special Committee on Foreign Interference (ING2), follows up on the work of the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation (INGE), and makes recommendations to address institutional and normative gaps identified in the run-up to the 2024 European elections.

The European Parliament on Thursday (1 June) endorsed a report on countering foreign interference and information manipulation, calling for a whole-of-society approach to tackling the issue.

Deepfakes are hyper-realistic media products created through artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that manipulate how people look and the things that they appear to say or do. The accessibility and outputs of deepfake generation tools are improving rapidly, and their use is increasing exponentially.
A wide range of malicious uses have been identified, including fraud, extortion and political disinformation.

Lobbying and foreign influence are normal, integrated activities in modern public policy-making and geopolitics. When these influencing activities are covert or illicit in nature, however, they can be damaging to public image and levels of public trust in our democratic societies and their institutions, including those of the EU.
The EU considers foreign interference tactics as a serious threat and is taking steps to monitor and mitigate them, by, for example, setting up specific bodies or committees, especially in the context of EU elections.
In parallel, the EU is also trying to improve the transparency of foreign influence activities. One such measure is broadening the scope of the Transparency Register, a public database of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, for the registration of transparent and ethical interest representation activities.

This first edition of the EEAS report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) threats is informed by the work of the European External Action Service’s (EEAS) Stratcom division in 2022. Based on a first sample of specific FIMI cases, it outlines how building on shared taxonomies and standards can fuel our collective understanding of the threat and help inform appropriate countermeasures in the short to the long term.

While AI technologies are expected to bring huge benefits in the coming years, spurring innovation in many sectors, their disruptive nature raises policy questions around privacy and intellectual property rights, liability and accountability, and concerns about their potential to spread disinformation and misinformation. EU lawmakers need to strike a delicate balance between fostering the deployment of these technologies while making sure adequate safeguards are in place.