France, Germany, Poland 'main Russian disinfo election targets', warns Jourová

France, Germany and Poland have recently become the main targets of Russian disinformation campaigns in the run-up to this weekend's elections, EU Commission vice-president Věra Jourová told a group of journalists in Brussels on Tuesday (4 June).

Before the 6-9 June European Parliament vote, these big countries had been “under permanent attack[s],” she said, citing non-public research from the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO).

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, long-running disinformation campaigns led by the Kremlin have been an increasing source of concern for EU policymakers — especially when it comes to the impact on elections.

Russian disinformation, Jourová said, varies by country because Kremlin propaganda targets national sensitivities.

In France, disinformation campaigns have been focused on the Olympic Games and French overseas territory in the Pacific, New Caledonia, while narratives in Germany have focused on migration and security. 

In Poland, Kremlin propaganda has been linked to Ukrainian refugees and the war. Last week, a fake news report claimed that prime minister Donald Tusk was mobilising 200,000 men starting on 1 July. Officials have denied this, attributing it to a possible Russian cyberattack on the Polish press agency.

“Being in this information war [with Russia] means that the platforms simply need to do more,” Jourová also said, as she briefed journalists about her recent meetings with CEOs of the Big Tech companies — namely TikTok, Google, X (Twitter), Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta, and Youtube, also owned by Google. 

“But, of course, when you have a country of 80 million [citizens], it requires bigger capacities than a country of eight million,” she said.

By 'doing more', she was referring to measures such as hiring locals to better understand Russian narratives and national sensitivities in EU member states or increasing companies’ capacity for content moderation and fact-checking.

According to the Digital Service Act (DSA), platforms may face sanctions if they are unable to prove they took mitigating measures against disinformation.

However, tweaking algorithms to recognise Russian-sanctioned media and ensuring that Russian propaganda does not spread unchecked is “the absolute minimum” expected by the EU commission, Jourová also said.

The EU announced bans on Sputnik and Russia Today in March 2022, right after the invasion. But the latest round of sanctions has also targeted the broadcasting activities of four more Russian outlets - Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

“And still recently, we saw some of the prominent, very convincing [and] compelling texts created by pro-Kremlin forces rank[ing] high in some of the platforms,” the Czech politician continued, warning of potential penalties.

“We will have to do our jobs as enforcers to possibly sanction that”.

The EU Commission is expected to come out with an assessment of the online electoral campaigns and how platforms have tackled disinformation linked to the 6-9 June EU elections by September.

But for the next mandate, Jourová said that child protection will become one of the priorities of the commission under future digital legislation. 

The Czech commissioner, who publicly said that she will not seek another term, also would like to see a broader disinformation strategy. She said this initiative should aim to improve national and European communication, raise awareness among citizens, increase media literacy, strengthen the role of media, open the debate about whether certain disinformation activities classify as crime and counter foreign interference. 

“Foreign interference remains a very serious threat and it may grow in the future,” Jourová warned, in the wake of allegations of Chinese espionage and possible payments by Russia to Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEPs.