Parliament’s Press Service organises a briefing for media on the practical details for covering the elections. It covers Parliament’s main legislative achievements during its ninth term, as well as unfinished business to be dealt with by the new Parliament. Media also is provided with practical information on the three key events in the run-up to the elections: One month to go (9 May); Eurovision debate with the lead candidates for the EU Commission Presidency (23 May); and Election night (9 June). Protecting the European election from disinformation and external interference by Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign (Screening of the TV advertising spot) by Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns.

Brussels

statement

press conference

2024 European elections (T)

EE2024 campaign material (T)

2024 European Election campaign briefing: Protecting the European election from disinformation and external interference and presentation of the Institutional election campaign (Screening of the TV advertising spot)

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson&rsquo;s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, So, as Neil just stated, and at the last European Council President Metsola highlighted again that disinformation is a threat to democracies, election times in Member States and that the European level, of course is sensitive moments. But of course, the EU and the Member States are prepared to address them. When we look at the national elections over the past two years, we look at different reports, including from fact checking organisations and media, three narratives tend to tend to stand out, one that is to undermine the elections, the stolen elections and fraud, and others seeking to suppress voters, so voting suppression, and a third one seeking to hijack any high profile topic to sow polarisation. It can be health Covid, the support to Ukraine, migration, women's rights, LGBTIQ rights...

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, All these narratives try to impact democracy, seeking disengagement of the citizens and distrust generally in parliamentary democracies. If I have to give examples we've seen in different Member States, it can be false instructions on how to vote that we saw in Greece, in the Netherlands, for example; stories about pens with disappearing ink that we saw in Slovenia, in Spain, in Finland, in Estonia; claims that there are physical threats to polling station for fake bomb alerts, for example, in Bulgaria, in Spain or in Poland, or fake polls used to prove that results are wrong in the Netherlands.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, So, what is being done to address it ahead of the elections? First of all, the EU has been acting as a team on the legislative side over the last years. There has been several pieces of legislation that are key to prevent this information to spread. It can be the disinformation, the Digital Services Act, it can be the Artificial Intelligence Act or the Act on Political Advertisement. But it's also because we know that media are a key antidote to disinformation, the Media Freedom Act and the anti-SLAPP Act.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, In the Parliament, you have noted that there was a dedicated committee on foreign interference working for three years, with key reports adopted in June 2022 and 2023, major resolutions adopted last February and last week in April in Strasbourg on New allegations of Russian interference in the European Parliament and in democracy. But beyond legislation, what the Members have advocated for in their several reports is the need of a whole of society approach. So, it's not solely legislation that can act as a silver bullet. It requires many actors that have a role to play in preserving or information space and democracy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, It's making sure, for example, that we have a better situational awareness, knowing the trends, knowing the developments, and to learn together how to anticipate them. It can be resilience building. Preventing is always better than cure. Empowerment of citizens with the right tools is important. The same goes with proactive communication on what the EU stands for and what it really does and delivers. But we also work on debunking or response, making sure that we can pre-empt some of these narratives to take ground.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, How do we do that? We work hand in hand with other partners, institutional partners in the Commission. I want to highlight the European Cooperation Network on elections. It's a coordination of all national electoral authorities that work hand in hand to exchange best practices and preserve these European elections. We work with the External Action Service, with the Rapid Alert System, connecting all the contact points on disinformation in different Member States. And we liaise, of course, with the civil society with, for example, the European Digital Media Observatory or the European Fact-checking organisation. So, those are organisation of fact checkers that focus a dedicated specific attention on elections these days. They have newsletters that you can subscribe to.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, In the Parliament, we do all our part and we build on existing good practices ahead of the elections. For example, in the interinstitutional website we have on elections, elections.eu. There is no dedicated section on free and fair elections. It is built on the model of the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic States, to make sure that reliable information on the way that elections are conducted is available to pre-empt some of these electoral fraud narratives. We have an election an educational toolkit that is distributed through teachers across the EU, and a fact sheets with ten ways to tackle disinformation in times of election for all the people countering or groups of visitors and multipliers.

SOUNDBITE (English), Delphine Colard, Spokesperson’s service and presentation of the Institutional election campaign, But we also talk whenever we can to journalist groups, students and teachers. And we have free banking, as we call them videos, making sure these videos are spread on social media, on YouTube. And they explain several tactics that are played by disinformation actors to try to fool citizens. It's playing on emotions, sowing polarisation, or flooding the information space with contradictory messages to seek a specific political gain. So, the risks are there, but we have a better situational awareness. We are better at providing resilience and awareness raising and working together, hand in hand, with Member States and other institutions on response. Media have a particular role to play. The members of this Parliament underline that pluralistic and independent media remain the powerful antidote to disinformation. Thank you for your attention.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, Good morning. I'm going to take you through, this morning, the last part of the information campaign for the of the European Parliament for these elections, our "Go to vote" video, and the surrounding assets that we have for it. But at the beginning, I would like to take you a little bit through the context of this last part of the European elections campaign. We have conceptualised this campaign in two large parts. The first one is to talk about the actual legislative work of the European Parliament, talk about delivery, about what the European Parliament has done in this past legislative phase. There have been many comments and many explanations made not only in this briefing today, but also before, how we can highlight the impact of the European Parliament's decisions on people's lives throughout this legislative period.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, Now we are arriving at the second the last part, the "Go to vote" phase, where we actually would like to motivate people in participating in the democratic process, encourage them to motivate others as well. This, we are doing as a complement to national candidates, political parties, campaigns. What we are doing, we are using both new digital tools and we are using traditional campaigning techniques. These methods range from modern digital online communication campaigns to engaging grassroot organisations, to engaging individual citizens, to engaging civil society organisations that are interested in sharing information about the elections with their stakeholders, with their Members, with the families and friends, and that are therefore amplifying the message of using your vote in the European elections, 6 to 9 June.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, I am pretty sure that you will have seen both within the Parliament and on social media. The first part of this "Go to vote" campaign, "Use your vote" campaign that we have launched at the beginning of this year. The skywalk outside the European Parliament here, for example. But this is something that we have rolled out across the 27 Member States with the help and engagement of all the European Parliament liaison offices in the Member State. So, this is clearly a campaign that is running in all 24 languages, that is running in all countries, that is running on the different range of out-of-home, advertisement placements. We have it on buses. Every one of you has to luck to go through Zaventem, every now and then, you should have seen, the use your vote advertising, that we have in the arrival hall.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, As I said, we have it across the country. This is from Portugal. This is from Barcelona. We have it here in Ireland. And we can see this in pretty much each of the Member States of the European Union. You also can see it on the outside of one of the buildings here in Parliament. And this is one, of the tools that we have been using over the first part, of this "Go to vote" campaign since the beginning of this year. We put it on this building and wherever we else we put it, so you can put it in your calendar. The reason behind that is relatively simple. Remind me of the date when the elections are taking place. Sounds simple, but it's one of the cool things that we actually really need to do.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, When are the European elections taking place? And how can I help citizens remind themselves of these elections? So, they actually put it in the calendar. I'd like to ask how many of you have actually the election date in your phone already saved? If you don't, please do. There is actually quite simple tool that we would invite you, and that we do invite all the citizens to use. Remind me to vote. It's a new tool that we have introduced in this election campaign, and which is accessible via the election website and also heavily promoted from our site. Remind me to vote a simple tool. Sign up with your email address in the country you would like to vote in, and you get nothing else but two three emails the week before the elections, the day of the elections, and once more in the afternoon, just to make sure that you would not forget to use your vote at these elections.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, Now we are working with today, in the second phase that we have launched today, the second phase, the last phase of our information activities ahead of the elections. And that also means that we are enhancing the baseline "Use your vote". We have been using so far by second line use your vote or others will decide for you. Again, there is a range of assets that we will use in print, in out-of-home, in social media advertising that are available in all 24 languages and that now come really to the core of our narrative, our democracy narrative as Jaume has already explained in the beginning that democracy should never be taken for granted, that it is a collective achievement and the collective responsibility in which we all have a role.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, We do safeguard our democracy, mainly by voting in elections, in the understanding that the more people vote, the stronger democracy becomes. The more people vote, the more legitimate the decisions made in this House after the elections over the next five years will become, and so these collective decisions, this going to vote at the foundation of our campaign for the European elections and what this baseline, this enhanced baseline would like to express is that you're, of course, free not to vote, but you should do so in the understanding that if you do not vote, one could say you live in someone else's democracy and you definitely live by someone else's decisions. So, therefore use your vote or others will decide for you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, In order to support and also to spread this message, this narrative, like in 2019, we set out to produce a core film asset, the Use Your Vote film that has been launched this morning and that will run until the elections. And what we wanted to do is very much to add an emotional layer to our communication activities as we get closer to the 2024 European elections. The working title is "Pass It On", and it's a story about democracy. The impact of democracy can be difficult to see in the short run. The day to day business in our everyday lives, it's sometimes not easy to see what democracy has actually done for my life, for our lives.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philipp Schulmeister, Director for campaigns, So, our idea was, we take a step back. Over time, this impact of democracy becomes clearer. So, we set out to give the spotlight to citizens, Europeans who have experienced democracy, who have experienced the impact on democracy, who have experienced voting over the longest time possible. We were looking for senior citizens from across Europe, people who have lived long enough to see the world change fundamentally, people who probably are facing the last vote of their lifetime and to therefore have the urge to pass on a message because they have lived the impact on democracy through their lifetime. Their message is to make democracy live on long after they are gone. And that to do so, it only takes one simple thing. Use your vote or others will decide for you. So, I would like to show you the nearly four minute long form of this film that has been produced. Message from my grandchild and we can take the questions and a few other explanations afterwards. So, thank you.