The European Union is facing a hybrid war. Cyberattacks, disinformation and propaganda campaigns carried out by foreign agents – mostly Russia – with the aim of destabilizing and causing chaos are ongoing. “Our democratic system and its institutions are under attack,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. in the speech he gave for the European Parliament, which re-elected her for a new five-year term. The Community administration is already preparing what the German conservative called a “European shield for democracy”, a toolkit to combat disinformation, including a European network of fact-checkers, available in the official languages of the member states. He wants to draw inspiration from the national agencies that already exist in France and Sweden.
According to community sources, the project will strengthen the work of the Foreign Action Service’s strategic communications unit against disinformation, which has been running since 2014, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. The announcement comes amid a debate in countries like Spain over how to combat hoaxes.
The basis for tackling this issue at the European level exists. And so does the definition of what needs to be combated: foreign interference in the form of disinformation or manipulation of information to create chaos and destabilize. “We look at behavior, not at narratives,” says a European official responsible for strategic communications. As an internal rule, European officials and technicians who counter disinformation do not give their first and last names. For a decade, the EU has developed a whole network to track the wave of disinformation and manipulation by foreign agents against the community club, which comes mainly from Russia. And they have special units that analyze this tide in other areas, such as the Balkans and the Sahel.
Much of the work is on the platform EUvsDisinfowhich tries to anticipate these false stories and communicate in a “proactive” way, the above-mentioned source explains. But more resources are needed. The Strategic Communication Unit consists of 16 people.
Moreover, there are already legal mechanisms in place to combat this kind of interference: from the sanctions – such as those imposed on Russian propaganda media after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine – which Brussels now proposes to strengthen, to the regulations for digital services. This rule allows big tech companies to demand the removal of digital content when that information is illegal. However, the definition of what is legal or not is in the hands of each member state. Community sources assure that this tool has already been used to eliminate harmful and illegal content during the European election campaign on 9 June.
Enemy number one that Von der Leyen is targeting in this plan is very clear: Russiaa great historical specialist in disinformation and propaganda; a country that has units in its three intelligence services that deal with this work. Moscow also often exploits current or divisive issues for its disinformation campaigns; fishing in the broth that already exists. Western intelligence services warn that they have also recently fully launched the use of artificial intelligence and are using a system of cloning to build websites identical to those of some major media outlets in order to pour their propaganda into them.
To know what is happening outside is to understand what will happen inside, don't miss anything.
Moreover, after vetoing several media outlets in the Kremlin's vicinity that participate in interference campaigns – and spread hate speech towards Ukrainian citizens – Russia is, according to Brussels, using white labels, which in reality are a smaller but multiple facade for the same media, but more complicated to detect.
In addition to these elements, the Commission wants to strengthen its early warning system, sharing information with Member States (and working with NATO and G-7 partners). It also proposes to work with national agencies that are involved in detecting this element of hybrid war in its European interpretation. If the French ViginumFounded three years ago, a cyber surveillance center that in October 2023, weeks after the Hamas attacks in Israel, discovered a Russian campaign to promote anti-Semitism by disseminating and amplifying on the Internet the appearance of Stars of David painted in a Paris neighborhood.
Von der Leyen wants to build something similar to Viginum. Or to the Swedish Psychological Defense Agencyfounded in 2022. An organization of about 60 people, which has tracked Russian campaigns that attempted to increase power the burning of Korans that took place in the Scandinavian country; and that coordinates the various government agencies in the field of disinformation. The agency advises local and regional government and the private sector to combat hoaxes that go against 'Swedish interests'.
The Commission President warns in the guidelines for the next term that technological development is enabling disinformation methods that are “harder to track, more damaging and easier to deploy.” “This enables new freedoms, but also lowers the costs of manipulating information and makes it easier for Russia and others to escalate information warfare,” he argues.
“There is an urgent need to equip the European Union with powerful cyber defence tools, to impose transparency in the foreign financing of our public life as a common standard, but also to guarantee a reliable information framework,” said the President of the European Commission.
The focus of the recently re-elected head of the Community Executive is also on the hoaxes that have affected electoral processes ‘across Europe’. “We will ensure that the transparency requirements of the Artificial Intelligence Regulation are applied and that we strengthen the focus of the content produced by this tool,” the document adds with political intentions. This roadmap concludes this section with a note that tries to reassure the most critical voices about whether this type of mechanism can limit freedom of communication. The aim, he says, is “to respect and promote freedom of expression.”