EU DisinfoLab’s mission is to raise awareness on disinformation and the manipulation of information, and contribute to a better information landscape.

We advocate for:

  • A trustworthy and transparent information ecosystem
  • Regulation that favours collective intelligence and includes civil society in the discussions
  • Efforts to tackle disinformation in order to enhance and protect our democratic freedoms online

In focus

Countering disinformation – Issues and solutions for EU decision-makers
This short booklet gives an introduction to disinformation in the digital age, to help defend our societies from large-scale manipulation.
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Liability of online intermediaries – the US and EU approaches
Recent US attacks on the EU’s approach to harmful and illegal content online relate to truth much like a drunk to a lamppost – used for support rather than illumination. This post offers context, showing that while EU and US approaches share motivations, key differences challenge much of the recent criticism.
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Your report is important to us – please overcome some unnecessary barriers to submit it
This blog post builds on our previous work on malicious semi-compliance, taking a deeper dive into the lengthy and burdensome reporting mechanisms platforms have designed to discourage users from reporting illegal content, despite the DSA’s requirement for user-friendly notice mechanisms.
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What matters most right now

DSA – from promise to practice

We advocate for the effective and consistent enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) across all EU Member States. While the legal framework is firmly in place, its full potential remains underused. Our priority is to support and encourage national authorities (and the European Commission) to make full use of the tools available, ensuring the DSA delivers on its promise in practice.​

Driving deterrence

We support the use of sanctions as an important tool, but current enforcement measures fall short of creating meaningful deterrence. The absence of real consequences allows sanctioned entities to continue their harmful and illegal activities with limited accountability for them and their enablers. Our focus is on strengthening enforcement so that sanctions are not only available, but genuinely impactful in driving compliance and responsible behaviour.

Funding for evidence and accountability

We call for sustained and robust civil society funding under the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). At a time of growing geopolitical pressure and increasingly powerful tech actors, there is a real risk of weakening this essential counterbalance. Long-term European support is crucial to ensure civil society can continue to uphold accountability and the public interest.​

Policy priorities

EU DisinfoLab advocates for the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) to prioritise sustained investment in Europe’s democratic information ecosystem. We call for AgoraEU to explicitly support civil society counter-disinformation, alongside media funding, in order to strengthen resilience against foreign interference and manipulative influence operations.

No resilience without resources: funding the information ecosystem through AgoraEU

You can find EU DisinfoLab’s policy brief and materials on the MFF here.

Fighting disinformation through MFF support for civil society

Find examples of what has been achieved with current MFF funding here (pdf).

EU DisinfoLab supports strong Digital Services Act (DSA) enforcement, as a key tool to increase transparency and accountability in how online intermediaries distribute and moderate online content. Strong, consistent enforcement, backed by civil society evidence and oversight is crucial to protecting Europe’s information integrity and democratic resilience.

Digital Services Act (DSA) enforcement in the EU Member States

Learn more about our analysis of DSA enforcement on a national level here.

Malicious semi-compliance as the platform approach to EU regulation

Learn more about how platforms are avoiding meaningful compliance in our Malicious Semi-compliance blog post.

webinar: DSA: Unfolding the European Commission’s first decision against X

This webinar, part of our ‘Evidence & Enforcement’ series, explores the European Commission’s first non-compliance decision under the DSA.

webinar: Navigating the DSA Delegated Act on data access

This webinar explores how the DSA’s Article 40 data access mechanism and its delegated act enable researchers to study platform behaviour, strengthen transparency, and support more effective enforcement in practice.

EU DisinfoLab believes that sanctions are a crucial EU instrument against Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), but their impact remains limited due to inconsistent enforcement. The core challenge is not illegality of the content itself, but preventing sanctioned actors from accessing EU-based infrastructure and commercial services. EU DisinfoLab calls for more targeted enforcement to ensure sanctions effectively disrupt disinformation networks.

Building a common operational picture of FIMI

Read our recommendations in our report on building a common operational picture of FIMI here.

EU DisinfoLab supports the overall objective of the European Media Freedom Act to safeguard media freedom and pluralism, while warning against provisions that may weaken information integrity. We strongly opposed the inclusion of the Article 18 “media exemption,” which risks distorting incentives, by shielding problematic content from timely moderation.

EU DisinfoLab participated in the Commission’s call for consultations for Article 18 guidelines, suggesting that Article 18.1 (d) and (g) declarations should be automatically forwarded to the responsible national authorities, so that the veracity of declarations can be automatically checked by those bodies, if and when needed – after all, a core principle of the EU is that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizen. The Commission did not include this recommendation in its guidelines.

Reject the media exemption

EU DisinfoLab previously campaigned against a media exemption when it was proposed in the DSA - find our position here.

The European Commission’s EMFA proposal is paving the way for the media exemption to come back

Read our policy statement about media exemption in EMFA here.

Policy statement on Article 17 of the proposed European Media Freedom Act

Read our policy statement about Article 18 (originally Article 17 of the proposal) here.

EU DisinfoLab supports strict enforcement of the AI Act’s bans on manipulative AI systems and strong safeguards for high-risk applications. Transparency obligations for AI-generated and AI-manipulated content must be applied consistently to protect the information space. We are concerned that proposed rollbacks under the AI “simplification” (deregulation) agenda risk weakening oversight and accountability, even before the law is fully implemented.

AI Disinfo Hub

You can find an extensive list of resources on AI including news, webinars and research on our AI Disinfo Hub.

EU DisinfoLab is concerned that the Digital Omnibus, presented as simplification, would weaken key EU safeguards on data, AI, and cybersecurity. The proposed rollbacks would narrow protections for personal and inferred sensitive data, while allowing broader reuse of data for AI without consent, therefore  increasing risks of hyper personalisation, disinformation, and platform abuse.

You can find more resources on the topic by organisations such as EDRi and People v. BigTech.

EU DisinfoLab is not a signatory to the Code of Conduct on Disinformation (formerly Code of Practice), as it offers limited added value beyond existing legal obligations, while requiring significant civil society resources. Our analysis is that for platforms, the Code functions largely as reputational cover rather than a driver of meaningful accountability.

Position of the EU DisinfoLab on the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation

Read EU DisinfoLab's position on the Code here.

Webinar: The EU Code of Practice on disinformation: evaluating VLOPSE compliance and effectiveness

Watch a webinar about an EDMO report evaluating the effectiveness of the Code of Conduct here.

Brussels corner

In our Brussels corner, we share insights into EU policy, with updates on legislative files and developments at European level.

update 08/05/2026

Bulgaria's parliamentary elections: domestic disinformation, platform gaps, and the limits of the DSA

On 4 May, the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS) in the European Parliament organised an exchange of views on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and the integrity of the electoral process during the most recent parliamentary elections in Bulgaria. The participants were the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Velizar Shalamanov, the journalist Christo Grozev, and Antoinette Nikolova from Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), a Bulgarian monitoring organisation.

Less FIMI, more DIMI

The Bulgarian government’s position was that there was no sign of any significant foreign information manipulation, despite reports being submitted every week to the Prime Minister’s office, and despite strong collaboration between Bulgaria and the European External Action Service’s (EEAS) FIMI. According to them, the main battleground was domestic.

The monitoring carried out by the BFMI and by the journalist Christo Grozev found that there was an already well-established network within the country for the creation and dissemination of disinformation. The social media contents of Rumen Radev, winner of the elections, were quickly boosted by algorithms to 9 million views among a population base of only 6,5 million people, with his engagement increasing by 83.000%. 

The speakers also underlined the importance of cooperation with civil society and more specifically with social media platforms. Bulgaria engaged the Digital Services Act (DSA) and sought EEAS assistance but had no operational clarity about which content could actually be deleted, especially in such a country where most of the speech does not fall foul of the law. TikTok proactively approached Bulgarian BFMI, cooperated efficiently and proposed to collaborate also during the Bosnian elections. In contrast, the speakers from BFMI explained that Meta was withholding data and discovered no coordinated inauthentic behavior, directly contradicting the monitoring data provided. 

Three asks to Brussels

Three specific recommendations were suggested by Grozev: 

  1. Develop a consistent definition of coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social media sites, so that some platforms cannot deny evidence from researchers; 
  2. Enforce more efficiently the Digital Services Act on major social media companies;
  3. Allow national digital coordinators real access to data, because civil society alone is not enough.

Joint committee work on the AgoraEU funding package gets underway

Work is continuing apace in the preparation of the European Parliament’s position on the AgoraEU funding package. Due to the inclusion of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme in AgoraEU, this is crucial for the fight against disinformation.

Unusually, two committees are in joint charge of the file – Culture (CULT) and Civil Liberties (LIBE). Deliberations of the joint CULT/LIBE committee structure will start in public in June with a lot of progress already achieved behind the scenes on the draft Report. This work will be supported by other relevant committees, which will provide advisory “Opinions” on the proposal. The draft opinions of the Gender Equality (FEMM) and Budgetary Control (CONT) committees have already been published, as have the proposed amendments of the FEMM Committee . The Parliament has prepared a thorough summary of the AgoraEU proposal 

Digital Services Act: developments in enforcement

“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” as the famous quotation from the Bible says. Not without justification, the European Commission has been lobbing a lot of stones, or infringement proceedings, at EU Member States, for failing to live up to their obligations under the Digital Services Act. These infringement proceedings are putting pressure on the Member States that haven’t already done so, to appoint duly empowered Digital Service Coordinators to enforce the DSA in their jurisdiction.

Yet, if we look at the European Commission itself, it is far from without sin. It has failed completely in its role as enforcement authority for very large online platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSES) with regard to even the simplest and clearest provision in the DSA – the Article 38 requirement to provide a non-profiling-based feed. In the end, a Dutch NGO had to take matters into its own hands and go to court, and win. Similarly the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (Society for Freedom Rights, GFF) gave up waiting for the Commission to take action, and took a case to court in Berlin to enforce its right under the DSA to order X to provide data access to researchers for monitoring misinformation, and won. 

Maybe it is time for the EU Member States to lob some stones back in the direction they came from. In relation to implementation of article 260(3) of the Lisbon Treaty on non-transposition of EU laws into national law, the Commission said that it “considers that the Article 260(3) instrument [legal proceedings] should be used as a matter of principle in all cases of failure to fulfil an obligation”.

As a matter of the same principle, maybe the Member States should start looking to test legal solutions when it is the Commission itself that is not respecting its obligations.