European media hub warns of disinformation during the EU elections

A special committee of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) said that disinformation has been spreading more frequently as the European elections drew closer. Certain themes have been the subject of a great deal of disinformation in the 27 European Union member states, mainly EU support for Ukraine, climate change, and immigration.

The EDMO group wrote about this in a report about disinformation during the elections, which was published on Wednesday. This is why special European data teams are working during the four-day election to report incidents to member states' voting boards, like the Dutch Electoral Council.

They also report manipulated news to platforms that want to cooperate with them in removing, editing or retracting their articles. The so-called Rapid Alert Force is working on it, but the EU did not give any other details about how disinformation is being discovered and tackled.

EU services are sharing their knowledge about the spread of disinformation, such as via social media channels. Voters are misled by "clones" of reliable news websites. These fake websites, which look almost identical to the actual websites, are a source of disinformation.

Fake news is also spread via deepfakes of politicians. The EU sources said that the techniques of spreading disinformation are becoming more refined.

Russia is most active in spreading disinformation in Europe, and they are mainly fans of Vladimir Putin who are responsible, according to EU sources.

The Baltic states were most targeted with disinformation before the elections. In addition to them, the attacks mainly affected large member states, like Germany and France. However, the EU warned that not a single country will avoid information that has been manipulated.

The Netherlands was the first to vote out of the 27 member states in an election held on Thursday. Of the 720 seats for the new European Parliament, 31 are for Dutch representatives. Initial exit polling showed that the left-wing party, GroenLinks-PvdA, will be the largest party with eight seats.

They will likely be followed by the far-right Eurosceptic PVV, with seven seats. Overall, pro-Europe parties were projected to hold a wide majority of Dutch seats in European Parliament.