On Tuesday 21 May, sixteen Member States - France, Germany, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia - put forward ideas for strengthening the protection of the democratic public sphere at national and European level against Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), which the European Commission is being asked to take into consideration for the next legislative cycle.
These proposals, which the countries presented in a joint declaration, are based on three pillars: - strengthen collective resilience through greater exchange of experience and by setting up a European media platform to help combat disinformation; - improve FIMI detection by making greater use of existing early warning systems; - strengthen compliance with the EU regulatory framework, in particular the ‘DSA’, which regulates the activities of digital platforms, by establishing new European sanctions and making the code of conduct on disinformation mandatory.
The idea is to build “a democratic shield” based on the detection and handling of FIMI and immunity against this phenomenon, according to a national diplomatic source.
The eight countries believe that EU action to combat FIMI must include the candidate countries. European funds allocated to these countries could be used to finance media literacy programmes.
See the declaration of the sixteen Member States: https://aeur.eu/f/caa
On Tuesday, the General Affairs Council adopted very general conclusions on the same subject, listing the various actions already taken at European level. It stresses “the importance of maximising the use of existing tools and measures”, such as the DSA, the directives on the resilience of critical entities (2002/2557) and the security of information networks (2002/2555).
See the EU Council’s conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/ca9
At an election campaign event in early May, Ursula von der Leyen, the candidate of the European People’s Party (EPP), announced her intention, if re-elected as head of the European Commission, to propose “a European democracy shield” to ensure that the EU is able to defend itself against all kinds of attacks. In her view, this shield would make it possible to detect disinformation and malicious interference, “remove content, including AI deepfakes” and make society more resilient. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)