EU declares war on disinformation: tech giants that refuse the rules will be removed from the community market

In a context marked by political pressure, external interference and an explosion of disinformation fueled by new technologies, the European Parliament is raising the stakes and tightening the rules, sending a message to the big platforms and actors that take advantage of the information chaos that, if they do not comply with the legislation, they are out of the game, said Delphine Colard, spokesperson for the institution, yesterday in Brussels.

"The EU has ensured, through legislation, that when you see political advertising online, you have to know who paid for it; there must be a register in this regard. Tech giants, such as Meta, instead of enforcing the legislation, have chosen not to allow any political or societal advertising anymore, because they do not want to comply with the transparency rules. Parliament considers this completely unfair, but it shows that Europe sets its own rules: if you do not want to play by the rules, then you cannot sell your services,” said Delphine Colard.

Behind this position lies a harsh economic reality: platforms are losing money and organizations are migrating to alternatives that comply with European law. It is, in fact, the beginning of a repositioning of power in the relationship between states and Big Tech.

She also referred to the direct struggle currently taking place for the control of the information space and for the health of European democracy, especially since, on April 12, parliamentary elections will be held in Hungary, and in a week, parliamentary elections will be held in Bulgaria.

"The European Parliament is very concerned about interference and ensuring an informed choice for citizens. We know that legislation is not the only miracle solution; we advocate an approach that involves the whole of society: the media, the legislature, the judiciary, civil society and the institutions,” said Delphine Colard, who added some concrete and alarming examples: "The Dutch authorities are very clear about LLMs; they noticed, for example, on ChatGPT, that they had a major problem because there was content before the Dutch elections that was distorted and that gave incorrect specific voting instructions or that offered support for a particular party. As a result, the national authority in the Netherlands went to OpenAI and said: "I'm sorry, this is not allowed.'”

However, the European Parliament spokesperson noted that we are witnessing an unbalanced fight, because implementing the EU's legislation in the digital field, in the face of tech giants, is difficult, as we are talking about large companies, and "the political pressure for them to have a free hand in the EU is extremely strong". In this context, the Parliament assumes the role of counterweight: "working groups are putting pressure to support the Commission and national authorities". Behind these actions there is also a more subtle strategy, which aims to expose and understand the mechanisms of manipulation. "Our role is to raise awareness of the tactics of disinformation actors, we identify who is doing these disinformation campaigns", said Delphine Colard, who specified that the European External Action Service exposes these actors weekly in the newsletter "EU versus Disinfo". The targets are clear: foreign actors, coordinated networks and even hijacked democratic processes. "We see Members of Parliament targeted by foreign actors and votes manipulated,” said Ms Colard.

In this invisible war, the tools are diverse, from training MEPs to adapted communication strategies. "We provide training to our members and teams to be more resilient in the face of cybersecurity and disinformation. Sometimes we use strategic silence to avoid falling into traps, other times we need to dismantle disinformation and raise alarm bells,” said the European Parliament spokesperson.

She also presented data showing the scale of the phenomenon: over 70% of EU citizens are concerned about disinformation, and in Romania this percentage was 68% in 2025.

That is why the European Parliament is trying to educate the public, especially the younger generations, on the mechanisms of manipulation. "We made videos in Romanian explaining some of the disinformation techniques: silencing dissenting voices, flooding the space, taking them out of context, polarizing them and creating false emotions,” said Delphine Colard.

She also referred to the protection of the media, as part of the protection of democracy, and recalled that the anti-SLAPP directive enters into force on May 7, a directive that drastically sanctions abusive lawsuits against journalists, due to the desire of some politicians or authorities to eliminate inconvenient voices from the public space.