Online election ad transparency in EU 'insufficient'

"We witnessed the most digital European election campaigns ever - this brings new opportunities of political engagement for the citizens and the candidates, but also pose some challenges for free and fair elections," said EU commissioner for values and transparency, Vera Jourová.

"We all need to work together to ensure that laws are respected also online and that voters are not subject to unlawful manipulation techniques and disinformation," Jourová added.

In 2019, almost half of EU citizens relied on online news as their main source of information about the national and European elections - in which social media played a crucial part.

That is why the commission previously urged member states and political parties to make sure citizens were able to recognise paid political ads, the amount of money spent, its source and why it was targeted at them.

However, the report of the commission indicates that European "political parties did not generally undertake additional transparency activities such as listing their adverts, or disclosing their spending for online political adverts, on their websites".

According to a working paper of the commission, only half of member states required transparency for paid political ads, and only a few had specific rules applying to social media at the time.

Additionally, the commission's report reveals that not all the online platforms had a searchable database of political ads, these ad libraries were often incomplete and platforms did not give easy access to public authorities and researchers to exercise the oversight and analysis functions.

Facebook's requirements are particularly described as "problematic" since the social media giant changed its advertising rules one month before the elections - making it difficult for EU political parties to run EU-wide campaigns.

So far, the EU executive has not identified any large-scale covert interference operation in the 2019 elections from foreign actors, like Russia and China - recently identified by the commission as the main sources of disinformation in the EU.

Yet the report recognises the need to address both interference and manipulation efforts targeting elections and the democratic debate.

The upcoming European Democracy Action Plan aims to protect against foreign interference in elections taking place in the EU - as was reported to occur in the 2016 US elections and Brexit referendum.

Moreover, the commission aims to strengthen the rules applicable to European political parties and foundations - ahead of the next European elections in 2024.