EPP Group Conclusions of the

INGE +ING2
* **

* “Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes

in the European Union, including Disinformation”
** “Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes
in the European Union, including Disinformation, and the Strengthening
of Integrity, Transparency and Accountability in the European Parliament”
INDEX

Foreword, Manfred Weber MEP

Chairman of the EPP Group in the European Parliament . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction, Javier Zarzalejos MEP

First Vice-Chair of INGE and ING2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Introduction, Vladimír Bilčík MEP

Coordinator for the EPP Group in INGE and ING2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Contribution, Sandra Kalniete MEP

Rapporteur of INGE and ING2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

INGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

EPP Group Members of the INGE Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Final INGE report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

ING2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

EPP Group Members of the ING2 Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Final ING2 report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

FOREWORD,
MANFRED WEBER MEP

Dear friends,

It is with great pleasure that I present to you this publication on

the important work of two Special Committees in the European
Parliament focused on foreign interference (INGE and ING2).

These two committees were established with the idea that

in a rapidly evolving world with big geopolitical changes and
permanent technological advancements, the EPP Group is
fully committed to protecting the principles of democracy and
ensuring the integrity of our democratic processes.

Recognising the pressing need to confront the challenges posed Manfred Weber MEP
by foreign interference, the INGE-Committee was established Chairman of the EPP Group
with its main mission to fight disinformation. The work of the in the European Parliament
Special Committee has been vital in highlighting the need for
us to do more to protect our democratic institutions. For the EPP
Group, it is clear that the EU must strengthen its own capacities to
detect, expose and fight disinformation. We have to invest more
to safeguard our democracy in the context of a comprehensive
and coordinated European strategy.

Building on the foundation laid by INGE, we recognised the

continued significance of this endeavour and established its
successor ING2 to also screen existing and planned EU legislation
in a range of areas for loopholes that could be exploited by third
countries for malicious purposes.

With the knowledge gained through the efforts of INGE and

ING2, we are more aware of the threats that are out there and
more prepared to protect ourselves against them.

I would like to thank the EPP Group members of the Special

Committees, who have done very important work to make sure
our EPP Group priorities were integrated in the reports as well as
the staff who accompanied the work of the Special Committees.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 3

 INTRODUCTION,
JAVIER ZARZALEJOS MEP

In recent years, the EU has realised the enormous challenge that fo-
reign interference and disinformation campaigns deployed from abroad
represent for democracy. The institutions have developed measures to
fight against these types of strategies that seek to undermine the basic
pillars on which our democratic system is built and sustained.

During the current legislature, the European Parliament established

the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic
Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation (INGE) to
define an approach that addresses evidence of foreign interference
in the EU and its Member States.

Javier Zarzalejos MEP ​ ore broadly, this committee not only aims to protect the values of the
M
First Vice-Chair INGE and ING2 European Union, but democracy itself. The quality of our democracies
leans on citizens making informed decisions, which makes the fight
against disinformation and foreign interference a priority.

On 9 March, the European Parliament's plenary adopted the first report

on this issue, analysing the situation in the EU and setting out concrete
recommendations to combat such actions. The report notes that Russia,
China and other authoritarian regimes, such as Iran and Venezuela, have
funnelled "more than 259 million euros into 33 countries to interfere in
democratic processes, and this trend is clearly accelerating".

​​ June 1, the Parliament adopted a new report following up on

On
the implementation of the Resolution adopted in March 2022. The
text highlights interference on online platforms, protection of critical
infrastructure and strategic sectors, interference during electoral
processes, covert funding of political activities by foreign actors and
resilience to cyberattacks. The report focuses particularly on Russian
and Chinese interference in the EU, in countries applying to join the
EU, including the Western Balkans, and countries in the Global South.

​​ these reports, Russia is singled out as being responsible for major

In
interference and disinformation campaigns on European soil. There
is evidence of Russian interference in European democracies, such
as the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, the secessionist
process in Catalonia, the 2017 presidential elections in France, as well
as practical support for extremist, populist and anti-European parties
across Europe, particularly in France, Germany, Italy and Austria.
Russia's goal in all these cases has always been the same: to promote
internal destabilisation and disunity in the European Union. In addition,
Russia's war against Ukraine has been paved by disinformation.

​​
Today, disinformation strategies are becoming increasingly sophis-
ticated, fueled by the rapid development of technology. The EU
must address this growing security threat and take the necessary
measures. It must strengthen its own capabilities to detect, expose
and combat disinformation and all types of hybrid threats. It is
essential to implement a coordinated strategy that outlines new
initiatives and improves the implementation of existing ones.
Better funding is also needed, and measures put in place to protect
the integrity of the upcoming European elections. These are vital
tasks for the EU, with the ultimate aim of protecting the principles
and values on which our democracies are established.

4 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

INTRODUCTION,
VLADIMÍR BILČÍK MEP

I am proud of the many things that my colleagues and I have

achieved in our parliamentary work during this mandate.
In particular, our work in the INGE Committee. For me, this
committee is proof that we can collectively formulate effective
responses to longstanding, serious issues that were previously
overlooked and will continue to pose significant dangers in the
future.

​he establishment of the committee also came at the right

T
time and brought together representatives from countries and
political groups who were united by sincere interest and shared
desire to find ways to defend our society from harmful influence
and actions by malicious actors. Vladimír Bilčik MEP
Coordinator for the EPP Group
​ s we approach European elections in 2024 the EU is much
A INGE and ING2
more aware of the threats that foreign interference poses
to European democracy. We are better able to identify the
pernicious consequences of disinformation on our society.
We are familiar with the fact that as a result of their business
model large online platforms systematically contribute to fear
and anxiety among people. We know that deliberate, well-
organised, coordinated and dangerous campaigns exist in
both the online and offline world. More than anyone else, the
people of Ukraine, and also of other vulnerable countries such
as Moldova, are painfully aware of these phenomena. We know
that at the end of such campaigns, in extreme cases people
end up fighting for their bare lives.

​ his picture of our reality was not at all that clear just a few years
T
ago. I am therefore very proud of the work that we achieved in
the INGE Committee. Together, we managed to gather the best
available and up to date expert knowledge. Dozens of hearings
helped us create a detailed map of the challenges that we are
facing.

​ hanks to the work of all our colleagues, and I dare say proudly
T
that especially our colleagues from the EPP Group, we have
managed not only to describe accurately the pitfalls of malign
foreign interventions in our democracy, but we have also helped
turn this once marginal topic into a fixed part of deliberations
about the EU's external and internal security policies.

​ ur task now is to reinforce this public attention and come up

O
with answers and solutions to the constantly evolving risks of
foreign interference and disinformation. Thanks to the team
that we managed to create in the EPP Group, I have no doubt
that we are going to succeed.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 5

 CONTRIBUTION,
SANDRA KALNIETE MEP,
RAPPORTEUR INGE AND ING2

​ s the rapporteur for INGE1 and ING2, I had the privilege to lead
A
the work on two different but equally important documents.

​ he Special Committee's first report was adopted just 2 weeks

T
after the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This was an eye-
opening moment for many – Putin’s propaganda machinery was
not only “turned on” only on 24 February, it has already been
working for decades in Europe, attempting to poison and divide
our societies. We have arrived at the moment of truth to ask frank
questions - How did the democratic world get to this point? How
can we prevent it in the future?
Sandra Kalniete MEP
Rapporteur INGE and ING2
​​
INGE1 has provided both the diagnosis of the EU’s vulnerabilities
and prescribes the medication for strengthening the EU’s
resilience.

​ he report identified and mapped the threat of foreign

T
interference in all of its forms, including disinformation,
manipulation of social media platforms and advertising
systems, cyberattacks, threats against and the harassment of
journalists. Another crucial factor weakening our resilience
is foreign covert funding, elite capture and co-optation. For
decades, we have watched former high-ranking European
officials and politicians take up prominent positions in Russian
energy companies, while we were channelling hundreds of
millions into Putin`s coffers and providing a safe haven for his
cronies and oligarchs.

In the second phase of the committee work-ING2 was devoted to

the assessment of the existing tools tackling foreign information
manipulation and putting forward tailored recommendations.
The overall conclusion is that we need stronger measures
and better coordination to protect democracy, also given the
upcoming EU elections in 2024.

​​
First, we need more sustainable and long-term investment
in our civil society organisations tackling information
manipulation. They have proved that their work can make
an impact. Although there are many valuable projects and
initiatives, the funding is still project-based, often relying on
third-country sources and not covering basic administrative
costs or requiring an unrealistic share of co-financing.
Therefore, we need a dedicated EU programme to invest in our
democracy sustainably. It will pay off in the long term.

​​
Another important conclusion of the ING2 report is that in
tackling disinformation, the EU is still suffering from a very
fragmented approach, without clear coordination mechanisms
and goals. We simply cannot afford compartmentalisation
when our democracy and integrity may be at stake- particularly
now, when we are facing the rapid development of the artificial
intelligence tools, we will need more agile ways to tackle the
disinformation.

6 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

​​ addition to building our resilience, we should expose the
In
preparatory to the costs: deliberately and intentionally engaging
in foreign information manipulation should be a highly
expensive and damaging exercise for any state or non-state player.
Therefore, the toolbox of the EU countermeasures should include
a specific permanent sanctions regime on foreign information
manipulation and interference.

​​
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine clearly exposed
the interconnection between attempts at foreign information
manipulation and threats to the EU, its immediate
neighbourhood, Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership
countries, as well as to global security and stability. The EU
should not stop at scratching the surface and admiring the
problem. Bringing our fight against foreign interference and
information manipulation at the new level is our common task
for the upcoming months and years.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 7

INGE
“Special Committee on Foreign Interference
in all Democratic Processes in the European
Union, including Disinformation”

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 9

EPP GROUP MEMBERS OF THE
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT’S
SPECIAL COMMITTEE (INGE)

Javier ZARZALEJOS ​Vladimír BILČÍK ​Sandra KALNIETE

First Vice-Chair Coordinator Member, Rapporteur

​Ioan-Rareş BOGDAN ​Sunčana GLAVAK ​Andrey KOVATCHEV

Member Member Member

​Jeroen LENAERS ​Lukas MANDL ​Sabine VERHEYEN

Member Member Member
10 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2
 ​Magdalena ADAMOWICZ ​Salvatore DE MEO ​Frances FITZGERALD
Substitute Substitute Substitute

​Rasa JUKNEVIČIENĖ ​David McALLISTER ​Nuno MELO

Substitute Substitute Substitute

​Eugen TOMAC ​Iuliu WINKLER ​Tomáš ZDECHOVSKÝ

Substitute Substitute Substitute
EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 11
 ​FINAL REPORT INGE

TEXTS ADOPTED

P9_TA(2022)0064

Foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union

European Parliament resolution of 9 March 2022 on foreign interference in all
democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation (2020/2268(INI))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the
Charter’), and in particular Articles 7, 8, 11, 12, 39, 40, 47 and 52 thereof,

– having regard to the Charter of the United Nations, in particular Articles 1 and 2
thereof,

– having regard to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX) of 21

December 1965 entitled ‘Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the
Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of their Independence and Sovereignty’,

– having regard to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms, and in particular Articles 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 17 thereof, and to
the Protocol thereto, and in particular Article 3 thereof,

– having regard to its resolution of 23 November 2016 on EU strategic communication to

counteract propaganda against it by third parties 1 and to its recommendation of 13
March 2019 concerning taking stock of the follow-up taken by the EEAS two years
after the EP report on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it
by third parties 2,

– having regard to its resolution of 13 June 2018 on cyber defence3 ,

– having regard to the joint communications from the Commission and the High
Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy of 5 December 2018
entitled ‘Action Plan against Disinformation’ (JOIN(2018)0036) and of 14 June 2019
entitled ‘Report on the implementation of the Action Plan Against Disinformation’
(JOIN(2019)0012),

– having regard to the joint staff working document of 23 June 2021 on the Fifth Progress
Report on the implementation of the 2016 Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats

1
OJ C 224, 27.6.2018, p. 58.
2
OJ C 23, 21.1.2021, p. 152.
3
OJ C 28, 27.1.2020, p. 57.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 13

 and the 2018 Joint Communication on increasing resilience and bolstering capabilities
to address hybrid threats (SWD(2021)0729),

– having regard to the European democracy action plan (COM(2020)0790),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 3 December 2020 entitled

‘Europe’s Media in the Digital Decade: An Action Plan to Support Recovery and
Transformation’ (COM(2020)0784),

– having regard to the Digital Services Act package,

– having regard to its resolution of 20 October 2021 entitled ‘Europe’s Media in the
1
Digital Decade: an Action Plan to Support Recovery and Transformation’ ,

– having regard to the 2018 Code of Practice on Disinformation and the 2021 Guidance
on Strengthening the Code of Practice on Disinformation (COM(2021)0262), and to the
Recommendations for the New Code of Practice on Disinformation issued by the
European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services in October 2021,

– having regard to the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report 09/2021 entitled
‘Disinformation affecting the EU: tackled but not tamed’,

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 16 December 2020 for a directive of the
European Parliament and of the Council on the resilience of critical entities
(COM(2020)0829) and to the proposed annex to the directive,

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2019/452 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 19 March 2019 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct
investments into the Union 2 (FDI Screening Regulation) and the March 2020 Guidance
on the FDI Screening Regulation (C(2020)1981),

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High
Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy of 16 December 2020 on
the EU’s cybersecurity strategy for the digital decade (JOIN(2020)0018),

– having regard to the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of

States for Internationally Wrongful Acts,

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 16 December 2020 for a directive of the
European Parliament and of the Council on measures for a high common level of
cybersecurity across the Union, repealing Directive (EU) 2016/1148 (COM(2020)0823),

– having regard to the March 2021 EU toolbox of risk mitigating measures on the
cybersecurity of 5G networks,

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2019/881 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 17 April 2019 on ENISA (the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity)

1
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2021)0428.
2
OJ L 79 I, 21.3.2019, p. 1.

14 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 and on information and communications technology cybersecurity certification and
repealing Regulation (EU) No 526/2013 1 ,

– having regard to the studies, briefings and in-depth analysis requested by the Special
Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union,
including Disinformation (INGE),

– having regard to the Frances Haugen hearing of 8 November 2021 organised by its
Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, in association with other
committees,

– having regard to its resolution of 7 October 2021 on the state of EU cyber defence
capabilities 2,

– having regard to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in
particular to SDG 16 which aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for
sustainable development,

– having regard to the State of the Union 2021 address and letter of intent,

– having regard to the UN Secretary-General’s report of 10 September 2021 entitled ‘Our

Common Agenda’,

– having regard to the joint communication from the Commission and the High
Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy of 10 June 2020 entitled
‘Tackling COVID-19 disinformation – Getting the facts right’ (JOIN(2020)0008),

– having regard to the Council’s decision of 15 November 2021 to amend its sanction
regime on Belarus to broaden the designation criteria to target individuals and entities
organising or contributing to hybrid attacks and the instrumentalisation of human beings
carried out by the Belarus regime,

– having regard to its decision of 18 June 2020 on setting up a special committee on

foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including
disinformation, and defining its responsibilities, numerical strength and term of office3,
adopted under Rule 207 of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to Rule 54 of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to the report of the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all
Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation (A9-
0022/2022),

A. whereas foreign interference constitutes a serious violation of the universal values and
principles on which the Union is founded, such as human dignity, freedom, equality,
solidarity, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule
of law;

1
OJ L 151, 7.6.2019, p. 15.
2
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2021)0412.
3
OJ C 362, 8.9.2021, p. 186.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 15

B. whereas foreign interference, information manipulation and disinformation are an abuse
of the fundamental freedoms of expression and information as laid down in Article 11
of the Charter and threaten these freedoms, as well as undermining democratic
processes in the EU and its Member States, such as the holding of free and fair
elections; whereas the objective of foreign interference is to distort or falsely represent
facts, artificially inflate one-sided arguments, discredit information to degrade political
discourse and ultimately undermine confidence in the electoral system and therefore in
the democratic process itself;

C. whereas Russia has been engaging in disinformation of an unparalleled malice and

magnitude across both traditional media outlets and social media platforms, in order to
deceive its citizens at home and the international community on the eve of and during
its war of aggression against Ukraine, which Russia started on 24 February 2022,
proving that even information can be weaponised;

D. whereas any action against foreign interference and information manipulation must
itself respect the fundamental freedoms of expression and information; whereas the EU
Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) plays a key role in evaluating respect for
fundamental rights, including Article 11 of the Charter, in order to avoid
disproportionate actions; whereas actors carrying out foreign interference and
information manipulation misuse those freedoms to their advantage and it is therefore
vital to step up the precautionary fight against foreign interference and information
manipulation because democracy depends on people making informed decisions;

E. whereas evidence shows that malicious and authoritarian foreign state and non-state
actors, such as Russia, China and others, use information manipulation and other
interference tactics to interfere in democratic processes in the EU; whereas these
attacks, which are part of a hybrid warfare strategy and constitute a violation of
international law, mislead and deceive citizens and affect their voting behaviour,
amplify divisive debates, divide, polarise and exploit the vulnerabilities of societies,
promote hate speech, worsen the situation of vulnerable groups which are more likely to
become victims of disinformation, distort the integrity of democratic elections and
referendums, sow distrust in national governments, public authorities and the liberal
democratic order and have the goal of destabilising European democracy, and therefore
constitute a serious threat to EU security and sovereignty;

F. whereas foreign interference is a pattern of behaviour that threatens or negatively

impacts values, democratic procedures, political processes, the security of states and
citizens, and the capacity to cope with exceptional situations; whereas such interference
is manipulative in character, and conducted and financed in an intentional and
coordinated manner; whereas those responsible for such interference, including their
proxies within and outside their own territory, can be state or non-state actors, and are
frequently assisted in their foreign interference by political accomplices in the Member
States who derive political and economic advantages from favouring foreign strategies;
whereas foreign actors’ use of domestic proxies and cooperation with domestic allies
blurs the line between foreign and domestic interference;

G. whereas foreign interference tactics take many forms, including disinformation, the
suppression of information, the manipulation of social media platforms and their
algorithms, terms and conditions, and advertising systems, cyberattacks, hack-and-leak
operations to gain access to voter information and interfere with the legitimacy of the
electoral process, threats against and the harassment of journalists, researchers,

16 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 politicians and members of civil society organisations, covert donations and loans to
political parties, campaigns favouring specific candidates, organisations and media
outlets, fake or proxy media outlets and organisations, elite capture and co-optation,
‘dirty’ money, fake personas and identities, pressure to self-censor, the abusive
exploitation of historical, religious and cultural narratives, pressure on educational and
cultural institutions, taking control of critical infrastructure, pressuring foreign nationals
living in the EU, the instrumentalisation of migrants and espionage; whereas these
tactics are often combined for greater effect;

H. whereas information manipulation and the spread of disinformation can serve the
economic interests of state and non-state actors and their proxies, and create economic
dependencies that can be exploited for political aims; whereas in a world of non-kinetic
international competition, foreign interference can be a prime tool for destabilising and
weakening targeted counterparts, or boosting one’s own competitive advantage through
the establishment of channels of influence, supply chain dependencies, blackmail or
coercion; whereas disinformation is causing direct and indirect economic damage that
has not been systematically assessed;

I. whereas misinformation is verifiably false information which is not intended to cause

harm, while disinformation is verifiably false or misleading information that is
intentionally created, presented or disseminated with a view to causing harm or
producing a potentially disruptive effect on society by deceiving the public or for
intentional economic gain;

J. whereas there is a need to agree within the EU on common and granular definitions and
methodologies to improve the shared understanding of the threats and develop
appropriate EU standards for improved attribution and response; whereas the European
External Action Service (EEAS) has done a considerable amount of work in this area;
whereas these definitions must guarantee imperviousness to external interference and
respect for human rights; whereas cooperation with like-minded partners, in relevant
international forums, on common definitions of foreign interference in order to establish
international norms and standards is of the utmost importance; whereas the EU should
take the lead in establishing clear international rules for the attribution of foreign
interference;

Need for a coordinated strategy against foreign interference

K. whereas foreign interference attempts across the world are increasing and becoming
more systemic and sophisticated, relying on widespread use of artificial intelligence
(AI) and eroding attributability;

L. whereas it is the duty of the EU and its Member States to defend all citizens and
infrastructure, as well as their democratic systems, from foreign interference attempts;
whereas, however, the EU and its Member States appear to lack the appropriate and
sufficient means to be able to better prevent, detect, attribute, counter and sanction these
threats;

M. whereas there is a general lack of awareness among many policy-makers, and citizens in
general, of the reality of these issues, which may unintentionally contribute to opening
up further vulnerabilities; whereas the issue of disinformation campaigns has not been at
the top of the agenda of European policy-makers; whereas the hearings and work of the
INGE Special Committee have contributed to public recognition and the

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 17

 contextualisation of these issues and have successfully framed the European debate on
foreign interference; whereas long-lasting foreign disinformation efforts have already
contributed to the emergence of home-grown disinformation;

N. whereas the transparent monitoring of the state of foreign interference in real time by
institutional bodies and independent analysts and fact-checkers, the effective
coordination of their actions and the exchange of information are crucial so that
appropriate action is taken not only to provide information about ongoing malicious
attacks but also to counter them; whereas similar attention must be paid to mapping
society, identifying the areas most vulnerable and susceptive to foreign manipulation
and disinformation, and tackling the causes of those vulnerabilities;

O. whereas the first priority of EU defence, i.e. the resilience and preparedness of EU
citizens vis-à-vis foreign interference and information manipulation, requires a long-
term and whole-of-society approach, beginning with education and raising awareness of
the problems at an early stage;

P. whereas it is necessary to cooperate and coordinate across administrative levels and

sectors among the Member States, at EU level and with like-minded countries, as well
as with civil society and the private sector, in order to identify vulnerabilities, detect
attacks and neutralise them; whereas there is an urgent need to synchronise the
perception of threats with national security;

Building resilience through situational awareness, media and information literacy, media
pluralism, independent journalism and education

Q. whereas situational awareness, robust democratic systems, strong rule of law, a vibrant
civil society, early warnings and threat assessment are the first steps towards countering
information manipulation and interference; whereas in spite of all the progress made in
raising awareness about foreign interference, many people, including policy-makers and
civil servants working in the areas potentially targeted, are still unaware of the potential
risks linked to foreign interference and how to address them;

R. whereas high-quality, sustainably and transparently financed, and independent news

media and professional journalism are essential for media freedom and pluralism and
the rule of law, and are therefore a pillar of democracy and the best antidote to
disinformation; whereas some foreign actors take advantage of Western media freedom
to spread disinformation; whereas professional media and traditional journalism, as a
quality information source, are facing challenging times in the digital era; whereas
quality journalism education and training within and outside the EU are necessary in
order to ensure valuable journalistic analyses and high editorial standards; whereas the
EU needs to continue supporting journalism in the digital environment; whereas
science-based communication should play an important role;

S. whereas editorially independent public service media are essential and irreplaceable in
providing high-quality and impartial information services to the general public and must
be protected from malign capture and strengthened as a fundamental pillar of the fight
against disinformation;

T. whereas different stakeholders and institutions use different methodologies and

definitions to analyse foreign interference – all with different degrees of
comprehensibility, and whereas these differences can inhibit comparable monitoring,

18 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 analysis and assessment of the threat level, which makes joint action more difficult;
whereas there is a need for an EU definition and methodology to improve the common
threat analysis;

U. whereas there is a need to complement terminology that focuses on content, such as

fake, false or misleading news, misinformation and disinformation, with terminology
that centres on behaviour, in order to adequately address the problem; whereas this
terminology should be harmonised and carefully adhered to;

V. whereas training in media and digital literacy and awareness-raising, for both children
and adults, are important tools to make citizens more resilient against interference
attempts in the information space and avoid manipulation and polarisation; whereas in
general, societies with a high level of media literacy are more resilient to foreign
interference; whereas journalistic working methods such as constructive journalism
could help to strengthen trust in journalism among citizens;

W. whereas information manipulation can take many forms, such as spreading

disinformation and completely false news, distorting facts, narratives and
representations of opinion, suppression of certain information or opinions, taking
information out of context, manipulating people’s feelings, promoting hate speech,
promoting some opinions at the expense of others, and harassing people to silence and
oppress them; whereas one aim of information manipulation is to create chaos in order
to encourage a loss of citizens’ trust in the old and new ‘gatekeepers’ of information;
whereas there is a fine line between freedom of expression and the promotion of hate
speech and disinformation which should not be abused;

X. whereas Azerbaijan, China, Turkey and Russia, among others, have all targeted
journalists and opponents in the European Union, such as in the case of Azerbaijani
blogger and opposition figure Mahammad Mirzali in Nantes and that of Turkish
journalist Erk Acarer in Berlin;

Y. whereas there is concrete evidence that the EU’s democratic processes are being
targeted and interfered with by disinformation campaigns that challenge democratic
ideals and fundamental rights; whereas disinformation related to topics including, but
not limited to, gender, LGBTIQ+, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and
minorities is a form of disinformation that threatens human rights, undermines digital
and political rights, as well as the safety and security of its targets, and sows fraction
and disunity among Member States; whereas during election campaigns female political
candidates tend to be disproportionately targeted by sexist narratives, leading to the
discouragement of women from taking part in democratic processes; whereas the
perpetrators of these disinformation campaigns, under the guise of promoting
‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ values, form strategic alliances with local partners to gain
access to local intelligence and have been reported to receive millions of euros in
foreign funding;

Z. whereas next to state institutions, journalists, opinion leaders and the private sector,
each section of society and each individual have important roles to play in identifying
and putting a stop to the spread of disinformation and in warning people in their
environment who are at risk; whereas civil society, academia and journalists have
already contributed strongly to raising public awareness and increasing societal
resilience, including in cooperation with counterparts in partner countries;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 19

AA. whereas civil society organisations representing minority voices and human rights
organisations across Europe remain underfunded, despite playing a crucial role in
raising awareness and countering disinformation; whereas civil society organisations
should be adequately resourced in order to play their part in limiting the impact of
foreign interference;

AB. whereas it is important to have easy and timely access to fact-based information from
reliable sources when disinformation starts to spread;

AC. whereas it is necessary to rapidly detect foreign interference attacks and attempts to
manipulate the information sphere in order to counter them; whereas EU intelligence
analysis and situational awareness are dependent on the willingness of Member States to
share information; whereas the Commission President has proposed that the
establishment of an EU Joint Situational Awareness Centre be considered; whereas
prevention and proactive measures including pre-bunking and a healthy information
ecosystem are far more effective than subsequent fact-checking and debunking efforts,
which show lower reach than the original disinformation; whereas the EU and its
Member States currently lack sufficient capabilities to take such measures; whereas new
AI-based analytical tools, such as the Lithuanian [Link], could help to detect
attacks, share knowledge and inform the public;

AD. whereas disinformation thrives in an environment of weak or fragmented national or

EU-level narratives, and on polarised and emotional debates, exploiting weak points and
biases among society and individuals, and whereas disinformation distorts the public
debate around elections and other democratic processes and can make it difficult for
citizens to make informed choices;

Foreign interference using online platforms

AE. whereas online platforms can be easily accessible and affordable tools for those
engaging in information manipulation and other interference, such as hate and
harassment, damaging the health and safety of our online communities, silencing
opponents, espionage or spreading disinformation; whereas their functioning has been
proven to encourage polarised and extreme opinions at the expense of fact-based
information; whereas platforms have their own interests and may not be neutral in
processing information; whereas some online platforms greatly benefit from the system
that amplifies division, extremism and polarisation; whereas online space has become
just as important for our democracy as physical space and therefore needs
corresponding rules;

AF. whereas platforms have accelerated and exacerbated the spread of mis- and
disinformation in an unprecedented and challenging way; whereas online platforms
control the flow of information and advertising online, whereas platforms design and
use algorithms to control these flows, and whereas platforms are not transparent, lack
appropriate procedures to verify identity, use unclear and vague terminology and share
very little or no information about the design, use and impacts of these algorithms;
whereas the addictive component of online platform algorithms has created a serious
public health problem that needs to be addressed; whereas online platforms should be
responsible for the harmful effects of their services, as some platforms were aware of
the flaws in their algorithms – in particular their role in spreading divisive content – but
failed to address them in order to maximise profit, as was revealed by whistle-blowers;

20 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 AG. whereas in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the Prime Ministers
of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland sent a letter to the CEOs of the Big Tech social
media platforms (Twitter, Alphabet, YouTube and Meta) on 27 February 2022, calling
for, inter alia, the suspension of accounts engaging in and glorifying war crimes and
crimes against humanity, reinforced content moderation in the Russian and Ukrainian
languages, the full and immediate demonetisation of all accounts disseminating
disinformation perpetrated by the Russian and Belarusian Governments, and assistance
for users trying to find trustworthy information on the war in Ukraine;

AH. whereas there are interference and information manipulation campaigns directed at all
measures against the spread of COVID-19, including vaccination across the EU, and
online platforms have failed to coordinate their efforts to contain them and may even
have contributed to their spread; whereas such disinformation can be life-threatening
when deterring people from being vaccinated or promoting false treatments; whereas
the pandemic has exacerbated the systemic struggle between democracy and
authoritarianism, prompting authoritarian state and non-state actors, such as China and
Russia, to deploy a broad range of overt and covert instruments in their bid to
destabilise their democratic counterparts; whereas the Facebook Papers have revealed
the platform’s failure to tackle vaccine-related disinformation, including in the English
language; whereas the situation is even worse for non-English vaccine-related
disinformation; whereas this issue concerns all platforms;

AI. whereas numerous vendors registered in the EU sell inauthentic likes, followers,
comments and shares to any actor wishing to artificially boost their visibility online;
whereas it is impossible to identify legitimate uses of such services, while harmful uses
include manipulating elections and other democratic processes, promoting scams,
posting negative reviews of competitors’ products, defrauding advertisers and the
creation of a fake public that is used to shape the conversation, for personal attacks and
to artificially inflate certain viewpoints that would otherwise receive no attention;
whereas foreign regimes, such as Russia and China, are using these online tools on a
massive scale to influence the public debate in European countries; whereas
disinformation can destabilise European democracy;

AJ. whereas social platforms, digital devices and applications collect and store immense
amounts of very detailed personal and often sensitive data about each user; whereas
such data can be used to predict behavioural tendencies, reinforce cognitive bias and
orient decision-making; whereas such data is exploited for commercial purposes;
whereas data leaks happen repeatedly, to the detriment of the security of victims of such
leaks, and data can be sold on the black market; whereas such databases could be
goldmines for malicious actors wanting to target groups or individuals;

AK. whereas, in general, platforms are designed to ensure that opting not to share data is
nonintuitive, cumbersome and time-consuming in comparison with opting to share data;

AL. whereas online platforms are integrated into most parts of our lives and the spread of
information on platforms can have a huge impact on our thinking and behaviour, for
instance when it comes to voting preferences, economic and social choices, and the
choice of information sources, and whereas these decisive choices of public importance
are today in fact conditioned by the commercial interests of private companies;

AM. whereas algorithm curation mechanisms and other features of social media platforms
are engineered to maximise engagement; whereas these features are repeatedly reported

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 21

 to promote polarising, radicalising and discriminatory content and keep users in like-
minded circles; whereas this leads to the gradual radicalisation of platform users, as well
as the conditioning and polluting of collective discussion processes, rather than the
protection of democratic processes and individuals; whereas uncoordinated actions by
platforms have led to discrepancies in their actions and allowed disinformation to spread
from platform to platform; whereas the business model of making money through the
spread of polarising information and the designing of algorithms make platforms an
easy target for manipulation by foreign hostile actors; whereas social media platforms
could be designed differently so as to foster a healthier online public sphere;

AN. whereas the creation of deepfake audio and audiovisual materials is becoming
increasingly easier with the advent of affordable and easy-to-use technologies, and the
spread of such materials is an exponentially increasing problem; whereas currently,
however, 90 % of research goes into the development of deepfakes and only 10 % into
their detection;

AO. whereas self-regulation systems such as the 2018 Code of Practice on Disinformation
have led to improvements; whereas, however, relying on the goodwill of platforms is
neither working nor effective and has produced little meaningful data on their overall
impact; whereas, in addition, platforms have taken individual measures varying in
degree and effect, leading to backdoors through which content can continue to spread
elsewhere despite being taken down; whereas there needs to be a clear set of rules and
sanctions in order for the Code of Practice to have sufficient effect on the online
environment;

AP. whereas the European Democracy Action Plan aims to strengthen the 2018 Code of
Practice and together with the Digital Services Act constitutes a step away from the self-
regulation approach and aims to introduce more guarantees and protections for users, by
increasing autonomy and overcoming passivity with respect to the services offered,
introducing measures to require greater transparency and accountability from
companies, and introducing more obligations for platforms;

AQ. whereas the current actions against disinformation campaigns on online platforms are
not effective or deterrent and allow platforms to continue promoting discriminatory and
malicious content;

AR. whereas platforms dedicate significantly lower resources to content management in

lesser-spoken languages, and even widely spoken non-English languages, compared to
English content;

AS. whereas platforms’ complaint and appeal procedures are generally inadequate;

AT. whereas in recent months, several major players have obeyed censorship rules, for
example during the Russian parliamentary elections in September 2021, when Google
and Apple removed Smart Voting apps from their stores in Russia;

AU. whereas the lack of transparency with regard to the algorithmic choices of platforms
makes it impossible to validate claims by platforms about what they do and the effect of
their actions to counter information manipulation and interference; whereas there are
discrepancies between the stated effect of their efforts in their annual self-assessments
and their actual effectiveness, as shown in the recent Facebook Papers;

22 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 AV. whereas the non-transparent nature of targeted advertising leads to massive amounts of
online advertising by reputable brands, sometimes even by public institutions, ending up
on websites encouraging terrorism, hosting hate speech and disinformation, and
financing the growth of such websites, without the awareness or consent of the
advertisers;

AW. whereas the online advertising market is controlled by a small number of big Ad Tech
companies which share the market among themselves, with Google and Facebook as the
largest players; whereas this high market concentration on a few companies is
associated with a strong power imbalance; whereas the use of clickbait techniques and
the power of these few actors to determine which content is monetised and which is not,
even though the algorithms they use cannot tell the difference between disinformation
and normal news content, constitutes a threat to diversified media; whereas the targeted
advertising market is profoundly non-transparent; whereas Ad Tech companies force
brands to take the hit for their negligence in monitoring where ads are placed;

Critical infrastructure and strategic sectors

AX. whereas the management of threats to critical infrastructure, especially when part of a
synchronised, malicious hybrid strategy, requires coordinated, joint efforts across
sectors, at different levels – EU, national, regional and local – and at various times;

AY. whereas the Commission has proposed a new directive to enhance the resilience of
critical entities providing essential services in the EU, which includes a proposed list of
new types of critical infrastructure; whereas the list of services will be set out in the
annex to the directive;

AZ. whereas the growing globalisation of the division of labour and of production chains has
led to manufacturing and skills gaps in key sectors across the Union; whereas this has
resulted in the EU’s high import dependence on many essential products and primary
assets, which may have built-in vulnerabilities, coming from abroad; whereas supply
chain resilience ought to be among the priorities of EU decision-makers;

BA. whereas foreign direct investments (FDIs) – investments by third countries and foreign
companies – in strategic sectors in the EU, but also in neighbourhood areas, such as the
Western Balkans, in particular China’s acquisition of critical structures, have been a
growing cause for concern in recent years, considering the increasing importance of the
trade-security nexus; whereas these investments pose a risk of creating economic
dependencies and leading to a loss of knowledge in key production and industrial
sectors;

BB. whereas the open strategic autonomy of the EU requires control of European strategic
infrastructure; whereas the Commission and the Member States have expressed growing
concern about the security and control of technologies and infrastructure in Europe;

Foreign interference during electoral processes

BC. whereas malicious actors who seek to interfere in electoral processes take advantage of
the openness and pluralism of our societies as a strategic vulnerability to attack
democratic processes and the resilience of the EU and its Member States; whereas it is
in the context of electoral processes that foreign interference becomes more dangerous
as citizens reengage and are more involved in conventional political participation;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 23

BD. whereas the distinctive nature of foreign interference in electoral processes, and the use
of new technologies in this regard, as well as their potential effects, represent especially
dangerous threats to democracy; whereas foreign interference in electoral processes
goes well beyond social media ‘information warfare’, favouring specific candidates to
hack and target databases and gain access to the information of registered voters and
directly interfering with the normal functioning, competitiveness and legitimacy of the
electoral process; whereas foreign interference aims to introduce doubt, uncertainty and
mistrust, and not just to alter the result of elections but to delegitimise the entire
electoral process;

Covert funding of political activities by foreign actors and donors

BE. whereas a solid body of evidence shows that foreign actors have been actively
interfering in the democratic functioning of the EU and its Member States, particularly
during election and referendum periods, through covert funding operations;

BF. whereas, for instance, Russia, China and other authoritarian regimes have funnelled
more than USD 300 million into 33 countries to interfere in democratic processes, and
other actors such as Iran and Venezuela, from the Middle-East and on the US far right
have also been involved in covert funding; whereas this trend is clearly accelerating;
whereas half these cases concern Russia’s actions in Europe; whereas corruption and
illicit money laundering are a source of political financing from authoritarian third
countries;

BG. whereas media tools created by foreign donors in a non-transparent way have become
highly effective in garnering large numbers of followers and generating engagement;

BH. whereas these operations finance extremist, populist, anti-European parties and certain
other parties and individuals or movements seeking to deepen societal fragmentation
and undermine the legitimacy of European and national public authorities; whereas this
has helped to increase the reach of these parties and movements;

BI. whereas Russia seeks out contacts to parties, figures and movements in order to use
players within the EU institutions to legitimise Russian positions and proxy
governments, to lobby for sanctions relief and to mitigate the consequences of
international isolation; whereas parties such as the AustrianFreiheitliche Partei
Österreichs, the French Rassemblement Nationaland the Italian Lega Nord have signed
cooperation agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party
and now face media allegations of being willing to accept political funding from Russia;
whereas other European parties such as the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD),
the HungarianFidesz and Jobbik, and the Brexit Party in the UK also reportedly have
close contact with the Kremlin, and the AfD andJobbik have also worked as so-called
‘election observers’ in Kremlin-controlled elections, for example in Donetsk and
Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, to monitor and legitimise Russian-sponsored elections;
whereas findings about the close and regular contacts between Russian officials and
representatives of a group of Catalan secessionists in Spain, as well as between Russian
officials and the largest private donor for the Brexit Vote Leave campaign, require an
in-depth investigation, and are part of Russia’s wider strategy to use each and every
opportunity to manipulate discourse in order to promote destabilisation;

24 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 BJ. whereas the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) of the Council of Europe and
the Venice Commission have already made wide-ranging recommendations to decrease
the scope for the possible interference of foreign actors via political financing;

BK. whereas electoral laws, in particular provisions on the financing of political activities,
are not sufficiently well coordinated at EU level, and therefore allow for opaque
financing methods by foreign actors; whereas the legal definition of political donations
is too narrow, allowing for foreign in-kind contributions in the European Union;

BL. whereas, in some Member States, online political advertising is not subject to the rules
for offline political advertising; whereas there is a serious lack of transparency in online
political advertising, which makes it impossible for regulators to enforce spending limits
and prevent illegal sources of funding, with potentially disastrous consequences for the
integrity of our electoral systems;

BM. whereas lack of financing transparency creates an environment for corruption, which
often accompanies foreign funding and investments;

BN. whereas Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 1141/2014 of 22 October 2014 on the statute and
funding of European political parties and European political foundations 1 is being
revised with a view to achieving a greater level of transparency in terms of the financing
of political activities;

BO. whereas the role of political foundations has grown in recent years, in most cases
playing a positive role in politics and in strengthening democracy, but in some cases
becoming a more unpredictable vehicle for malicious forms of finance and indirect
interference;

BP. whereas modern technologies and digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, are used to
disguise illegal financial transactions to political actors and political parties;

Cybersecurity and resilience against cyberattacks

BQ. whereas the incidence of cyberattacks and cyber-enabled incidents led by hostile state
and non-state actors has been increasing in recent years; whereas several cyberattacks,
such as the global spear-phishing email campaigns targeting strategic vaccine storage
structures and the cyberattacks against the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the
European Banking Authority, the Norwegian Parliament and countless others, have
been traced back to state-backed hacker groups, predominantly affiliated to the Russian
and Chinese Governments;

BR. whereas the European Union is committed to the application of existing international
law in cyberspace, in particular the UN Charter; whereas malign foreign actors are
exploiting the absence of a strong legal international framework in the cyber domain;

BS. whereas the Member States have increased their cooperation in the domain of cyber
defence within the framework of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO),
including by setting up Cyber Rapid Response Teams; whereas the European Defence
Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) has included intelligence, secured
communication and cyber defence in its work programmes; whereas the current
capacity to face cyber threats is limited owing to the scarcity of human and financial

1
OJ L 317, 4.11.2014, p. 1.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 25

 resources, for example in critical structures such as hospitals; whereas the EU has
committed to investing EUR 1.6 billion, under the Digital Europe programme 1 , in the
response capacity and deployment of cybersecurity tools for public administrations,
businesses and individuals, as well as developing public-private cooperation;

BT. whereas gaps in and the fragmentation of the EU’s capabilities and strategies in the
cyber field is becoming an increasing problem, as pointed out by the European Court of
Auditors 2 ; whereas the EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox, set up in May 2019, has shown
the added value of a joint EU diplomatic response to malicious cyber activities; whereas
the Council decided for the first time on 30 July 2020 to impose restrictive measures on
individuals, entities and bodies responsible for or involved in various cyberattacks;

BU. whereas massive-scale and illicit use of surveillance programs, such as Pegasus, have
been used by foreign state actors to target journalists, human rights activists, academics,
government officials and politicians, including European heads of state; whereas
Member States have also made use of the surveillance spyware;

Protection of EU Member States, institutions, agencies, delegations and missions

BV. whereas the decentralised and multinational character of EU institutions, including their
missions and operations, is an ever-increasing target and is exploited by malicious
foreign actors wanting to sow division in the EU; whereas there is an overall lack of a
security culture in the EU institutions despite the fact that they are clear targets; whereas
Parliament as the democratically elected EU institution faces specific challenges;
whereas several cases have revealed that EU institutions appear vulnerable to foreign
infiltration; whereas the safety of EU staff should be ensured;

BW. whereas it is necessary to put in place strong and coherent crisis management
procedures as a matter of priority; whereas additional training should be offered in order
to enhance the preparedness of staff;

BX. whereas cyberattacks have recently targeted several EU institutions, which underlines
the need for strong interinstitutional cooperation in terms of detecting, monitoring and
sharing information during cyberattacks and/or with a view to preventing them,
including during EU common security and defence policy (CSDP) missions and
operations; whereas the EU and its Member States should organise regular, joint
exercises to identify weak spots and take the necessary measures;

Interference through global actors via elite capture, national diasporas, universities and
cultural events

BY. whereas a number of politicians, including former high-level European politicians and
civil servants are hired or co-opted by foreign authoritarian state-controlled national or
private companies in exchange for their knowledge and at the expense of the interests of
the citizens of the EU and its Member States;

BZ. whereas some countries are particularly active in the field of elite capture and co-
optation, in particular Russia and China, but also Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries,
with, for instance, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former Prime

1
[Link]
2
[Link]
BRP_CYBERSECURITY/BRP_CYBERSECURITY_EN.pdf

26 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen having both joined Gazprom to speed up the
application process for Nord Stream 1 and 2, former Austrian Minister of Foreign
Affairs Karin Kneissl appointed board member of Rosneft, former Prime Minister of
France François Fillon appointed board member of Zaroubejneft, former Prime Minister
of France Jean-Pierre Raffarin actively engaged in promoting Chinese interests in
France, former Czech Commissioner Štefan Füle having worked for CEFC China
Energy, former Prime Minister of Finland Esko Aho now on the board of the Kremlin’s
Sberbank, former French Minister for Relations with Parliament Jean-Marie Le Guen
now a member of the Board of Directors of Huawei France, former Prime Minister of
Belgium Yves Leterme appointed Co-Chairman of the Chinese investment fund ToJoy,
and many other high-level politicians and officials taking on similar roles;

CA. whereas economic lobbying strategies can be combined with foreign interference goals;
whereas according to the OECD’s report on lobbying in the 21st century 1 only the US,
Australia and Canada have rules in place that cover foreign influence; whereas there is a
serious lack of legally binding rules and enforcement of the EU’s lobbying register,
which makes it practically impossible to track lobbying coming from outside the EU;
whereas there is currently no way of monitoring lobbying efforts in Member States that
influence legislation and foreign policy through the European Council; whereas rules on
lobbying in the EU focus mainly on face-to-face contact and do not take into account
the whole ecosystem of different types of lobbying that exists in Brussels; whereas
countries such as China and Russia, but also Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and
Turkey, have invested heavily in lobbying efforts in Brussels;

CB. whereas trying to instrumentalise vulnerable groups, including the national minorities
and diaspora living on EU soil, represents an important element of foreign interference
strategies;

CC. whereas different state actors, such as the Russian, Chinese and, to a lesser degree,
Turkish Governments, have been attempting to increase their influence by setting up
and using cultural, educational (e.g. through grants and scholarships) and religious
institutes across Member States, in a strategic effort to destabilise European democracy
and expand control over Eastern and Central Europe; whereas the alleged difficult
situation of its national minority has been used in the past by Russia as an excuse for
direct intervention in third countries;

CD. whereas there is evidence of Russian interference and online information manipulation
in many liberal democracies around the world, including but not limited to the Brexit
referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential elections in France and the US,
and practical support of extremist, populist, anti-European parties and certain other
parties and individuals across Europe, including but not limited to France, Germany,
Italy and Austria; whereas more support for research and education is needed to be able
to understand the exact influence of foreign interference on specific events, such as
Brexit and the election of President Trump in 2016;

CE. whereas Russian state-controlled Sputnik and RT networks that are based in the West,
combined with Western media and fully or partially owned by Russian and Chinese
legal and individual entities actively engage in disinformation activities against liberal

1
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Lobbying in the 21st
Century: Transparency, Integrity and Access, 2021, OECD Publishing, Paris, available
at: [Link]

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 27

 democracies; whereas Russia is resorting to historical revisionism, seeking to rewrite
the history of Soviet crimes and promoting Soviet nostalgia among the susceptible
population in Central and Eastern Europe; whereas for national broadcasters in Central
and Eastern Europe it is difficult to compete with Russian-language TV content funded
by the Russian Government; whereas there is a risk of unbalanced cooperation between
Chinese and foreign media, taking into account that Chinese media are the voice of the
Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad;

CF. whereas more than 500 Confucius centres have been opened around the world,
including around 200 in Europe, and Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms are
used by China as a tool of interference within the EU; whereas academic freedom is
severely restricted in Confucius Institutes; whereas universities and educational
programmes are the target of massive foreign funding, notably from China or Qatar,
such as the Fudan University campus in Budapest;

CG. whereas the EU is currently lacking the necessary toolbox to address elite capture and
counter the establishment of channels of influence, including within EU institutions;
whereas situational awareness capabilities and counter-intelligence instruments remain
scarce at EU level, with a high degree of reliance on national actors’ willingness to
share information;

Deterrence, attribution and collective countermeasures, including sanctions

CH. whereas the EU and its Member States do not currently have a specific regime of
sanctions related to foreign interference and disinformation campaigns orchestrated by
foreign state actors, meaning that these actors can safely assume that their
destabilisation campaigns against the EU will meet with no consequences;

CI. whereas ensuring clear attribution of disinformation and propaganda attacks, including
publicly naming the perpetrators, their sponsors and the goals they seek to achieve, as
well as measuring the effects of these attacks on the targeted audience, are the first steps
towards effectively defending against such actions;

CJ. whereas the EU should strengthen its deterrence tools and tools for attributing such
attacks and categorising their nature as violating or not violating international law, with
a view to establishing an effective sanctions regime so that malicious foreign actors
have to pay the costs of their decisions and bear the consequences; whereas targeting
individuals might not be sufficient; whereas other tools, such as trade measures, could
be used to protect European democratic processes against state-sponsored hybrid
attacks; whereas deterrence measures must be applied transparently with all due
guarantees; whereas hybrid attacks are calibrated so that they deliberately fall below the
threshold of Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 5 of the
North Atlantic Treaty;

Global cooperation and multilateralism

CK. whereas malicious actions orchestrated by foreign state and non-state actors are
affecting many democratic partner countries around the world; whereas democratic
allies depend on their ability to join forces to deliver a collective response;

CL. whereas the EU accession countries in the Western Balkans are being hit particularly
hard by attacks in the form of foreign interference and disinformation campaigns

28 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 stemming from Russia, China and Turkey, such as Russia’s interference campaigns
during the ratification process of the Prespa Agreement in North Macedonia; whereas
the COVID-19 pandemic has been further exploited in the Western Balkans by China
and Russia to destabilise these countries and discredit the EU; whereas candidate and
potential candidate countries are expected to join the EU’s initiatives to fight foreign
interference;

CM. whereas there is still a lack of common understanding and common definitions among
like-minded partners and allies with regard to the nature of the threats at stake; whereas
the UN Secretary-General is calling for a global code of conduct to promote the
integrity of public information; whereas the Conference on the Future of Europe is an
important platform for discussions related to the topic;

CN. whereas there is a need for global, multilateral cooperation and support among like-
minded partners in dealing with foreign malicious interference; whereas other
democracies have developed advanced skills and strategies, such as Australia and
Taiwan; whereas Taiwan stands at the forefront of the fight against information
manipulation, mainly from China; whereas the success of the Taiwanese system is
founded on cooperation among all branches of government, but also with independent
NGOs specialised in fact-checking and media literacy and with social media platforms,
such as Facebook, as well as on the promotion of media literacy for all generations, the
debunking of disinformation, and the curbing of the spread of manipulative messages;
whereas the INGE Special Committee went on a three-day official mission to Taiwan to
discuss disinformation and foreign electoral intervention;

Need for an EU coordinated strategy against foreign interference

1. Is deeply concerned about the growing incidence and increasingly sophisticated nature
of foreign interference and information manipulation attempts, conducted
overwhelmingly by Russia and China and targeting all parts of the democratic
functioning of the European Union and its Member States;

2. Welcomes the Commission President’s announcement of 27 February 2022 of an EU-

wide ban on Russian propaganda outlets such as Sputnik TV, RT (formerly known as
Russia Today) and other Russian disinformation organs which have the sole aim of
weakening and dividing the EU’s public opinion and EU decision-makers; calls for
further measures in this regard;

3. Calls on the Commission to propose, and the co-legislators and Member States to
support, a multi-layer, coordinated and cross-sector strategy, as well as adequate
financial resources, aimed at equipping the EU and its Member States with appropriate
foresight and resilience policies and deterrence tools, enabling them to tackle all hybrid
threats and attacks orchestrated by foreign state and non-state actors; considers that this
strategy should be built on:

(a) common terminologies and definitions, a single methodology, evaluations and ex

post impact assessments of the legislation adopted so far, a shared intelligence
system, and understanding, monitoring, including early warnings, and situational
awareness of the issues at stake;

(b) concrete policies enabling resilience-building among EU citizens in line with

democratic values, including through support to civil society;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 29

 (c) appropriate disruption and defence capabilities;

(d) diplomatic and deterrence responses, including an EU toolbox for countering

foreign interference and influence operations, including hybrid operations,
through adequate measures, e.g. attribution and naming of perpetrators, sanctions
and countermeasures, and global partnerships to exchange practices and promote
international norms of responsible state behaviour;

4. Underlines that all measures to prevent, detect, attribute, counter and sanction foreign
interference must be designed in a way that respects and promotes fundamental rights,
including the ability of EU citizens to communicate in a secure, anonymous and
uncensored way, without undue interference from any foreign actors;

5. Considers that this strategy should be based on a risk-based, whole-of-society and

whole-of-government approach, covering the following areas in particular:

(a) building EU resilience through situational awareness, media and information

literacy, media pluralism, independent journalism and education,

(b) foreign interference using online platforms;

(c) critical infrastructure and strategic sectors;

(d) foreign interference during electoral processes;

(e) covert funding of political activities by foreign actors and donors;

(f) cybersecurity and resilience against cyberattacks;

(g) protection of EU Member States, institutions, agencies, delegations and missions;

(h) interference through global actors via elite capture, national diasporas, universities
and cultural events;

(i) deterrence, attribution and collective countermeasures, including sanctions;

(j) global cooperation and multilateralism;

6. Calls, in particular, for the EU and its Member States to boost the resources and means
allocated to bodies and organisations across Europe and globally – such as think tanks
and fact-checkers – tasked with monitoring and raising awareness of the severity of
threats, including disinformation; highlights the crucial role of the EU in a broader
strategic sense; calls for the foresight capacity and interoperability of the EU and its
Member States to be strengthened to ensure robust preparedness to predict, prevent and
mitigate foreign information manipulation and interference, to strengthen the protection
of their strategic interests and infrastructure, and to engage in multilateral cooperation
and coordination to reach a common understanding of the issue in the relevant
international forums; calls on the Foreign Affairs Council to discuss matters of foreign
interference on a regular basis;

7. Is concerned about the overwhelming lack of awareness, including among the broader
public and government officials, of the severity of the current threats posed by foreign
authoritarian regimes and other malicious actors targeting all levels and sectors of

30 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 European society, aimed at undermining fundamental rights and public authorities’
legitimacy, deepening political and social fragmentation and, in some instances, even
causing life-threatening harm to EU citizens;

8. Is concerned about the lack of norms and appropriate and sufficient measures to
attribute and respond to acts of foreign interference, resulting in an attractive calculation
for malicious actors of low costs, low risks and a high reward, since the risks of facing
retribution for their actions are currently very low;

9. Urges the Commission to include, where relevant, a foreign information manipulation

and interference perspective in the ex ante impact assessment carried out before
presenting new proposals, with a view to mainstreaming the countering of foreign
interference and information manipulation within EU policymaking; urges the EEAS
and the Commission to perform regular resilience reviews and to assess the
development of the threats and their impact on current legislation and policies;

10. Calls on the Commission to analyse recent national institutions, such as Australia’s
National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator, Finland’s Security Committee
assisting the government and ministries, Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency, new
agency for psychological defence and National China Centre, France’s new national
agency Viginum, Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Centre, and Taiwan’s interagency
disinformation coordination taskforce to see what we can learn from these best practices
and to what extent a similar idea could be implemented at EU level; invites the
Commission to support the sharing of information and best practices among Member
States in this regard; underlines the importance of a proactive approach and instruments,
including strategic communications as a core activity for implementing EU and Member
State policies through words and actions; calls on the Commission to provide adequate
data science training and to create a single monitoring body within the Commission on
information manipulation;

11. Is concerned about the many gaps and loopholes in current legislation and policies at
EU and national level intended to detect, prevent and counter foreign interference;

12. Notes that a number of long-term projects and programmes with a focus on countering
disinformation at a technological, legal, psychological and informational level are being
funded by the EU; calls on the Commission to assess the impact of these projects and
programmes and their applicability;

13. Calls on the Commission to set up a Commission taskforce led byVěra Jourová, as
Vice-President of the Commission for Values and Transparency, dedicated to
scrutinising existing legislation and policies to identify gaps that could be exploited by
malicious actors, and urges the Commission to close these gaps; stresses that this
structure should cooperate with other EU institutions and Member States at national,
regional and local level and facilitate the exchange of best practices; calls on the
Commission and the EEAS to consider the establishment of a well-resourced and
independent European Centre for Interference Threats and Information Integrity, which
should identify, analyse and document information manipulation operations and
interference threats against the EU as a whole, increase situational awareness, develop a
specialised knowledge hub by becoming a platform for coordination with civil society,
the business sector, the EU and national institutions, and raise public awareness, inter
alia via regular reports on systemic threats; stresses that the tentative creation of such a
new independent and well-resourced European Centre for Interference Threats and

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 31

 Information Integrity should clarify and enhance the role of the EEAS StratCom
division and its taskforces as the strategic body of the EU’s diplomatic service and
prevent the overlap of activities; stresses that EEAS StratCom’s mandate should be
focused on strategically developing external policies to counter existing and emerging
joint threats and to enhance engagement with international partners in this field; points
out that EEAS StratCom could pursue this in close cooperation with a new European
Centre for Interference Threats and Information Integrity and a new Commission
taskforce;

14. Calls for the EU institutions and the Member States to empower civil society to play an
active role in countering foreign interference; calls on all levels and sectors of European
society to set up systems to make organisations and citizens more resilient to foreign
interference, to be able to detect attacks on time and to counter attacks as efficiently as
possible, including through education and awareness-raising, within the EU framework
of fundamental rights and in a transparent and democratic way; points, in this context, to
the best practices and whole-of-society approach pursued by Taiwan; calls on decision-
makers to provide civil society with appropriate tools and dedicated funds to study,
expose and combat foreign influence;

Building EU resilience through situational awareness, media literacy and education

15. Stresses that EU institutions and Member States need sound, robust and interlinked
systems to detect, analyse, track and map incidents of foreign state and non-state actors
trying to interfere in democratic processes in order to develop situational awareness and
a clear understanding of the type of behaviour that the EU and its Member States need
to deter and address; calls for regular sociological research and polling to monitor
resilience and media literacy, as well as to understand public support and perceptions of
the most common disinformation narratives;

16. Underlines that it is equally important that the insights from this analysis do not stay
within groups of foreign interference specialists, but are, to the extent possible, shared
openly with the broader public, especially with people performing sensitive functions,
so that everyone is aware of the threat patterns and can avoid the risks;

17. Underlines that it is necessary to develop a common methodology for developing

situational awareness, early warnings and threat assessment, collecting evidence
systematically and the timely detection of manipulation of the information environment,
as well as developing standards for technical attribution, for example on content
authenticity, in order to ensure an effective response;

18. Stresses the need for the EU, in cooperation with Member States and working
multilaterally in the relevant international forums, to develop a conceptual definition of
the interference threats faced by the EU; underlines that this definition needs to reflect
the tactics, techniques, procedures and tools used to describe the patterns of behaviour
of the state and non-state threat actors that we see today; urges the Commission to
involve the EU FRA to ensure that there are no discriminatory or inequitable concepts
or biases embedded in any conceptual definitions;

19. Underlines that public diplomacy and strategic communication are essential elements of
the EU’s external relations and the protection of the EU’s democratic values; calls for
the EU institutions to further develop and boost the important work of the EEAS
StratCom division, with its taskforces, EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (EU

32 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 INTCEN) and Hybrid Fusion Cell, the EU Military Staff Intelligence Directorate, the
Rapid Alert System, the established cooperation at administrative level among the
EEAS, the Commission and Parliament, the Commission-led network against
disinformation, Parliament’s administrative taskforce against disinformation, and the
ongoing cooperation with NATO, the G7, civil society and private industry when it
comes to cooperating on intelligence, analysis, the sharing of best practices and raising
awareness about foreign information manipulation and interference; welcomes the
European Court of Auditors (ECA) Special Report 09/2021 entitled ‘Disinformation
affecting the EU: tackled but not tamed’; calls on the EEAS and the Commission to
publish a detailed timeline for the implementation of the ECA’s recommendations;

20. Underlines the need to strengthen permanent monitoring efforts while reinforcing them
well ahead of elections, referendums or other important political processes across
Europe;

21. Calls on Member States to make full use of these resources by sharing relevant
intelligence with EU INTCEN and enhancing their participation in the Rapid Alert
System; is of the opinion that analysis and intelligence cooperation within the EU and
with NATO needs to be strengthened even more, while making such cooperation more
transparent and democratically accountable, including by sharing information with
Parliament;

22. Welcomes Commission President von der Leyen’s idea of establishing a Joint
Situational Awareness Centre to improve strategic foresight and the EU’s open strategic
autonomy, while expecting further clarification of its set-up and mission; underlines that
such a centre would require active cooperation with the relevant services of the
Commission, the EEAS, the Council, Parliament and national authorities; reiterates,
however, the importance of avoiding duplication of work and overlap with existing EU
structures;

23. Recalls the need to equip the EEAS with a strengthened and clearly defined mandate
and the necessary resources for the Strategic Communication, Task Forces and
Information Analysis Division to monitor and address information manipulation and
interference beyond the foreign sources currently covered by the three taskforces and to
aim for broader geographic coverage by applying a risk-based approach; calls urgently
for the deployment of adequate capabilities by the EEAS in order to address information
manipulation and interference emanating from China, notably by setting up a dedicated
Far East team; stresses further the need to significantly boost expertise and language
capacity with regard to China and other strategically important regions, in the EEAS, in
the Member States and in the EU institutions in general, and to make use of open-source
intelligence sources which are currently underutilised;

24. Stresses the importance of broadly distributed, competitive, pluralistic media,

independent journalists, fact-checkers and researchers, and a strong public service
media for lively and free democratic debate; welcomes initiatives to bring together, train
and otherwise support organisations of independent journalists, fact-checkers and
researchers all over Europe, and particularly in the regions most at risk, such as the
European Digital Media Observatory and the European Endowment for Democracy;
deeply regrets that the European Digital Media Observatory does not cover the Baltic
states; welcomes, too, initiatives aiming at establishing journalism and fact-checking
trustworthiness indicators that are easy to recognise, such as that initiated by Reporters

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 33

 Without Borders; calls on the Commission to counter monopolistic mass-media
ownership;

25. Praises the indispensable research and the many creative and successful media and
digital literacy and awareness-raising initiatives carried out by individuals, schools,
universities, media organisations, public institutions and civil society organisations;

26. Calls for the EU and the Member States to earmark EU public funding sources for
independent fact-checkers, researchers, quality and investigative media and journalists,
and NGOs researching and investigating information manipulation and interference,
promoting media, digital and information literacy, and other means to empower citizens,
and researching how to meaningfully measure the effectiveness of media, digital and
information literacy training, awareness-raising, debunking and strategic
communication;

27. Calls for measures to strengthen professional and pluralistic media, ensuring that
publishers receive a fair income for the use of their content on the internet; underlines
that several countries around the globe are taking steps to ensure that the media have
adequate financial resources; reiterates its call for the creation of a permanent EU news
media fund and welcomes, in this regard, the News Initiative, including the new funding
possibilities for the media sector and media and information literacy in the 2021-2027
Creative Europe programme; notes, however, that funding streams may create
dependencies or have an impact on the independence of media; highlights, in this
regard, the importance of the transparency of media financing; believes that public
disclosure of information on who owns, donates to, controls or provides content to
media outlets and pays for journalistic content is needed to protect media pluralism;

28. Underlines the need to consolidate analysis, incident reports and intelligence-based
public threat assessments with regard to information manipulation and interference and
make this information available to the public; therefore suggests the creation of a EU-
wide database on incidents of foreign interference reported by EU and Member State
authorities; underlines that information on these incidents could be shared, when
appropriate, with civil society organisations and the public, in all EU languages;

29. Calls on all Member States to include media and digital literacy, as well as education in
democracy, fundamental rights, recent history, world affairs, critical thinking and public
participation, in their curricula, from early years to adult education, including training
for teachers and researchers; calls on the Commission and the Member States to
increase support for historical education and research on how foreign interference and
past totalitarianism has influenced society in general, and large-scale democratic events
more specifically;

30. Calls for the EU institutions and Member States, at all administrative levels, to identify
sectors at risk of interference attempts and provide regular training and exercises for
staff working in these sectors in how to detect and avoid interference attempts, and
underlines that such efforts would benefit from a standardised format established by the
EU; recommends that comprehensive training modules also be offered to all public
servants; welcomes in this regard the training offered to Members and staff by
Parliament’s administration; recommends that this training be developed further;

31. Underlines the need to raise awareness about foreign interference in all layers of
society; welcomes the initiatives taken by the EEAS, the Commission and Parliament’s

34 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 administration, such as training and awareness-raising events for journalists, teachers,
influencers, students, senior citizens and visitors, both offline and online, in Brussels
and across the Member States, and recommends that they be further developed;

32. Calls on the Member States, the EU administration and civil society organisations to
share best practices for media and information literacy training and awareness-raising,
as requested in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 1 ; calls on the Commission to
organise these exchanges in cooperation with the Media Literacy Expert Group;
underlines that the revised directive needs to be rapidly and properly implemented by
the Member States;

33. Urges the EU institutions to draw up a Code of Ethics to guide public authorities and
political representatives in the use of social media platforms and networks; considers it
necessary to encourage responsible use of such platforms and networks to combat
manipulation and misinformation originating in the public sphere;

34. Calls for the EU and its Member States to implement tailored awareness-raising and
media and information literacy programmes, including for diasporas and minorities, and
calls on the Commission to set up a system for the easy sharing of material in minority
languages, in order to reduce translation costs and reach out to as many people as
possible; calls on regions and municipalities to take a leading role, since it is important
to reach out to rural areas and across demographic groups;

35. Underlines that an essential response to foreign interference attempts is to defend the
main target groups it is aimed at; emphasises the need for targeted action, through a
harmonised EU legal framework, against the spread of disinformation and hate speech
on issues related to gender, LGBTIQ+ people, minorities and refugees; calls on the
Commission to develop and implement strategies to hinder the financing of individuals
and groups that actively spread or participate in information manipulation, frequently
targeted against the abovementioned groups and topics, in order to divide society; calls
for positive communication campaigns on these issues and underlines the need for
gender-sensitive training;

36. Recognises that gendered disinformation attacks and campaigns are often used as part of
a broader political strategy to undermine equal participation in democratic processes,
especially for women and LGBTIQ+ people; stresses that disinformation about
LGBTIQ+ people fuels hate, both online and offline, and threatens lives; calls for
research into online disinformation to be carried out with an intersectional lens and for
oversight of the changes platforms are making to respond to gendered disinformation
campaigns online; calls for increased attention to be paid to gender-based
disinformation through the creation of early warning systems through which gendered
disinformation campaigns can be reported and identified;

37. Calls on the Commission to put forward an overarching media and information literacy
strategy with a special focus on combating information manipulation;

1
Directive 2010/13/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 March 2010
on the coordination of certain provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative
action in Member States concerning the provision of audiovisual media services (OJ L
95, 15.4.2010, p. 1).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 35

38. Welcomes the establishment of the expert group on tackling disinformation and
promoting digital literacy through education and training, which will focus on critical
thinking, teacher training, pre-bunking, debunking and fact-checking efforts, and
student engagement, among other tasks; calls on the Commission to share the results of
the work of this expert group and to implement its conclusions;

39. Underlines the importance of strategic communication to counter the most common
anti-democracy narratives; calls for the improvement of EU strategic communication to
increase its reach both towards citizens and abroad; stresses that all democratic
organisations need to defend democracy and uphold the rule of law and have a common
responsibility to engage with citizens, using their preferred languages and platforms;

40. Calls on Member States to ensure effective public communication campaigns in relation
to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to disseminate accurate and timely information to
counteract misinformation, particularly in relation to vaccines;

41. Is deeply concerned about the spread of foreign state propaganda, mainly originating in
Moscow and Beijing, as well as in Ankara, which is translated into local languages, for
instance in RT-, Sputnik- Anadolu-, CCTV-, Global Times-, Xinhua-, TRT World-, or
Chinese Communist Party-sponsored media content disguised as journalism, and
distributed with newspapers; maintains that such channels cannot be considered real
media and therefore should not enjoy the same rights and protection as democratic
media; is equally concerned about how these narratives have spread into genuine
journalistic products; underlines the need to raise awareness about Russia’s and China’s
disinformation campaigns, which aim to challenge democratic values and divide the
EU, as these constitute the main source of disinformation in Europe; calls on the
Commission to initiate a study on minimum standards for media as a basis on which to
possibly revoke licences in the event of breaches; asks the Commission to integrate the
findings of the study into upcoming legislation, such as in a possible Media Freedom
Act; notes that foreign interference actors may falsely present themselves as journalists;
believes that it should be possible in such cases to sanction that person or organisation,
for instance by naming and shaming, blacklisting from press events or revoking media
accreditation;

42. Is deeply concerned about attacks, harassment, violence and threats against journalists,
human rights defenders and other persons exposing foreign interference, which may
also undermine their independence; calls on the Commission to swiftly submit concrete
and ambitious proposals on the safety of all these persons, including an anti-strategic
lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) instrument and economic, legal and
diplomatic support, as announced under the European Democracy Action Plan;
welcomes, in this regard, Commission Recommendation (EU) 2021/1534 of 16
September 2021 on ensuring the protection, safety and empowerment of journalists and
1
other media professionals in the European Union ; calls on the Member States to
effectively protect journalists and other media professionals by means of legislative and
non-legislative tools;

43. Stresses the need to involve local and regional decision-makers responsible for strategic
decisions in the areas that fall under their competence, such as infrastructure,
cybersecurity, culture and education; underlines that local and regional politicians and
authorities can often identify concerning developments at an early stage and stresses

1
OJ L 331, 20.9.2021, p. 8.

36 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 that local knowledge is often needed to identify and implement adequate
countermeasures;

44. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to establish communication channels
and set up platforms where companies, NGOs and individuals, including members of
diasporas, can report instances in which they fall victim to information manipulation or
interference; calls on the Member States to support those who are victims of attacks and
those who are aware of such attacks or are being put under pressure;

Foreign interference using online platforms

45. Welcomes the proposed review of the Code of Practice on Disinformation and the
proposals for a Digital Services Act, a Digital Markets Act and other measures linked to
the European Democracy Action Plan as potentially effective tools to tackle foreign
interference; recommends that the final reading of these texts take into account the
aspects set out in the remainder of this section;

46. Stresses that freedom of expression must not be misinterpreted as freedom to engage in
online activities that are illegal offline, such as harassment, hate speech, racial
discrimination, terrorism, violence, espionage and threats; underlines that platforms
need not only to abide by the law of the country in which they operate, but also to live
up to their terms and conditions, especially with regard to harmful content online; calls
on platforms to strengthen efforts to prevent the reappearance of illegal content that is
identical to that which has been identified as illegal and removed;

47. Underlines the need, above all, to continue studying the rise of disinformation and
foreign interference online and for EU-wide legislation to ensure significantly increased
and meaningful transparency, monitoring and accountability as regards the operations
conducted by online platforms and access to data for legitimate access seekers, in
particular when dealing with algorithms and online advertising; calls for social media
companies to keep ad libraries;

48. Calls for regulation and actions to oblige platforms, especially those with a systemic
risk to society, to do their part to reduce information manipulation and interference, for
instance by using labels that indicate the true authors behind accounts, limiting the reach
of accounts regularly used to spread disinformation or that regularly break the terms and
conditions of the platform, suspending and, if necessary and based on clear legislation,
deleting inauthentic accounts used for coordinated interference campaigns or
demonetising disinformation-spreading sites, setting up mitigation measures for
interference risks posed by the effects of their algorithms, advertising models,
recommender systems and AI technologies, and flagging disinformation content in both
posts and comments; recalls the need for these measures to be implemented in a
transparent and accountable way;

49. Calls on the Commission to fully take into account the Council of Europe’s guidance
note on best practices towards effective legal and procedural frameworks for self-
regulatory and co-regulatory mechanisms of content moderation, adopted in June 2021;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 37

50. Calls for full and effective implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation,1
which limits the amount of data platforms can store about users and how long this data
can be used, especially for platforms and applications using very private and/or
sensitive data, such as messaging, health, finance and dating apps and small discussion
groups; calls for gatekeeper platforms to refrain from combining personal data with
personal data from other services offered by the gatekeeper or with personal data from
third-party services, to make it equally easy to disagree as to agree to the storage and
sharing of data and to allow users to choose whether to be targeted with other
personalised advertising online; welcomes all efforts to ban micro-targeting techniques
for political advertising, particularly but not limited to those based on sensitive personal
data, such as ethnic origin, religious beliefs or sexual orientation, and asks the
Commission to consider extending a ban on micro-targeting to issue-based advertising;

51. Calls for binding EU rules to require platforms to cooperate with competent authorities
to regularly test their systems and to identify, assess and mitigate the risk of information
manipulation, interference and the vulnerabilities that using their services carries,
including how the design and management of their services contribute to that risk; calls
for binding EU rules to oblige platforms to set up systems to monitor how their services
are used, such as real-time monitoring of the most trending and popular posts in a
country-by-country overview, in order to detect information manipulation and
interference and flag suspected interference to the authorities responsible, and to
increase the costs for actors who make it possible to turn a blind eye to any such actions
facilitated by their systems;

52. Calls on online platforms to commit adequate resources to preventing harmful foreign
interference, as well as to ensuring better working conditions, psychological care and
fair payment for content moderators; calls on large social media platforms to provide
detailed and country-by-country reports on the resources devoted to in-country fact-
checking, research activities, content moderation, including human and AI capacities in
individual languages, and collaboration with local civil society; underlines the need for
these platforms to step up their efforts to address disinformation in smaller and less
commercially profitable markets in the EU;

53. Calls on social media platforms to fully respect the equality of all EU citizens
irrespective of the language used in the design of their services, tools and monitoring
mechanisms, as well as in measures for greater transparency and a safer online
environment; stresses that this refers not only to all official national and regional
languages, but also to the languages of sizeable diasporas within the EU; underlines that
these services should also be accessible for people with hearing impairment;

54. Calls for clear and readable labelling of deepfakes, both for platform users and in
content metadata, to improve their traceability for researchers and fact-checkers; in this
respect, welcomes the initiatives aimed at improving content authenticity and
traceability, such as the development of watermarks and authenticity standards, and the
introduction of global standards;

1
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April
2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data
and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (OJ L 119,
4.5.2016, p. 1).

38 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 55. Calls for services offering social media manipulation tools and services, such as
boosting the reach of accounts or content using artificial engagement or inauthentic
profiles, to be regulated; underlines that this regulation needs to be based on a thorough
assessment of current practices and the associated risks and should prevent these
services from being used by malicious actors for political interference;

56. Stresses the need for transparency as regards the real natural or legal person behind
online content and accounts for those wishing to advertise; calls on platforms to
introduce mechanisms to detect and suspend, in particular, inauthentic accounts linked
to coordinated influence operations; underlines that these practices should not interfere
with the ability to be anonymous online, which is of crucial importance in protecting
journalists, activists, marginalised communities and persons in vulnerable positions (e.g.
whistle-blowers, dissidents and political opponents of autocratic regimes), and should
allow room for satirical and humorous accounts;

57. Underlines that a greater responsibility to remove content must not lead to the arbitrary
removal of legal content; urges caution as regards entirely suspending the accounts of
real individuals or the mass use of automated filters; notes with concern the arbitrary
decisions of platforms to suppress the accounts of elected officials; stresses that these
accounts should only be struck down on the basis of clear legislation based on
democratic values, which are translated into business policy and enforced by
independent democratic oversight, and that there must be a fully transparent process
covering the right to appeal;

58. Calls for binding rules to require platforms to create easily available and effective
communication channels for people or organisations who want to report illegal content,
violation of terms and conditions, disinformation, or foreign interference or
manipulation, where appropriate allowing the accused individuals to respond before any
restrictive action is taken, and for the establishment of impartial, transparent, fast and
accessible referral and appeal procedures for victims of content posted online, those
who report content, and individuals or organisations affected by the decision to label,
restrict visibility to, disable access to or suspend accounts or to restrict access to
advertising revenue; recommends that social media platforms designate a specific
contact point for each Member State and form taskforce teams for every important
election in every Member State;

59. Calls for legislative rules to ensure transparency vis-à-vis users and the general public,
such as obligating platforms to set up public and easily searchable archives of online
advertisements, including who they are targeted at and who paid for them, and
moderated and deleted content, establish self-regulatory measures and give
comprehensive and meaningful access to information about the design, use and impact
of algorithms to national competent authorities, vetted researchers affiliated with
academic institutions, the media, civil society organisations and international
organisations representing the public interest; believes that the metrics of these libraries
should be harmonised to allow for cross-platform analysis and reduce the administrative
burden for platforms;

60. Calls for an end to business models that rely on encouraging people to stay on platforms
longer by feeding them engaging content; calls on legislative decision-makers and
platforms to ensure, through the use of human moderators and a third party auditor, that
algorithms do not promote illegal, extremist, discriminatory or radicalising content, but
rather offer users a plurality of perspectives and prioritise and promote facts and

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 39

 science-based content, in particular on important social issues such as public health and
climate change; considers that engagement-based and addictive ranking systems pose a
systemic threat to our society; calls on the Commission to address the current issue of
price incentives, where highly targeted ads with divisive content often have much lower
prices for the same amount of views than less-targeted ads with socially integrative
content;

61. Calls for algorithms to be modified in order to stop boosting content originating from
inauthentic accounts and channels that artificially drive the spread of harmful foreign
information manipulation; calls for algorithms to be modified so that they do not push
divisive and anger-inducing content; stresses the need for the EU to put in place
measures to legally require social media companies to prevent the amplification of
disinformation once detected to the greatest extent possible, and that there must be
consequences for platforms if they do not comply with the requirement to take down
disinformation;

62. Stresses the need for an improved testing phase and a systematic review of the
consequences of algorithms, including how they shape public discourse and influence
political outcomes and how content is prioritised; underlines that such a review should
also examine whether platforms can meet the guarantees promised in their respective
terms and conditions and whether they have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent
large-scale, coordinated inauthentic behaviours from manipulating the content shown on
their platforms;

63. Is alarmed by the average of EUR 65 million in ad revenue that flows each year to
approximately 1 400 disinformation websites targeting EU citizens 1 ; underlines that
online advertisements, sometimes even by public institutions, end up on, and therefore
finance, malicious websites promoting hate speech and disinformation, without the
consent or even knowledge of the advertisers concerned; notes that five companies,
including Google Ads, pay 97 % of these ad revenues and are responsible for selecting
the publishers’ websites listed in their inventory, and so have the power to determine
which content is monetised and which not; considers it unacceptable that the algorithms
which distribute the advertising funds are a complete black box for the public; calls on
the Commission to make use of the tools of competition policy and anti-trust law to
ensure a functional market and break up this monopoly; calls on these actors to prevent
disinformation websites from being funded by their ad services; congratulates
organisations dedicated to raising awareness about this concerning issue; underlines that
advertisers should have the right to know and decide where their advertisements are
placed and which broker has processed their data; calls for the establishment of a
mediation process that allows advertisers to be refunded when ads are placed on
websites that promote disinformation;

64. Underlines that the updated Code of Practice on Disinformation, the Digital Services
Act, the Digital Markets Act and other measures linked to the European Democracy
Action Plan will require an effective overview, assessment and sanctions mechanism
after their adoption, in order to evaluate their implementation at national and EU level
on a regular basis and identify and remedy loopholes without delay, and to sanction the
misapplication of and failure to apply the commitments; calls, in this respect, for strong
and resourceful digital service coordinators in each Member State, as well as sufficient
resources to enable the enforcement arm of the Commission to execute the tasks it is

1
[Link]

40 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 assigned under the Digital Services Act; stresses, furthermore, the importance of
ensuring that online platforms are subject to independent audits certified by the
Commission; notes that auditors cannot be funded by individual platforms in order to
ensure their independence;

65. Calls, in this respect, for objective key performance indicators (KPIs) to be defined, by
means of co-regulation, in order to ensure the verifiability of the actions taken by the
platforms, as well as their effects; underlines that these KPIs should include country-
specific metrics, such as the audience targeted by the disinformation, engagement
(click-through rate, etc.), funding of in-country fact-checking and research activities,
and the prevalence and strength of in-country civil society relationships;

66. Is deeply concerned by the lack of transparency in the revision of the Code of Practice
on Disinformation, as the discussion has remained largely the preserve of the private
sector and the Commission; regrets that the European Parliament, in particular the
INGE Special Committee, and some other key stakeholders were not properly consulted
during the drafting of the review of the Code of Practice;

67. Deplores the continued self-regulatory nature of the Code of Practice, since self-
regulation is insufficient when it comes to protecting the public from interference and
manipulation attempts; is worried that the updated Code of Practice on Disinformation
may not be able to provide an answer to the challenges ahead; is concerned by the
strong reliance of the guidance to strengthen the Code of Practice on the Commission’s
Digital Services Act proposal; calls for swift action to ensure that the Code of Practice
incorporates binding commitments for platforms to ensure the EU’s readiness before the
next local, regional, national and European elections;

68. Calls for the EU to protect and encourage dialogue within the technology community
and the exchange of information on the behaviour and strategies of social platforms;
considers that only an open technological community can strengthen public opinion
against attacks, manipulation and interference; calls for an investigation into the
possibility of setting up a public-private Information Sharing and Analysis Centre
(ISAC) for disinformation, where members would track, label and share threat
information on disinformation content and their delivery agents according to a threat
classification; believes that this could inform the EU Rapid Alert System and the G7
Mechanism and would also benefit smaller actors with fewer resources; calls also for an
industry-wide standard on disinformation for ad services and online monetisation
services in order to demonetise harmful content, which should also be used by online
payment systems and e-commerce platforms and audited by a third party;

69. Stresses the need for the code to be able to function as an effective tool until the entry
into force of the Digital Services Act (DSA); believes that the code should frontload
some of the obligations of the DSA and oblige signatories to implement a number of
DSA provisions with regard to data access for researchers and regulators, and
advertising transparency, including algorithmic and recommender system transparency;
urges signatories to have their compliance with these obligations audited by an
independent auditor and calls for these audit reports to be published;

70. Deplores the lack of transparency in the process of monitoring compliance with the
code, as well as the timing of the revision of the code, which will be finalised before the
conclusion of the INGE Special Committee; notes that at the very least, meeting
agendas, concluding notes and attendance lists should be made publicly available; urges

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 41

 signatories to testify in Parliament about their commitments regarding the code and the
way they have and will implement these commitments;

71. Believes that independent media regulators, such as the European Regulators Group for
Audiovisual Media Services, could have a crucial role to play in monitoring and
enforcing the code;

72. Welcomes the proposal to establish a taskforce set out in the Commission’s guidance on
strengthening the code; insists that the Commission invite representatives of Parliament,
national regulators and other stakeholders, including civil society and the research
community, to be part of this taskforce;

Critical infrastructure and strategic sectors

73. Considers that, given its interconnected and cross-border nature, critical infrastructure is
increasingly vulnerable to outside interference and believes that the framework
currently in place should be revised; welcomes, therefore, the Commission’s proposal
for a new directive to enhance the resilience of critical entities providing essential
services in the European Union;

74. Recommends that Member States maintain the prerogative to identify critical entities,
but that coordination at EU level is necessary to:

(a) strengthen the connection and communication channels used by multiple actors,
including for the overall security of EU missions and operations;

(b) support the competent authorities in Member States through the Critical Entities
Resilience Group, ensuring a diverse participation of stakeholders, and notably the
effective involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), civil
society organisations and trade unions;

(c) promote the exchange of best practices not only among Member States but also at
regional and local level, including with the Western Balkans, and among owners
and operators of critical infrastructure, including through interagency
communication, in order to identify concerning developments at an early stage
and develop adequate countermeasures;

(d) implement a common strategy for responding to cyberattacks on critical

infrastructure;

75. Recommends that the list of critical entities could be extended to include digital election
infrastructure and education systems given their crucial importance in guaranteeing the
long-term functioning and stability of the EU and its Member States, and that flexibility
should be allowed when deciding on the addition to the list of new strategic sectors to
be protected;

76. Calls for an overarching EU approach to tackle issues of hybrid threats to election
processes and to improve coordination and cooperation among Member States; calls on
the Commission to critically assess dependence on platforms and the data infrastructure
in the context of elections; believes that there is a lack of democratic oversight over the
private sector; calls for more democratic oversight of platforms, including appropriate
access to data and algorithms for competent authorities;

42 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 77. Recommends that the obligations flowing from the proposed directive, including
assessments of the EU-wide and country-by-country threats, risks and vulnerabilities,
should reflect the latest developments and be conducted by the Joint Research Centre in
conjunction with the EEAS’s INTCEN; underlines the need for sufficient resources for
these institutions so that they can provide the latest state-of-the-art analysis, with strong
democratic oversight, which should not preclude prior evaluation by the FRA to ensure
respect for fundamental rights;

78. Believes that the EU and its Member States need to provide financing alternatives to EU
Western Balkans candidate countries and other potential candidate countries, where
FDIs have been used as a geopolitical tool by third countries to increase the leverage of
such countries, to prevent large parts of EU and candidate country critical infrastructure
from coming into the possession of countries and companies outside the EU, such as in
the case of the port of Piraeus in Greece and as is currently happening with Chinese
investments in undersea cables in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Arctic seas; therefore
welcomes the FDI Screening Regulation as an important tool to coordinate the actions
of Member States on foreign investments, and calls for a stronger regulatory framework,
and stronger enforcement of the framework, to ensure that FDIs with a detrimental
effect on the EU’s security, as specified in the regulation, are blocked, and that more
competences in screening FDIs are transferred to EU institutions; calls for the
abolishment of the lowest bidder principle in governmental investment decisions; calls
on all Member States without investment screening mechanisms to establish such
measures; believes that the framework should be better connected with independent
analyses by national and EU institutes or other relevant stakeholders, such as think
tanks, to map and assess FDI flows; considers that it might also be appropriate to
include other strategic sectors in the framework, such as 5G and other information and
communication technologies (ICTs), so as to limit the dependency of the EU and its
Member States on high-risk suppliers; underlines that this approach should apply
equally to candidate and potential candidate countries;

79. Believes that the EU faces more challenges as a result of its lack of investments in the
past, which has contributed to its dependence on foreign suppliers of technology;
recommends securing production and supply chains of critical infrastructure and critical
material within the EU; believes that the EU’s move towards open strategic autonomy
and digital sovereignty is important and the right way forward; stresses that the EU is
expected to deploy new tools to strengthen its geopolitical position, including an anti-
coercion instrument; considers the European Chips Act announced by the Commission,
to ensure that parts that are vital for the production of chips are manufactured within the
EU, an important step in limiting dependence on third countries such as China and the
US; believes that investment in chip production must be made in a coordinated manner
across the bloc and on the basis of a demand-side analysis, so as to avoid a race to
national public subsidies and fragmentation of the single market; calls on the
Commission, therefore, to set up a dedicated European Semiconductor Fund, which
could support the creation of a much-needed skilled workforce and compensate the
higher establishment costs of manufacturing and design facilities in the EU; sees
Taiwan as an important partner in boosting the production of semiconductors within the
EU;

80. Calls for further development of European networks of data infrastructure and service
providers with European security standards, such as GAIA-X, which is an important
step in building viable alternatives to existing service providers and towards an open,
transparent and secure digital economy; underlines the need to strengthen SMEs and

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 43

 avoid cartelisation of the cloud market; recalls that data centres are critical
infrastructures; is concerned about the influence of third countries and their companies
on the development of GAIA-X;

81. Underlines that the integrity, availability and confidentiality of public electronic
communication networks, such as internet backbones and submarine communication
cables, are of vital security interest; calls on the Commission and Member States to
prevent sabotage and espionage in those communication networks and to promote the
use of interoperable secure routing standards to ensure the integrity and robustness of
electronic communication networks and services, also via the recent Global Gateway
strategy;

82. Calls on the Commission to propose actions to build a secure, sustainable, and equitable
supply of the raw materials used to produce critical components and technologies,
including batteries and equipment, 5G and subsequent technologies, and chemical and
pharmaceutical products, while stressing the importance of global trade, international
cooperation with full respect for workers’ rights, and the natural environment, and with
the enforcement of international social and sustainability standards as regards the use of
resources; recalls the need to grant the necessary funding for research and development
in order to find appropriate substitutes in the event of supply chain disruption;

Foreign interference during electoral processes

83. Calls for the protection of the entire electoral process to be established as a top EU and
national security issue, since free and fair elections are at the heart of the democratic
process; calls on the Commission to develop a better response framework to counter
foreign interference in electoral processes, which among other measures should consist
of direct communication channels with citizens;

84. Highlights the need to foster societal resilience against disinformation during electoral
processes, including in the private and academic sectors, and to adopt a holistic
approach in which this interference should be tackled on a constant basis, from school
education programmes to the technical integrity and reliability of voting, and through
structural measures to tackle its hybrid nature; calls, in particular, for a plan to prepare
for the European elections in 2024, which should involve a strategy, training and
awareness-raising for European political parties and their staff, as well as enhanced
security measures to prevent foreign interference;

85. Believes that mis- and disinformation through social media have become an increasing
problem for electoral integrity; considers that social media platforms should ensure the
implementation and proper functioning of policies to protect the integrity of elections; is
alarmed by the recent findings of private firms being employed by malicious actors to
meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social
media; calls for an in-depth investigation into how to counter the ‘disinformation for
hire’ phenomenon, as it is growing more sophisticated and common in every part of the
world;

86. Highlights the utmost importance of election observation missions in providing relevant
information and issuing specific recommendations to make the electoral system more
resilient and to help counter foreign interference in electoral processes; calls for
electoral processes to be improved and strengthened, electoral observation missions
being a key instrument in the fight against the increasing use of unfair and rigged

44 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 electoral processes by illiberal regimes seeking to appear democratic; stresses in this
connection the need to reassess and update the tools and methods used in international
election observation in order to address new trends and threats, including the fight
against fake electoral observers, the exchange of best practices with like-minded
partners, and closer collaboration with relevant international organisations such as the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of
Europe, and all relevant actors in the framework of the Declaration of Principles for
International Election Observation and the Code of Conduct for International Election
Observers; stresses that the participation of MEPs in unauthorised election observation
missions undermines the credibility and reputation of the European Parliament;
welcomes and recommends the full enforcement of the Democracy Support and
Election Coordination Group procedure for ‘cases of individual unofficial election
observation by Members of the European Parliament’ (adopted on 13 December 2018)
which allows for the exclusion of MEPs from Parliament’s official election observation
delegations for the duration of the mandate;

Covert funding of political activities by foreign donors

87. Stresses that, while there is still a need for a better understanding of the effects of covert
financing of political activities on, for example, anti-democratic tendencies in Europe,
foreign funding of political activities through covert operations nevertheless represents a
serious breach of the integrity of the democratic functioning of the EU and its Member
States, in particular during election periods, and therefore violates the principle of free
and fair elections; stresses that it should therefore be made illegal in all Member States
to engage in any covert activity financed by foreign actors that aims to influence the
process of European or national politics; notes in this respect that countries such as
Australia have implemented laws that ban foreign interference in politics;

88. Condemns the fact that extremist, populist, anti-European parties and certain other
parties and individuals have connections with and are explicitly complicit in attempts to
interfere in the Union’s democratic processes and is alarmed that these parties are used
as the voice of foreign interference actors to legitimise their authoritarian governments;
calls for full clarification of the political and economic relations between these parties
and individuals and Russia; considers these relationships to be highly inappropriate and
condemns complicity which, in pursuit of political objectives, can expose the EU and its
Member States to attacks by foreign powers;

89. Calls on the Member States to close in particular all the following loopholes when
further harmonising national regulations, and to implement a ban on foreign donations:

(a) in-kind contributions from foreign actors to political parties, foundations, people
who hold public office or elected officials, including financial loans from any
legal or physical persons based outside the EU and the European Economic Area
(EEA) (except European voters), anonymous donations above a certain threshold,
and the lack of spending limits for political campaigns which allows for influence
through large donations; political individuals, actors or parties who have been
offered and/or accepted a financial or in-kind contribution by a foreign actor must
be obliged to report it to the competent authorities and this information should be
reported in turn at EU level to allow for EU-wide monitoring;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 45

 (b) straw donors with domestic citizenship1 : transparency on physical and legal
donors must be enforced through conformability statements attesting to the status
of the donor and greater enforcement powers given to electoral commissions;
donations from within the EU that exceed a certain minimum threshold should be
registered in an official and public register and linked to a natural person, and a
ceiling should be set for donations from private and legal persons (and subsidies)
to political parties;

(c) shell companies and domestic subsidiaries of foreign parent companies2: shell
companies should be prohibited and more robust requirements established in order
to reveal the origins of funding through parent companies; funding and donations
to political parties beyond a certain threshold must be registered in a public and
central register with an official name and address that can be linked to an existing
person, and Member States should collect that information; calls on the
Commission to ensure that authorities in Member States have the right to
investigate the origins of funding to verify the information from domestic
subsidiaries and to address the lack of sufficient data in national registers,
especially in situations in which a network of shell companies is used;

(d) non-profit organisations and third parties3, coordinated by foreign actors and
created with a view to influencing electoral processes: more uniform rules and
transparency should be considered across the EU for organisations aiming to
finance political activities when seeking to directly influence electoral processes
such as elections and referendum campaigns; such rules should not prevent non-
profit organisations and third parties from receiving funding for issue campaigns;
rules ensuring the transparency of funding or donations must also apply to
political foundations;

(e) online political advertisements are not subject to the rules on TV, radio and print
advertising and are usually not regulated at EU level: there is therefore a need to
prohibit advertisements bought by actors coming from outside the EU and the
EEA and guarantee complete transparency with regard to the purchasing of online
political advertisements by actors from within the EU; underlines the need to
ensure much greater transparency and democratic accountability as to the use of
algorithms; welcomes the announcement of a new legislative proposal on the
transparency of sponsored political content by the Commission, as proposed under
the European Democracy Action Plan, which should aim to prevent a patchwork
of 27 different national bodies of legislations on online political advertising and
will guarantee that EU parties are able to campaign online ahead of the European
elections while limiting the risk of foreign interference and exploring which of the
rules that political parties within single Member States and major social media
platforms have voluntarily adopted can be made rules for everyone in the EU;
calls on the Member States to update their national political advertising rules,
which have not kept pace with the steady evolution towards the digital medium as

1
Person who donates someone else’s money to a political party or candidate using their
own name.
2
This loophole covers two different realities: the shell companies, which do not pursue
actual business activities and are nothing but vehicles for financial covering; and the
domestic subsidiaries of foreign parent companies used to funnel money into politics.
3
Non-profits and third parties are not required to disclose the identity of their donors, but
are allowed to finance political parties and candidates in several EU Member States.

46 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 the primary mode of political communication; calls on the Commission to propose
how to democratically define issue-based political advertising to end a situation
where private for-profit platforms decide what is issue-based and what is not;

(f) monitoring of election spending through independent auditors should be

implemented and information on spending and donations made available to
independent auditors in a timely manner, mitigating risks such as conflicts of
interest and lobbying in relation to political finance; in establishing proactive
disclosure, institutions responsible for finance regulations should have a clear
mandate, and the ability, resources and legal power to conduct investigations and
refer cases for prosecution;

90. Calls on the Commission, therefore, to conduct an analysis of covert funding in the EU
and submit concrete proposals aimed at closing all loopholes allowing for the opaque
financing of political parties and foundations or elected officials from third-country
sources, and to propose common EU standards that would apply to national electoral
laws in all Member States; believes that Member States should aim to introduce clear
transparency requirements on the funding of political parties as well as a ban on
donations to political parties and individual political actors from outside the EU and the
EEA, with the exception of European voters living outside the EU and the EEA, and to
establish a clear strategy for the sanctions system; urges the Commission and the
Member States to establish an EU authority for financial controls to combat illicit
financial practices and interference from Russia and other authoritarian regimes;
underlines the need to ban donations or funding which use emerging technologies that
are extremely difficult to trace; asks Member States and the Commission to allocate
more resources and stronger mandates to oversight agencies with a view to achieving
better data quality;

91. Undertakes to ensure that all non-profit organisations, think tanks, institutes and NGOs
that are given input in the course of parliamentary work into the development of EU
policy or any consultative role in the lawmaking process are fully transparent,
independent and free from conflicts of interest in terms of their funding and ownership;

92. Welcomes the ongoing revision of Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 1141/2014 on the
statute and funding of European political parties and foundations; supports all efforts to
achieve a greater level of transparency in the financing of the activities of European
political parties and foundations, in particular ahead of the European elections of 2024,
including a ban on all donations from outside the EU and anonymous sources, with the
exception of the diaspora from EU Member States, and on donations from outside the
EU that cannot be documented through either contracts, service agreements or fees
associated with affiliation to European political parties, while allowing membership fees
from national member parties outside the EU and EEA to European political parties;
urges European and national political parties to commit to fighting foreign interference
and combating the spread of disinformation by signing a charter containing specific
commitments in this respect;

93. Stresses that implementation of many of the Council of Europe GRECO and Venice
Commission recommendations would strengthen the immunity of the political system of
Member States and the Union as a whole from foreign financial influence;

Cybersecurity and resilience against cyberattacks

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 47

94. Urges the EU institutions and the Member States to rapidly increase investments in the
EU’s strategic cyber capacities and capabilities to detect, expose and tackle foreign
interference, such as AI, secured communication, and data and cloud infrastructure, in
order to improve the EU’s cybersecurity, while ensuring respect for fundamental rights;
calls on the Commission to also invest more in increasing the EU’s digital knowledge
and technical expertise so as to better understand the digital systems used across the EU;
calls on the Commission to allocate additional resources, human, material and financial,
to cyber threat analysis capabilities, namely the EEAS’s INTCEN, and the cybersecurity
of the EU institutions, bodies and agencies, namely ENISA and the Computer
Emergency Response Team for the EU institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU),
and the Member States; regrets the lack of cooperation and harmonisation on
cybersecurity matters among Member States;

95. Welcomes the proposals by the Commission for a new cybersecurity strategy and a new
directive on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the European
Union, repealing Directive (EU) 2016/1148 1 (NIS2); recommends that the final outcome
of the ongoing work on the proposal address the flaws of the 2016NIS Directive,
notably by strengthening security requirements, broadening its scope, creating a
framework for European cooperation and information sharing, strengthening Member
States’ cybersecurity capabilities, developing public-private cooperation, introducing
stricter enforcement requirements and making cybersecurity a responsibility at the
highest level of management in European entities that are vital for our society;
emphasises the importance of reaching a high common level of cybersecurity across all
Member States so as to limit weak points in joint EU cybersecurity; underlines the
crucial need to ensure the resilience of information systems and welcomes in this regard
the Cyber Crisis Liaison Organisation Network (CyCLONe); encourages the further
promotion of the OSCE confidence-building measures for cyberspace;

96. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal in the NIS2 to carry out coordinated security risk
assessments of critical supply chains, in the same vein as its 5G EU toolbox, so as to
better take into account risks linked to, for example, the use of software and hardware
produced by companies under the control of foreign states; calls on the Commission to
develop global 6G standards and competition rules, in accordance with democratic
values; calls on the Commission to promote exchanges between EU institutions and
national authorities about the challenges, best practices and solutions related to the
toolbox measures; believes that the EU should invest more in its capacities in the area of
5G and post-5G technologies in order to reduce dependencies on foreign suppliers;

97. Stresses that cybercrime has no borders and urges the EU to step up its international
efforts to tackle it effectively; points out that the EU should take the lead in the
development of an International Treaty on Cybersecurity that lays down international
norms on cybersecurity to fight cybercrime;

98. Insists on the need for the EU, NATO and like-minded international partners to step up
their cybersecurity assistance to Ukraine; welcomes the initial deployment of experts
from the PESCO-funded Cyber Rapid Response Team and calls for full use of the EU

1
Proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures for
a high level of cybersecurity across the Union, repealing Directive (EU) 2016/1148
(COM(2020)0823).

48 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 cyber sanctions regime against the individuals, entities and bodies responsible for or
involved in the various cyberattacks targeting Ukraine;

99. Welcomes the announcement of the creation of a Cyber Resilience Act that would
complement a European Cyber Defence Policy, as cyber and defence are closely
related; calls for more investments in European cyber defence capabilities and
coordination; recommends that the cyber capability-building of our partners be fostered
through EU training missions or civilian cyber missions; underlines the need to
harmonise and standardise cyber-related training and calls for structural EU funding in
that area;

100. Condemns the massive-scale and illicit use of the NSO Group’s Pegasus surveillance
software by state entities, such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Poland, Bahrain,
the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, against journalists, human rights defenders
and politicians; recalls that Pegasus is only one of the many examples of a program that
is abused by state entities for illicit mass surveillance purposes against innocent citizens;
also condemns other state spying operations targeted against European politicians; urges
the Commission to draw up a list of illicit surveillance software and to continuously
update this list; calls for the EU and Member States to use this list in order to ensure full
human rights due diligence and proper vetting of exports of European surveillance
technology and technical assistance and imports to Member States which pose a clear
risk to the rule of law; calls, in addition, for the establishment of an EU Citizens’ Lab,
similar to that established in Canada, comprising journalists, human rights experts and
reverse malware engineering experts, which would work to discover and expose the
unlawful use of software for illicit surveillance purposes;

101. Calls for the EU to adopt a robust regulatory framework in this field, both within the EU
and at international level; welcomes, in this regard, the decision of the US Commerce
Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to blacklist NSO Group Technologies,
thereby prohibiting the company from receiving American technologies;

102. Expresses its concern that the EU is cooperating on judicial and law enforcement
matters with third countries that have been involved with NSO Group and that have
been using the Pegasus spyware to spy on EU citizens; calls for additional safeguards
and enhanced democratic scrutiny of such cooperation;

103. Calls on the Commission to review EU investments in NSO Group Technologies and to
adopt targeted measures against foreign states using software to spy on EU citizens or
persons benefiting from refugee status in EU countries;

104. Is worried that journalists and democracy activists can be illegally kept under
surveillance and harassed by the authoritarian regimes they sought to escape, even on
EU soil, and considers that this represents a grave violation of the fundamental values of
the Union and of the fundamental rights of individuals, as provided for in the Charter,
the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights; regrets the lack of legal support provided to the victims of
this spy software;

105. Points out the urgent need to reinforce the legislative framework so as to hold
accountable those who distribute, use and abuse such software for illicit and
unauthorised purposes; refers, in particular, to the sanctions imposed on 21 June 2021
on Alexander Shatrov, CEO of a Belarusian company producing facial recognition

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 49

 software used by an authoritarian regime, for example to identify political opposition
protesters; calls on the Commission to prevent any use or funding in the EU of illegal
surveillance technologies; calls for the EU and Member States to engage with third-
country governments to end repressive cybersecurity and counter-terrorism practices
and legislation, under enhanced democratic scrutiny; calls for an investigation by the
competent EU authorities into the unlawful use of spyware in the EU and exports of
such software from the EU, and for repercussions for Member States and associated
countries, including those participating in EU programmes, which have bought and used
such spyware and from which it has been exported to illegally target journalists, human
rights defenders, lawyers and politicians;

106. Calls for an ambitious revision of the ePrivacy Directive 1 in order to strengthen the
confidentiality of communications and of personal data when using electronic devices,
without lowering the level of protection provided by the directive, and without prejudice
to Member States’ responsibility to safeguard national security; highlights that public
authorities should be obliged to disclose vulnerabilities they find in IT devices; calls for
the EU and Member States to further coordinate their actions based on the Directive on
Attacks against Information Systems 2 in order to ensure that illegal access to
information systems and illegal interception are defined as criminal offences and met
with appropriate sanctions; recalls that every breach of confidentiality for national
security purposes must be carried out lawfully and for explicit and legitimate purposes
in a democratic society, on the basis of strict necessity and proportionality, as required
by the ECHR and the Court of Justice of the European Union;

Protection of EU Member States, institutions, agencies, delegations and missions

107. Underlines that the EU institutions, bodies, agencies, delegations, mission and operation
networks, buildings and staff are a target for all types of hybrid threats and attacks by
foreign state actors and should, therefore, be properly protected, paying special attention
to the EEAS’s assets, premises and activities abroad and the safety of EU staff
delegated to non-democratic countries with repressive regimes; calls for a structured
response to these threats by CSDP missions, as well as for more concrete support to be
provided to those missions through strategic communication; acknowledges the constant
increase in state-sponsored attacks against EU institutions, bodies and agencies,
including against the EMA, and Member State institutions and public authorities;

108. Calls for a thorough and periodical review of all the services, networks, equipment and
hardware of EU institutions, bodies, agencies, delegations, missions and operations in
order to bolster their resilience to cybersecurity threats and exclude potentially
dangerous programmes and devices, such as those developed by Kaspersky Lab; urges
the EU institutions and the Member States to ensure proper guidance and secure tools
for staff; emphasises the need to raise awareness of the use of secure services and
networks within institutions and administrations, including while on mission; notes the

1
Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002
concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the
electronic communications sector (OJ L 201, 31.7.2002, p. 37).
2
Directive 2013/40/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 August
2013 on attacks against information systems and replacing Council Framework
Decision 2005/222/JHA (OJ L 218, 14.8.2013, p. 8).

50 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 trust and security advantages of open-source-based network operating systems, which
are widely used by allied military and government agencies;

109. Stresses the importance of efficient, timely and close coordination between different EU
institutions, bodies and agencies specialised in cybersecurity, such as CERT-EU,
alongside the full development of its operational capabilities, as well as ENISA and the
upcoming Joint Cyber Unit, which will ensure a coordinated response to large-scale
cybersecurity threats in the EU; welcomes the ongoing structured cooperation between
CERT-EU and ENISA; welcomes, too, the establishment of the EU cyber intelligence
working group within EU INTCEN with a view to advancing strategic intelligence
cooperation; appreciates the recent initiatives taken by the Secretaries-General of the
EU institutions to develop common information and cybersecurity rules;

110. Looks forward to the Commission’s two proposals for regulations setting up a
normative framework for information security and cybersecurity in all EU institutions,
bodies and agencies, and is of the opinion that these regulations should include capacity
and resilience-building; calls on the Commission and Member States to allocate
additional funds and resources to the cybersecurity of the EU institutions in order to
meet the challenges of a constantly evolving threat landscape;

111. Looks forward to the European Court of Auditors’ Cybersecurity Audit Special Report,
expected in early 2022;

112. Calls for a thorough investigation of the reported cases of foreign infiltration among the
staff of the EU institutions; calls for a review and potential revision of human resources
procedures, including pre-recruitment screening, to close loopholes enabling foreign
infiltration; calls on Parliament’s governing bodies to improve security clearance
procedures for staff and tighten rules and checks for access to its premises to prevent
individuals closely linked with foreign interests from having access to confidential
meetings and information; calls on the Belgian authorities to review and update the
domestic anti-espionage framework to enable effective detection, prosecution and
sanctioning of offenders; calls for similar actions to be taken in the other Member States
to protect the EU institutions and agencies on their soil;

113. Calls for all the EU institutions to raise awareness among their staff through proper
training and guidance in order to prevent, mitigate and address cyber and non-cyber
security risks; calls for mandatory and regular security and ICT training for all staff
(including interns) and MEPs; calls for regular and dedicated mapping and risk
assessments of foreign influence within the institutions;

114. Stresses the need for proper crisis management procedures for information manipulation
cases, including alert systems between administrative levels and sectors, in order to
ensure the provision of mutual information and prevent information manipulation from
spreading; welcomes, in this regard, the Rapid Alert System (RAS) and rapid alert
procedure established prior to the 2019 European elections and the procedures in place
in the Commission and Parliament administrations to warn of possible cases affecting
the institutions or EU democratic processes; asks the EU administration to strengthen its
monitoring, inter alia through the establishment of a central repository and incident
tracking tool, and to develop a shared toolbox to be activated in the event of an RAS
alert;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 51

115. Calls for mandatory transparency rules for trips offered by foreign countries and entities
to officials of the EU institutions, including MEPs, APAs and group advisors, as well as
for national officials, including but not limited to: the name of paying agents, the cost of
trips and the stated motives; recalls that such organised trips cannot be considered
official Parliament delegations and calls for strict sanctions should this not be respected;
stresses that informal friendship groups can undermine the work of the official bodies of
Parliament, as well as its reputation and the coherence of its actions; urges Parliament’s
governing bodies to increase the transparency and accountability of these groups, to
enforce current rules and to take the necessary measures when these friendship groups
are misused by third countries; asks the Quaestors to develop and maintain an accessible
and up-to-date register of friendship groups and declarations;

Interference through global actors via elite capture, national diasporas, universities and
cultural events

116. Condemns all types of elite capture and the technique of co-opting top-level civil
servants and former EU politicians used by foreign companies with links to
governments actively engaged in interference actions against the EU, and regrets the
lack of tools and enforcement needed to prevent these practices; considers that
disclosing confidential information acquired during public mandates or when
performing civil servant functions, at the expense of the EU and its Member States’
strategic interests, should have legal consequences and incur severe sanctions, including
immediate dismissal and/or disqualification from future recruitment by the institutions;
considers that the income and property declarations of such individuals should be made
publicly available;

117. Calls on the Commission to encourage and coordinate actions against elite capture, such
as complementing and implementing unexceptional enforcement of the cooling-off
periods for EU Commissioners and high-ranking EU civil servants with a reporting duty
after the period, in order to end the practice of ‘revolving doors’, and structured rules to
tackle elite capture at EU level; calls on the Commission to evaluate whether existing
cooling-off requirements are still fit for purpose; underlines that former EU politicians
and civil servants should report instances in which they are approached by a foreign
state at a dedicated supervisory body and should receive whistleblower protection; calls
on all the Member States to apply and harmonise cooling-off periods for their political
leadership and to ensure that they have measures and systems in place requiring public
officials to declare their outside activities, employment, investments, assets and
substantial gifts or benefits from which a conflict of interest may result;

118. Is concerned about integrated lobbying strategies combining industrial interests and
foreign political goals, in particular when they favour the interests of an authoritarian
state; calls, therefore, for the EU institutions to reform the Transparency Register,
including by introducing more stringent transparency rules, mapping foreign funding for
EU-related lobbying, and ensuring an entry which allows for the identification of
funding from foreign governments; calls for effective cooperation on this matter among
all EU institutions; considers Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme to be
a good practice to follow;

119. Calls on the Member States to consider the establishment of a foreign influence
registration scheme and the creation of a government-managed register of declared
activities undertaken for, or on behalf of, a foreign state, following the good practice of
other like-minded democracies;

52 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 120. Is concerned by the attempts to control the diasporas living on EU soil by foreign
authoritarian states; points out the crucial role played by China’s United Front, which is
a department reporting directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party and tasked with coordinating the external interference strategy of China through
the strict control of Chinese individuals and Chinese companies abroad; points out the
experiences of Australia and New Zealand in dealing with the United Front;

121. Strongly condemns the Kremlin’s efforts to instrumentalise minorities in EU Member

States by implementing so-called compatriot policies, particularly in the Baltic states
and the Eastern Neighbourhood countries, as part of the geopolitical strategy of Putin’s
regime, whose aim is to divide societies in the EU, alongside the implementation of the
concept of the ‘Russian world’, aimed at justifying expansionist actions by the regime;
notes that many Russian ‘private foundations’, ‘private enterprises’, ‘media
organisations’ and ‘NGOs’ are either state-owned or have hidden ties with the Russian
state; stresses that it is of the utmost importance when engaging in dialogue with
Russian civil society to differentiate between those organisations which stay clear of
Russian governmental influence and those that have links to the Kremlin; recalls that
there is also evidence of Russian interference and manipulation in many other Western
liberal democracies, as well as active support for extremist forces and radical-minded
entities in order to promote the destabilisation of the Union; notes that the Kremlin
makes broad use of culture, including popular music, audiovisual content and literature,
as part of its disinformation ecosystem; deplores Russia’s attempts not to fully
recognise the history of Soviet crimes and instead to introduce a new Russian narrative;

122. Is concerned by the attempts of the Turkish Government to influence people with
Turkish roots with the aim of using the diaspora as a relay for Ankara’s positions and to
divide European societies, in particular via the Presidency for Turks Abroad and
Related Communities (YTB); condemns Turkey’s open attempts to use its diaspora in
Europe to change the course of elections;

123. Condemns Russia’s efforts to exploit ethnic tensions in the Western Balkans in order to
inflame conflicts and divide communities, which could lead to the destabilisation of the
whole region; is concerned about the attempts by the Orthodox Church in countries such
as Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in its entity Republika
Srpska, to promote Russia as a protector of traditional family values and fortify relations
between state and church; is alarmed that Hungary and Serbia are helping China and
Russia with their geopolitical objectives; recommends convening dialogues with
Western Balkan civil society and the private sector to coordinate anti-disinformation
efforts in the region, with an emphasis on research and analysis and the inclusion of
regional expertise; calls on the Commission to build up the infrastructure required to
produce evidence-based responses to both short-term and long-term disinformation
threats in the Western Balkans; calls on the EEAS to pivot to a more proactive stance,
focusing on building the EU’s credibility in the region, rather than defending it, in
expanding StratCom monitoring to focus on cross-border disinformation threats
emanating from Western Balkan countries and their neighbours;

124. Stresses the need for the EU and its Member States to enhance support to Eastern
Partnership countries, in particular through cooperation on building state and societal
resilience to disinformation and Russian state propaganda, in order to counter the
strategic weakening and fragmentation of their societies and institutions;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 53

125. Is alarmed by the extraterritorial application of coercive measures stemming from Hong
Kong’s new National Security Law and China’s Law on Countering Foreign Sanctions,
combined with the extradition agreements that China enjoys with other countries,
enabling China to implement large-scale deterrence actions against critical non-Chinese
nationals, for example, in a recent case, against two Danish parliamentarians, and the
Chinese counter-sanctions against five MEPs, Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human
Rights, three MPs from EU Member States, the Political and Security Committee of the
Council of the EU, two European scholars and two European think tanks in Germany
and Denmark respectively; calls on all Member States to resist and refuse extradition
and, where appropriate, offer appropriate protection for the individuals concerned to
prevent potential human rights violations;

126. Is worried about the number of European universities, schools and cultural centres
engaged in partnerships with Chinese entities, including Confucius Institutes, which
enable the theft of scientific knowledge and the exercise of strict control over all topics
related to China in the field of research and teaching, thus constituting a violation of the
constitutional protection of academic freedom and autonomy, and over the choices of
cultural activities related to China; is worried that such actions might lead to a loss of
knowledge on China-related issues, depriving the EU of the necessary competences; is
concerned, for example, by the sponsoring, in 2014, of the China Library of the College
of Europe by the State Council Information Office of the Chinese Government1 ; is
deeply concerned about China’s attempts to pressure and censor, for example, the
museum of Nantes in relation to the exhibition on Genghis Kahn initially planned for
2020 2 ; invites the Commission to facilitate the exchange of good practices among
Member States in order to tackle foreign interference in the cultural and educational
sectors;

127. Is concerned about cases of concealed financing of research conducted in Europe,

including China’s attempts to poach talent through the Thousand Talents Plan and the
Confucius Institute Scholarships, and the deliberate blending of military and civil
scientific projects through China’s civil-military fusion strategy; highlights attempts by
Chinese higher education institutions to sign memorandums of understanding with
partner institutions in Europe which contain clauses that perpetuate Chinese propaganda
or encourage support for Chinese Communist Party standpoints or political initiatives,
such as the Belt and Road Initiative, thereby bypassing and undermining official
positions taken by the governments of the respective countries; asks cultural, academic
and non-governmental institutions to improve transparency as regards China’s influence
and calls on them to publicise any exchanges and engagements with the Chinese
Government and related organisations;

128. Condemns the decision taken by the Hungarian Government to open a Fudan University
branch while, at the same time, closing the Central European University in Budapest; is
concerned about the increasing financial dependence of European universities on China
and other foreign states, given the risk of sensitive data, technologies and research
outcomes flowing to foreign states and the implications this dependence could have for
academic freedom; stresses the importance of academic freedom to address
disinformation and influence operations; encourages these institutions to conduct
detailed vulnerability assessments before entering into new partnerships with foreign
partners; stresses that academic staff should be trained to report covert funding or

1
[Link]
2
[Link]

54 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 influence through a dedicated hotline and that those coming forward should always
receive whistleblower protection; calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure
that funding for research of geopolitical concern at European universities comes from
European sources; calls on the Commission to propose legislation on increasing the
transparency of the foreign financing of universities, as well as NGOs and think tanks,
such as through mandatory donation declarations, due diligence for their funding
streams and the disclosure of funding, in-kind contributions and subsidies from foreign
parties; calls on Member State authorities to adopt effective rules on foreign funding for
higher education institutions, including strict ceilings and reporting requirements;

129. Underlines that similar risks to security and intellectual property theft exist in the
private sector, where employees might have access to key technologies and trade
secrets; calls on the Commission and Member States to encourage both academic
institutions and the private sector to set up comprehensive security and compliance
programmes, including specific security reviews for new contracts; notes that
heightened limitations on systems and network access, as well as security clearance,
may be warranted for some of the professors or employees working on critical research
and products;

130. Notes that the revised Blue Card Directive1 , which makes it easier for skilled non-EU
migrants to come to the EU, enables Chinese and Russian companies established in
Europe, for example, to bring over skilled migrants from their respective countries;
points out that this could make it more difficult for Member States to exercise control
over the influx of these citizens, which might lead to risks of foreign interference;

131. Notes the increasing number of Confucius Institutes established around the world, and
in particular in Europe; remarks that the Center for Language Education and
Cooperation, formerly known as Confucius Institute Headquarters or Hanban (Office of
Chinese Language Council International), which is responsible for the Confucius
Institutes programme worldwide, is part of the Chinese party-state’s propaganda
system; calls on Member States and the Commission to support independent Chinese
language courses without the involvement of the Chinese state or affiliated
organisations; believes that the recently established National China Centre in Sweden
could serve as an important example of how to increase independent China competence
in Europe;

132. Considers, in addition, that Confucius Institutes serve as a lobbying platform for
Chinese economic interests and for the Chinese intelligence service and the recruitment
of agents and spies; recalls that many universities have decided to terminate their
cooperation with Confucius Institutes because of the risks of Chinese espionage and
interference, as did the universities of Dusseldorf in 2016, Brussels (VUB and ULB) in
2019, and Hamburg in 2020, and all universities in Sweden; calls for more universities
to reflect on their current cooperation to ensure that it does not affect their academic
freedom; calls on Member States to closely monitor teaching, research and other
activities within the Confucius Institutes and, where alleged espionage or interference is
substantiated by clear evidence, take enforcement action to safeguard European

1
Directive (EU) 2021/1883 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October
2021 on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purpose
of highly qualified employment, and repealing Council Directive 2009/50/EC (OJ L
382, 28.10.2021, p. 1).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 55

 economic and political sovereignty, including through the denial of funding or the
revocation of the licences of associated institutes;

133. Observes that foreign interference can also be pursued through influence in and the
instrumentalisation of religious institutes, such as Russian influence in Orthodox
churches, in particular in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in its
Republika Srpska entity, Georgia and to some extent in Ukraine, including by sowing
division among local populations, developing a biased writing of history and promoting
an anti-EU agenda, Turkish Government influence through mosques in France and
Germany, and Saudi Arabian influence through Salafi mosques across Europe
promoting radical Islam; calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure better
coordination on protecting religious institutes from foreign interference and to cap and
increase the transparency of funding; calls on Member States to closely monitor
activities in religious institutes and, where appropriate and supported by evidence, take
action, including through the denial of funding or the revocation of the licences of
associated institutes;

134. Calls on the EEAS to produce a study into the prevalence and influence of malicious
state actors in European think tanks, universities, religious organisations and media
institutions; calls on all EU institutions and Member States to collaborate with and
engage in systematic dialogue with stakeholders and experts in order to accurately map
and monitor foreign influence in the cultural, academic and religious spheres; calls for
greater content sharing among European national broadcasters, including those in
neighbouring countries;

135. Is concerned by reports of foreign interference in European judicial systems; draws

particular attention to the execution of Russian judgments by European courts against
Kremlin opponents; calls on Member States to raise awareness among judicial staff and
to work with civil society to prevent abuse of international judicial cooperation and
European tribunals and courts by foreign governments; calls on the EEAS to
commission a study into the prevalence and influence of foreign interference in
European court proceedings; notes that, on the basis of this study, it may be necessary to
propose changes to transparency and funding requirements for court proceedings;

Deterrence, attribution and collective countermeasures, including sanctions

136. Considers that the sanctions regimes recently set up by the EU, such as the restrictive
measures against cyberattacks threatening the Union and its Member States 1 and the EU
Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime 2 (EU Magnitsky Act), adopted on 17 May
2019 and 7 December 2020 respectively, have demonstrated added value in providing
the EU with valuable deterrence tools; calls on the Commission to put forward a
legislative proposal to adopt a new thematic sanctions regime to address serious acts of
corruption; recalls that the cyberattack and human rights sanctions regimes have been
used twice, in 2020 and 2021 respectively; urges that the cyber sanctions regime be
made permanent and calls on Member States to share all evidence and intelligence
gathered in order to feed into the establishment of cyber sanction lists;

1
[Link]
content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL%3A2019%3A129I%3ATOC
2
[Link]

56 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 137. Calls for the EU and its Member States to take further measures against foreign
interference, including large-scale disinformation campaigns, hybrid threats and hybrid
warfare, with full respect for the freedoms of expression and of information, including
in the form of setting up a sanctions regime; believes that this should include the
introduction of a cross-sectoral and asymmetric sanctions framework, as well as
diplomatic sanctions, travel bans, asset freezes and the stripping of EU residence
permits from foreign individuals and their family members associated with foreign
interference attempts, which should target as precisely as possible the decision-makers
and bodies responsible for aggressive actions, avoiding a tit-for-tat environment, under
Article 29 TEU and Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
(TFEU) (restrictive measures) and firmly integrated within the Union’s common foreign
and security policy (CFSP) and CSDP pillars; calls on Member States to make foreign
and domestic interference and disinformation a fixed point on the agenda of the Foreign
Affairs Council; calls for the EU to define what an internationally wrongful act is and to
adopt minimum thresholds for the triggering of countermeasures as a result of this new
definition, which should be accompanied by an impact assessment to provide legal
certainty; notes that the Council should be able to decide on sanctions related to foreign
interference by majority vote, rather than unanimity; is of the opinion that countries
engaged in foreign interference and information manipulation with the aim of
destabilising the situation within the EU should pay the costs of their decisions and bear
the economic and/or reputational and/or diplomatic consequences; calls on the
Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the
Union for Foreign and Security Policy to submit concrete proposals in this regard;

138. Insists that, while aiming to preserve democratic processes, human rights and freedoms
as defined in the Treaties, a sanctions regime must pay particular attention to the
impacts on fundamental rights and freedoms of any sanctions imposed, in order to
uphold respect for the Charter, and must be transparent as regards the grounds on which
the decision to implement sanctions is taken; stresses the need for greater clarity at EU
level regarding the scope and impact of sanctions against associated persons, such as
EU nationals and companies;

139. Considers that while the nature of these hybrid attacks varies, their danger to the values,
fundamental interests, security, independence and integrity of the EU and its Member
States, as well as to the consolidation of and support for democracy, the rule of law,
human rights, the principles of international law and fundamental freedoms, may be
substantial in terms of either the scale of the attacks, their nature or their cumulative
effect; welcomes the fact that the European Democracy Action Plan envisages that the
Commission and the EEAS together develop a toolbox for foreign interference and
influence operations, including hybrid operations and the clear attribution of malicious
attacks by third parties and countries against the EU;

140. Points out that the understanding that certain foreign interference actions are seriously
affecting democratic processes and influencing the exercise of rights or duties is gaining
ground internationally; points out, in this regard, the amendments adopted in 2018 in the
Australian National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign
Interference) Act, which aims to criminalise covert and deceptive activities by foreign
actors intending to interfere with political or governmental processes, impact rights or
duties, or support the intelligence activities of a foreign government, by creating new
offences such as ‘intentional foreign interference’;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 57

141. Is aware that pursuant to Article 21(3) TEU the Union must ensure consistency among
the different areas of its external action and among these and other policies, as defined
in the Treaties; points out, in this respect, that foreign interference, such as the threat
posed by foreign terrorist fighters and groups who influence individuals remaining in
the EU, was also tackled through Directive (EU) 2017/541 of the European Parliament
and of the Council of 15 March 2017 on combating terrorism1 ;

142. Underlines that, in order to reinforce their impact, sanctions should be imposed
collectively, based, where possible, on coordination with like-minded partners, possibly
involving international organisations and formalised in an international agreement,
considering also other types of reactions to the attacks; notes that candidate and
potential candidate countries should also adopt these sanctions in order to align with the
EU’s CFSP; notes the important work done by NATO in the area of hybrid threats and
recalls in this respect the communiqué of the NATO meeting of 14 June 2021, where it
was reaffirmed that a decision as to when a cyberattack would lead to the invocation of
Article 5 of the NATO Treaty would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-
by-case basis, and that the impact of significant malicious cumulative cyber activities
might, in certain circumstances, be considered as amounting to an armed attack 2;
stresses that the EU and NATO should adopt a more forward-looking and strategic
approach towards hybrid threats focused on the motives and objectives of adversaries,
and should clarify in which instances the EU is better equipped to deal with a threat, as
well as the comparative advantages of their capabilities; recalls that several EU Member
States are not members of NATO, but nevertheless cooperate with NATO, for instance
through its Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme and Partnership Interoperability
Initiative (PII), and therefore underlines that any EU-NATO cooperation must be
without prejudice to the security and defence policy of the non-NATO EU Member
States, including those which have neutrality policies in place; stresses the importance
of mutual assistance and solidarity in line with Article 42(7) TEU and Article 222
TFEU and calls for the EU to draw up concrete scenarios for the activation of these
articles in the event of a hypothetical cyberattack; calls on the EU and all Member
States to link the issue with the other aspects of their relations with the states behind
interference and disinformation campaigns, in particular Russia and China;

Global cooperation and multilateralism

143. Acknowledges that many democratic countries all over the world are facing similar
destabilisation operations carried out by foreign state and non-state actors;

144. Highlights the need for global, multilateral cooperation between like-minded countries
in relevant international forums on these issues of crucial importance, in the form of a
partnership based on common understanding and shared definitions, with a view to
establishing international norms and principles; underlines the importance of close
cooperation with the US and other like-minded states for the modernisation of
multilateral organisations; welcomes the Summit for Democracy in that regard and
expects it to result in concrete proposals and actions to tackle through collective action
the greatest threats faced by democracies today;

145. Considers that, on the basis of common situational awareness, like-minded partners
should exchange best practices and identify common responses to global, but also

1
OJ L 88, 31.3.2017, p. 6.
2
[Link]

58 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 shared domestic, challenges, including collective sanctions, the protection of human
rights and democratic standards; calls for the EU to lead the debate on the legal
implications of foreign interference, to promote common international definitions and
attribution rules and to develop an international framework for responses to interference
in elections in order to establish a Global Code of Practice for Free and Resilient
Democratic Processes;

146. Calls for the EU and its Member States to consider the right international formats to
allow for such a partnership and cooperation between like-minded partners; calls for the
EU and its Member States to initiate a process at UN level to adopt a global convention
to promote and defend democracy that establishes a common definition of foreign
interference; calls for the EU to propose a global democracy defence toolkit, to be
included in the convention, containing joint actions and sanctions to counter foreign
interference;

147. Welcomes the NATO statement of 14 June 2021, which recognises the increasing
challenge posed by cyber, hybrid and other asymmetric threats, including
disinformation campaigns, and by the malicious use of ever-more sophisticated
emerging and disruptive technologies; welcomes the progress made on EU-NATO
cooperation in the cyber defence field; welcomes Lithuania’s establishment of the
Regional Cyber Defence Centre involving the US and the Eastern Partnership countries;
supports closer cooperation with partner countries in the area of cyber defence, in terms
of information sharing and operational work; welcomes the discussions between the US
and the EU on multilateral export controls on cyber-surveillance items in the context of
the Trade and Technology Council;

148. Welcomes the initiatives already taken, in particular at administrative level, to share
knowledge about the state of hybrid attacks, including disinformation operations, in
real-time, such as the EEAS-established Rapid Alert System partly opened to like-
minded third countries, the G7-established Rapid Response Mechanism, and the NATO
Joint Intelligence and Security Division;

149. Underlines that global cooperation should be based on common values reflected in
common projects, involving international organisations such as the OSCE and
UNESCO, and setting up democratic capacity building and sustainable peace and
security in countries facing similar foreign interference threats; calls for the EU to
establish a European Democratic Media Fund to support independent journalism in
(potential) enlargement and European neighbourhood countries and in candidate and
potential candidate countries; highlights the practical needs, such as obtaining technical
work equipment, regularly voiced by independent journalists from neighbouring
countries;

150. Emphasises the urgent need to address climate mis- and disinformation; welcomes the
efforts at COP26 to adopt a universal definition of climate mis- and disinformation and
to outline actions to address the matter; calls for models such as the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change to be built on to create a global code of conduct on
disinformation, a process that would provide the basis for a Paris Agreement on
Disinformation;

151. Stresses the importance of providing a clear perspective for candidate and potential
candidate countries and of supporting partner and neighbouring countries, such as those
in the Western Balkans and the Eastern and Southern Neighbourhoods of the EU, since

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 59

 countries such as Russia, Turkey and China are trying to use these countries as an
information manipulation and hybrid warfare laboratory, aimed at undermining the EU;
believes that the US is an important partner in countering foreign interference,
disinformation campaigns and hybrid threats in those regions; is worried in particular by
the role played by Serbia and Hungary in widely disseminating disinformation to
surrounding countries; underlines that the EU should support and engage with these
countries, as provided for in the NDICI Regulation1 ; considers that its actions can take
the form of promoting the EU’s added value and positive impact in the region, financing
projects aimed at ensuring media freedom, strengthening civil society and the rule of
law, and enhancing cooperation on media, digital and information literacy, while
respecting the sovereignty of such countries; calls for increased EEAS capacity in this
regard;

152. Encourages the EU and its Member States to deepen cooperation with Taiwan in
countering interference operations and disinformation campaigns from malign third
countries, including the sharing of best practices, joint approaches to fostering media
freedom and journalism, deepening cooperation on cybersecurity and cyber threats,
raising citizens’ awareness and improving overall digital literacy among the population
in order to strengthen the resilience of our democratic systems; supports intensified
cooperation between relevant European and Taiwanese government agencies, NGOs
and think tanks in the field;

153. Calls for Parliament to actively promote an EU narrative, to play a leading role in
promoting the exchange of information and to discuss best practices with partner
parliaments across the globe, using its vast network of interparliamentary delegations,
as well as the democracy initiatives and support activities coordinated by its Democracy
Support and Election Coordination Group; underlines the importance of close
cooperation with parliamentarians from third countries through tailor-made projects
supporting a European perspective for candidate and potential candidate countries;

154. Calls for the EEAS to strengthen the role of the EU delegations and EU CSDP missions
in third countries in order to reinforce their ability to detect and debunk disinformation
campaigns orchestrated by foreign state actors, and to fund education projects
strengthening democratic values and fundamental rights; strongly recommends the
creation of a Strategic Communication Hub, initiated by the EEAS, to establish
structural cooperation on countering disinformation and foreign interference, which
should be based in Taipei; calls, in addition, on EU delegations to contribute to the EU’s
fight against disinformation by translating relevant EU decisions, such as Parliament’s
urgency resolutions, into their posted country’s language;

155. Calls for the issue of foreign malicious interference to be addressed within the
upcoming new Strategic Compass of the EU;

156. Calls for the creation of a permanent institutional arrangement in the European
Parliament dedicated to the follow-up of these recommendations, in order to address

1
Regulation (EU) 2021/947 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 June
2021 establishing the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation
Instrument – Global Europe, amending and repealing Decision No 466/2014/EU of the
European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Regulation (EU) 2017/1601 of
the European Parliament and of the Council and Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No
480/2009 (OJ L 209, 14.6.2021, p. 1).

60 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 foreign interference and disinformation in the EU in a systematic way beyond the
current mandate of the INGE Special Committee; calls for an improved institutionalised
exchange between the Commission, the EEAS and Parliament through this body;

157. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the
Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign
Affairs and Security Policy, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 61

ING2
“Special Committee on Foreign Interference
in all Democratic Processes in the European
Union, including Disinformation, and the
Strengthening of Integrity, Transparency and
Accountability in the European Parliament”

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 63

EPP GROUP MEMBERS OF THE
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT’S
SPECIAL COMMITTEE (ING2)

Javier ZARZALEJOS ​Vladimír BILČÍK ​Sandra KALNIETE

First Vice-Chair Coordinator Member, Rapporteur

David LEGA ​Ioan-Rareş BOGDAN ​Andrey KOVATCHEV

Vice-Coordinator Member Member

​Janusz LEWANDOWSKI ​Benoît LUTGEN ​Lukas MANDL

Member Member Member
64 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2
 ​Sabine VERHEYEN ​Salvatore DE MEO ​Geoffroy DIDIER
Member Substitute Substitute

​Sunčana GLAVAK ​Rasa JUKNEVIČIENĖ Paulo RANGEL

Substitute Substitute Substitute

​Maria SPYRAKI Isabel WISELER-LIMA ​Tomáš ZDECHOVSKÝ

Substitute Substitute Substitute
EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 65
 ​FINAL REPORT ING2

TEXTS ADOPTED

P9_TA(2023)0219

Foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union,

including disinformation
European Parliament resolution of 1 June 2023 on foreign interference in all democratic
processes in the European Union, including disinformation (2022/2075(INI))

The European Parliament

– having regard to its decision of 10 March 2022 on setting up a special committee on

foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including
disinformation (INGE 2), and defining its responsibilities, numerical strength and term
of offices1 , and its decision of 14 February 2023 amending its aforementioned decision
of 10 March, and adjusting its title and responsibilities 2,

– having regard to its resolution of 9 March 2022 on foreign interference in all democratic
processes in the European Union, including disinformation 3 (hereinafter the ‘INGE 1
report’),

– having regard to the Commission’s follow-up to Parliament’s recommendations in its

resolution of 9 March 2022,

– having regard to the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence – For a European
Union that protects its citizens, values and interests and contributes to international
peace and security, approved by the Council on 21 March 2022 and endorsed by the
European Council on 24 March 2022,

– having regard to its recommendation of 23 November 2022 to the Council, the

Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the
Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy concerning the new EU strategy for
enlargement,4

– having regard to the Commission communication of 13 July 2022 entitled ‘2022 Rule of
Law Report – The rule of law situation in the European Union’ (COM(2022)0500),

– having regard to its resolution of 8 March 2022 on the shrinking space for civil society

1
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2022)0070.
2
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2023)0030.
3
OJ C 347, 9.9.2022, p. 61.
4
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2022)0406.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 67

 in Europe 1,

– having regard to its resolution of 15 December 2022 on suspicions of corruption from

Qatar and the broader need for transparency and accountability in the European
institutions 2,

– having regard to its resolution of 23 November 2016 on EU strategic communication to

, 3
counteract propaganda against it by third countries

– having regard to its recommendation of 13 March 2019 to the Council and the Vice-
President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and
Security Policy concerning taking stock of the follow-up taken by the EEAS two years
after the EP report on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it
by third countries 4,

– having regard to its resolution of 20 October 2021 entitled ‘Europe’s Media in the
Digital Decade: an Action Plan to Support Recovery and Transformation’ 5,

– having regard to the Articles of Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful

Acts,

– having regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,

– having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in particular
Article 20 thereof,

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2021/692 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 28 April 2021 establishing the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values
Programme and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1381/2013 of the European Parliament
and of the Council and Council Regulation (EU) No 390/2014 6 ,

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 27 April 2022 for a directive of the
European Parliament and of the Council on protecting persons who engage in public
participation from manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings (‘Strategic
lawsuits against public participation’) (COM(2022)0177),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 3 December 2020 on the European

democracy action plan (COM(2020)0790),

– having regard to the proposal of 16 September 2022 for a regulation of the European
Parliament and of the Council establishing a common framework for media services in
the internal market (European Media Freedom Act) and amending Directive
2010/13/EU (COM(2022)0457),

– having regard to the final report of the Conference on the Future of Europe, and in

1
OJ C 347, 9.9.2022, p. 2.
2
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2022)0448.
3
OJ C 224, 27.6.2018, p. 58.
4
OJ C 23, 21.1.2021, p. 152.
5
OJ C 184, 5.5.2022, p. 71.
6
OJ L 156, 5.5.2021, p. 1.

68 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 particular proposals 27 and 37 thereof,

– having regard to the strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation 2022,

– having regard to Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 19 October 2022 on a single market For Digital Services and amending
Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act) 1 ,

– having regard to Directive (EU) 2022/2557 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 14 December 2022 on the resilience of critical entities and repealing Council
Directive 2008/114/EC2 (CER Directive);

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 18 October 2022 for a Council

recommendation on a coordinated approach by the Union to strengthen the resilience of
critical infrastructure (COM(2022)0551),

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 25 November 2021 for a regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council on the transparency and targeting of political
advertising (COM(2021)0731) and the amendments thereto, adopted by Parliament on 2
February 2023 3,

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 25 November 2021 for a regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council on the statute and funding of European political
parties and European political foundations (COM(2021)0734),

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 16 December 2020 for a directive of the
European Parliament and of the Council on measures for a high common level of
cybersecurity across the Union, repealing Directive (EU) 2016/1148 (COM(2020)0823)
(NIS2 Directive),

– having regard to European Court of Auditors (ECA) special report 05/2022 of

29 March 2022 entitled ‘Cybersecurity of EU institutions, bodies and agencies – Level
of preparedness overall not commensurate with the threats’,

– having regard to the Commission proposal of 22 March 2022 for a regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures for a high common level
of cybersecurity at the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union
(COM(2022)0122),

– having regard to the interinstitutional agreement of 20 May 2021 between the European
Parliament, the Council and the Commission on a mandatory transparency register, 4

– having regard to the US-EU Joint Statement of the Trade and Technology Council of
5 December 2022,

– having regard to the ECA Annual Report on EU agencies for the financial year 2021,

1
OJ L 277, 27.10.2022, p. 1.
2
OJ L 333, 27.12.2022, p. 164.
3
Texts adopted, P9_TA(2023)0027.
4
OJ L 207, 11.6.2021, p. 1.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 69

– having regard to the European Code of Standards for Independent Fact-Checking
Organisations, published by the European Fact-Checking Standards Network in August
2022,

– having regard to Rules 54 and 207 of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to the (mid-term) report of the Special Committee on foreign interference
in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation, and the
strengthening of integrity, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament
(ING2) (A9-0187/2023),

A. whereas Parliament adopted a resolution on 9 March 2022 laying down its

recommendations based on the report of the first special committee on foreign
interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including
disinformation; whereas among its recommendations, this report called for the adoption
of a coordinated strategy against foreign interference; whereas the Commission
produced a document following up on these recommendations, suggesting among other
things that such a strategy de facto already exists in the form of various kinds of
interinstitutional coordination;

B. whereas the European Parliament is the only directly elected body among the EU
institutions and is at the forefront of EU political discussions on fighting foreign
interference, information manipulation and hybrid threats in our democracies, including
in the EU institutions; whereas recent events have highlighted that Parliament is a target
of diverse and aggressive foreign interference campaigns;

C. whereas the President of the Commission announced in her September 2022 State of the
Union address that a Defence of Democracy package would be presented by the
Commission, scheduled for adoption in the second quarter of 2023; whereas this
package would include a legislative proposal to protect democracies from third-country
entities exercising activities in the EU that may affect public opinion and the democratic
sphere, a review of actions under the European democracy action plan (EDAP) and
measures to ensure secure and resilient elections, including, among others,
cybersecurity measures in electoral processes;

D. whereas the Council of the European Union, the Commission and the European
External Action Service co-led a joint exercise called ‘EU Integrated Resolve 2022’
aimed at testing the EU’s response to hybrid campaigns;

E. whereas Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine started as a carefully planned and
aggressively executed information war followed by a full-scale military invasion on
24 February 2022; whereas Russia uses an array of different methods of interference,
embedded within a larger strategy to harm, confuse, frighten, weaken and divide the
EU’s Member States and its neighbourhood; whereas the United States and the United
Kingdom led effective ‘pre-bunking’ communication campaigns prior to Russia’s full-
scale invasion of Ukraine, involving making unprecedented public use of available
reliable intelligence to counter the Kremlin narrative and shed light on the lies of the
Russian Government and related actors; whereas Russia had for years been carrying out
disinformation campaigns, cyber-attacks, elite capture and attacks aimed at rewriting
history in an attempt to prepare the groundwork for its invasion of Ukraine to underpin
it;

70 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 F. whereas Parliament’s services are expected to make significant efforts to follow up on
the recommendations adopted on 9 March 2022, in particular when preparing the 2024
European elections; whereas Parliament’s task force on disinformation has been tasked
with coordinating the work of different European Parliament Directorates-General and
cooperating with other EU institutions on a number of actions undertaken in particular
in the following fields: situational awareness, resilience building, pre-bunking and
contribution to a healthy information space, and mitigation;

G. whereas Parliament is proactively supporting parliamentary democracy in a number of

non-EU countries, including through the actions of the Democracy and Election Support
Group (DEG); whereas the EU’s immediate neighbourhood is particularly important in
this regard;

H. whereas EU accession countries are facing challenges stemming from malign foreign
interference and disinformation campaigns; whereas past developments have shown that
non-enlargement has a serious strategic cost; whereas the Western Balkans are an area
of strategic and geopolitical competition and some of its countries are prone to
destabilisation, threatening the security and stability of our continent; whereas third
countries are exploiting these vulnerabilities, including through strategic investments
and disinformation campaigns; whereas the stability, security and democratic resilience
of the accession countries are inextricably linked to the EU’s own security, stability and
democratic resilience;

I. whereas the aim of those interference campaigns in the Western Balkans is to negatively
influence the growing euro-Atlantic orientation and stability of individual countries, and
so change the orientation of the region as a whole; whereas Russia is using its influence
in Serbia in an attempt to destabilise and interfere in neighbouring sovereign states: in
Bosnia via the Republika Srpska; in Montenegro via the country’s pro-Serbian
sentiments as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church; and in Kosovo by exploiting and
inflaming existing disputes in the North of Kosovo; whereas Russia therefore still has
notable influence in the Western Balkans, with the power to interfere in regional
attempts at reconciliation, integration and reform towards democratisation;

J. whereas initiatives such as the EU-funded RADAR project, from the Trans European
Policy Studies Association (TEPSA, a pan-European consortium of leading research
institutes and universities), aims to raise citizens’ awareness of disinformation and
provide a public platform for debate, and the project has a special focus on youth in
order to empower their voices, strengthen their engagement in civil society and improve
their education on critical thinking and media literacy;

K. whereas a holistic approach, encompassing our societies as a whole, is needed when

educating and training European citizens of all ages, including specific training for
people of working age and in schools to detect and be resilient against prospective
disinformation operations and information manipulation; whereas a strategy should be
established to pre-emptively show internet users videos and content on the tactics
behind disinformation, which have the potential to make them more aware and resilient
to misinformation and disinformation and increase the resilience of vulnerable
population groups; whereas public awareness and constant dialogue with media is
critical in this regard; whereas the central feature of communication success against
disinformation is trust in the communicating institutions;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 71

L. whereas contemporary antisemitism takes many forms, including online hate speech and
the (re-)emergence of new conspiracy theories, and whereas the EU has, within the
framework of the EU strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life
(2021-2030), established its commitment to a future free from antisemitism in the EU
and beyond;

M. whereas civil society organisations (CSOs) play an essential role as watchdogs, are key
to building democratic resilience from within and protecting democracy, and support
the combat against breaches of the rule of law while actively contributing to fostering
the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights on the ground; whereas, specifically,
CSOs play an important part in detecting and countering foreign interference in
democratic processes; whereas CSOs play a critical role in developing self-regulation,
enabling the creation of industry standards to fight disinformation, in particular in fields
where any state actions may create mistrust; whereas when the participation of citizens
and civil society in democratic processes is further strengthened, then the democracy as
a whole is better fortified against the risk of foreign interference;

N. whereas CSOs, think tanks, consulting agencies, foundations and companies themselves
are not immune from experiencing such interference and, in some cases, may serve as
the vehicle, tool or vector of influence from malicious actors, including third-country
actors, directly sponsoring or instigating foreign interference and influencing
policymakers; whereas transparency is key to ensure that these actors do not become
and are not used as vessels for foreign interference and therefore clear rules for their
influence must be observed and scrutinised; whereas some EU Member States have
attempted to implement mechanisms to screen foreign governmental funding for CSOs,
especially from Russia and China;

O. whereas the EU support of CSOs through the Citizens Equality Rights and Values
programme (CERV), stepped up efforts to support civil society organisations, in
particular the smaller, local ones facing particular constraints; whereas certain Member
States, through the national recovery and resilience programmes, have provided funding
for capacity-building for fact-checking and tackling disinformation;

P. whereas, in spite of certain available financial resources, including successful projects

from EU funds and programmes, overall, the funding of CSOs and the media is
fragmented, project-based and often comes from non-EU countries; whereas application
procedures for financing should be transparent and accessible; whereas the Court of
Auditors has concluded that the lack of a coherent EU media literacy strategy that
includes tackling disinformation and the fragmentation of EU actions dilutes the impact
of media literacy projects, and that many such projects have not demonstrated sufficient
scale and reach;

Q. whereas fact-based journalism plays a key role in a democratic society, upholding the
principles of truthfulness, accuracy, impartiality, honesty and independence; whereas
freedom of expression and of information are fundamental rights guaranteed by the
European Convention on Human Rights and recognised by the Charter of Fundamental
Rights of the EU, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
whereas the tabloidisation of the media has a detrimental effect on the reliability of
publically accessible information and the media landscape;

R. whereas whistleblowers, journalists, CSOs, activists and human rights defenders are

72 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 increasingly facing intimidation, intrusive surveillance and hacking, harassment and
threats, including legal threats and abusive litigation; whereas they should be supported
by the EU and its institutions; whereas strategic lawsuits against public participation
(SLAPPs), including those initiated by authorities of third countries against EU
nationals or EU-based entities, are a serious threat to democracy and fundamental rights
such as freedom of expression and information, as they are a means by which to prevent
journalists and activists as well as broader civil society actors from speaking up on
issues of public interest and to penalise them for doing so, and thus have a chilling
effect on all actual or potential critical voices;

S. whereas in the EU, there are cases of journalists whose existence and life are threatened
as a result of their research into topics of public interest; whereas foreign powers are
suspected of interfering in the Union and have extended repressive measures to
territories within the Union in order to silence journalists who wish to report and
denounce criminal acts; whereas an example of this is the strategy of judicial
harassment being exercised by the Kingdom of Morocco against the Spanish journalist
Ignacio Cembrero; whereas some journalists and human rights defenders that have been
granted asylum in the EU are still the target of persecution, harassment, violence and
assassination attempts; whereas the Member States should ensure their security and that
they are able to continue their work;

T. whereas reducing the effectiveness of malicious information manipulation, and in

particular its effects on the functioning of democratic processes, is a matter of public
interest; whereas disinformation decreases the ability of citizens to take informed
decisions and to freely participate in democratic processes; whereas this situation is
intensified by the rapid development of new types of media; whereas according to the
Media Pluralism Monitor 2022, no country is at low risk for the indicator of ‘media
viability’, reflecting the existing economic threats to media pluralism; whereas news
media operating in smaller markets, including local, regional and niche media, face
additional challenges as they have limited revenues, and are becoming less viable using
current commercial business models and cannot embrace new ones in the same way that
media operating in larger markets can; whereas, in addition, some Member States,
which Russia considers its sphere of influence, are more exposed to geopolitical risks
arising from Kremlin interference in their information space;

U. whereas the promotion of media independence and pluralism and media literacy in
tackling disinformation is one of the citizens’ proposals contained in the final report of
the Conference on the Future of Europe, published on 9 May 2022, where citizens
called specifically for the EU to address threats to media independence through the
establishment of EU-wide minimum standards as well as to defend and support free,
pluralistic and independent media, to step up the fight against disinformation and
foreign interference, and to ensure the protection of journalists; whereas the final report
of the Conference of the Future of Europe also contained calls for setting up an EU
body in charge of addressing and tackling targeted disinformation and interference,
enhancing the cooperation of national cybersecurity authorities and legislation and
guidelines for online platforms and social media companies to address disinformation
vulnerabilities;

V. whereas the integrity of the internal market for media services may be compromised and
the polarisation of society fomented by media providers that systematically engage in
disinformation, including information manipulation and interference of state-controlled

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 73

 media service providers financed by certain non-EU countries, such as China, Russia
and Türkiye; whereas a highly concentrated and government-controlled media
environment can lead to an informational autocracy, where the state or malign foreign
actors can easily exert influence through the manipulation of information;

W. whereas China has invested almost EUR 3 billion in European media firms over the last
10 years, without an adequate response from the EU and its Member States; whereas
China’s example could be followed by other states with similar authoritarian political
ideologies, entailing considerable risks for the integrity of European democracies and
interference by other countries in the EU’s domestic affairs; whereas a number of
Chinese state-run Confucius Institutes, which spread propaganda and interfere in
academic institutions, are still functioning in the EU; whereas Chinese broadcast media
represent and disseminate the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideology; whereas
Chinese bot accounts are increasingly active on social media and in social networking,
serving the needs of the Chinese authorities;

X. whereas a massive operation targeting international institutions, notably in Brussels and

Geneva and serving Indian interests was recently uncovered by EU DisinfoLab,
involving hundreds of fake media outlets and dozens of government-organised non-
governmental organisations;

Y. whereas only some EU Member States have screening mechanisms for foreign media
investments in place; whereas it is in the public interest to know about the beneficial
ownership structures of media outlets;

Z. whereas important structural shortcomings facilitating information manipulation

through online platforms still remain; whereas online platforms’ business models are
based on personal data, algorithms that push extreme and divisive content and
advertising, whereby more engagement means more advertising revenue, and the drive
for engagement rewards divisive and extreme opinions at the expense of fact-based
information; whereas online platforms are therefore designed in a way that helps to
amplify conspiracy theories and disinformation; whereas these global online platforms
in addition have had a vast disruptive impact on the economic viability of the European
media sector, as they dominate the advertising market, thus impacting media business
models;

AA. whereas even though the Code of Practice on Disinformation was strengthened, many
structural problems persist, such as the lack of binding rules and the provision whereby
companies can choose their own commitments, which ultimately hinders the success of
the Code of Practice as a tool;

AB. whereas rapidly evolving generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could have
potentially grave consequences that could enable malicious actors to produce and spread
more disinformation content, cheaper and at a greater speed; whereas particularly
devastating effects could be faced by countries across the world that lack resources to
address this challenge;

AC. whereas the Commission proposal on transparency and targeting of political advertising
aims to address these structural problems in the context of political advertising;

AD. whereas platforms have developed several initiatives to counter online disinformation,

74 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 designing ‘pre-bunking’ campaigns to inform users about the dangers of disinformation
by pre-emptively warning about and disproving false claims made through dis- and
misinformation campaigns undertaken by malicious actors; whereas the effect of these
initiatives cannot be fully evaluated owing to the absence of independent or
institutionalised analyses by researchers with full access to the data;

AE. whereas non-English language content is still substantially left unmonitored as

platforms still do not employ a sufficient number of reviewers and fact-checkers able to
perform their respective tasks in other languages, especially in smaller languages in
countries gravely affected by disinformation; whereas online platforms should
guarantee fundamental rights to citizens, such as freedom of expression and of
information;

AF. whereas since the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, the company has introduced a
crisis misinformation policy, according to which the company would take action in
response to tweets that contain false or misleading allegations regarding use of force
and weapons, and that it would respond by prioritising tweets from state-affiliated
media accounts and place a warning notice that a tweet has violated the company’s
crisis misinformation policy, but this approach was partially cancelled on
23 November 2022; whereas the company has fired the staff of all departments
responsible for detecting, classifying or responding to disinformation, including a
majority of content moderators and country-specific teams, and reinstated over 60 000
accounts which had previously been found to have broken the platform’s rules by
sharing disinformation, engaging in harassment or abuse, or running scams; whereas
since the takeover, there has been an increase of abusive content of about 40 %;
whereas there have been repeated and intolerable suspensions of the accounts of
journalists and media outlets without concrete justification;

AG. whereas media reports on internal documents have raised questions about the political
neutrality of the company’s efforts to implement its policies against foreign interference
and disinformation in the 2020 US presidential election, and whether those efforts also
amount to a form of interference in the political and wider social debate around the
election, as the dozens of internal emails revealed that methods intended to counter
disinformation and hate speech were being used by the main parties in the United States
to control the electorate; whereas it remains unclear how Twitter is going to develop in
the near future, owing to concerning statements and decisions taken by its new senior
management;

AH. whereas health dis- and misinformation is a serious threat to public health since it
erodes public trust in science, public institutions, authorities and medical staff, as well
as generating hostility towards them, and advances conspiracy theories; whereas such
disinformation can be life-threatening when it deters people from seeking medically
recommended treatments, including vaccinations, or promoting false treatments;
whereas, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of COVID-19-related content
that was not dealt with after having been fact-checked and found to consist of mis- or
disinformation amounted to 20 % in German and Spanish, 47 % in French, and 84 % in
Italian; whereas smaller languages were even more heavily impacted;

AI. whereas networks of bots and fake accounts on social media platforms are used by
malicious actors to undermine democratic processes; whereas Meta removed two
networks originating in China and in Russia for violating its policy against coordinated

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 75

 inauthentic behaviour; whereas the network originating in Russia and composed of over
60 websites impersonated legitimate websites of news organisations in Europe and
posted original articles that criticised Ukraine, supported Russia and argued that
Western sanctions on Russia would backfire; whereas similar findings were made by
EU DisinfoLab in its Doppelgänger investigation; whereas this is only the tip of the
iceberg and online platforms constantly have to be vigilant and to improve their content
moderation policies;

AJ. whereas there is a lack of oversight over platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, where
disinformation spreads mostly unchecked; whereas Spotify hosts podcasts containing
mis- and disinformation content, in particular regarding vaccine disinformation;
whereas some of them have up to 11 million listeners per episode; whereas the company
has refused to take any actions against the accounts that broadcast the podcasts as it has
no disinformation policy; whereas the EU has started multiple investigations into
TikTok, concerning the transfer of EU’ citizens data to China and targeted advertising
aimed at minors;

AK. whereas the Digital Services Act (DSA) 1 entered into force on 16 November 2022 and
will apply from 17 February 2024; whereas it fully harmonises the rules applicable to
intermediary services in the internal market and contains specific provisions applicable
to very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs)
when it comes to systemic risks such as disinformation and manipulation;

AL. whereas the DSA creates obligations for VLOPs and VLOSEs to perform annual risk
assessments and take measures to mitigate the risks stemming from the design and use
of their services; whereas some provisions of the DSA should be extended to smaller
platforms, on which disinformation keeps spreading unhindered;

AM. whereas the DSA classifies disinformation and election manipulation as systemic risks;

AN. whereas algorithms designed to benefit platforms’ business models play a crucial role in
the amplification of false and misleading narratives, creating filter bubbles that limit or
distort the information available to individual users; whereas platforms still have not
done enough to counter this; whereas the development, testing and functioning of
algorithms still lack transparency;

AO. whereas social media platforms are used as tools, for example, to spread Russian
propaganda seeking to justify Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and to foster anti-
democratic political movements in the Balkans; whereas AI, through the malicious use
of large language models (LLM), such as ChatGPT, is becoming an increasingly
important tool used to spread propaganda and disinformation, but will also be crucial to
more effectively discover and counter manipulated narratives; whereas there is a need to
develop digital technologies with respect for human rights and the rule of law;

AP. whereas the Commission set up a European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency,
which is part of the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and is composed mainly of

1
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of
19 October 2022 on a Single Market For Digital Services and amending Directive
2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act) (OJ L 277, 27.10.2022, p. 1).

76 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 engineers and data scientists dedicated to the study of algorithms;

AQ. whereas digital services coordinators, which are independent authorities appointed by
each Member State, have an important role and function and are responsible for
supervising and enforcing the DSA in the Member States;

AR. whereas there is a risk of economic dependence, but also espionage and sabotage, with
foreign companies acquiring influence over EU critical infrastructure; whereas Chinese
shipping companies have acquired majority or sizeable interests in over 20 European
ports, for example China Merchants Group in France and COSCO in the ports of
Piraeus, Antwerp, Bilbao, Genoa, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Valencia and Zeebrugge;
whereas the INGE 1 report called for a stronger regulatory and enforcement framework
to ensure foreign direct investment (FDI) with a detrimental effect on the EU’s security
is blocked;

AS. whereas foreign actors, predominantly China and Russia, but also Iran, are actively
trying to infiltrate European critical infrastructure and supply chains to steal information
and/or know-how through espionage, in order to gain a competitive advantage or to
sabotage parts of these infrastructures to impair their functioning; whereas the same
malign behaviour is coupled with economic and infrastructure projects in candidate and
potential EU candidate countries; whereas an increasing threat to European citizens also
lies in the possibility of espionage and information gathering via everyday household
appliances;

AT. whereas the EU’s energy dependence on Russia has created enormous difficulties for its
energy security after Russia started its war of aggression against Ukraine; whereas
‘corrosive capital’ projects by foreign actors in Member States, such as the Paks nuclear
power plant in Hungary, risk influencing political decisions; whereas despite Russia’s
illegal occupation and annexation of parts of Ukraine in 2014, many EU countries
increased their gas dependency on Russia; whereas some of these countries have
recently reduced their dependency to almost 0 %;

AU. whereas the investment programmes for 5G deployment such as CEF2 Digital, as well
as the 6G Programme of the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking, could
support technological sovereignty and reduce dependencies on foreign suppliers in this
field by building secure 5G infrastructure as well as 6G technology capacities; whereas
the development of critical technological infrastructure for the European economy
should be reserved for European manufacturers and developers or those from like-
minded countries;

AV. whereas national authorities of some Member States have strengthened their approach
to countering foreign threats to critical infrastructure, such as espionage and sabotage;

AW. whereas disinformation and other information manipulation vitiates the public debate
around elections and other democratic processes and can prevent citizens from making
informed choices or discourage them from political participation altogether; whereas
disinformation in political campaigns is a direct threat to fair democratic political
competition; whereas these issues present a challenge to the 2024 European elections;

AX. whereas on the eve of the 2024 European elections increased interference and
information manipulation activity is expected; whereas the European elections are

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 77

 fundamental to the functioning of the democratic processes of the European Union,
promoting its stability and legitimacy; whereas the democratic integrity of the Union
must therefore be defended, including by preventing the spread of disinformation and
undue foreign influence over European elections; whereas the proposal on the
transparency and targeting of political advertising could make a contribution by
establishing a ban on sponsors of political advertising coming from non-EU countries;

AY. whereas free and fair elections are a cornerstone of democratic countries, and
independent and transparent electoral processes are necessary to foster a competitive
electoral environment and citizens’ trust in election integrity; whereas the systemic
integrity of electoral processes is also entrenched in the legal and institutional
frameworks governing how elections are conducted, including electoral management
bodies; whereas the quality and the strength of these frameworks and democratic
institutions are essential to the electoral integrity of any country; whereas online social
platforms are increasingly important instruments in electoral decision-making;

AZ. whereas interference in electoral processes can occur in different ways, either direct or
indirect, such as fraudulent operations with ballots, the blocking of entrances to polling
stations or physical coercion to vote, the distribution of distorted information on
candidates, the manipulation of or changes to election dates, and disinformation
campaigns on social media, among others;

BA. whereas authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or

circumventing norms and institutions that support basic liberties, and at providing aid to
others who wish to do the same; whereas these regimes have fuelled and exploited
polarisation, through proxies in third countries and in the EU, and have attempted to
distort national politics to promote hatred, violence and unbridled power; whereas
foreign interference in electoral processes is often not aimed exclusively at influencing
specific election results but at undermining or destroying citizens’ long-term confidence
in the legitimacy of their democratic institutions as well as their democratic processes;

BB. whereas the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political
Foundations contributes to the protection of the integrity of the European elections;

BC. whereas the European cooperation network on elections plays a crucial role in ensuring
the integrity of the elections within the European Union; whereas this network has been
set up by the Commission’s services with the relevant Member States’ services;

BD. whereas extra-EU funding of political activities and politicians inside the European
Union before and after 24 February 2022, in particular from Russia, continues to be
revealed by journalists and experts, puts at risk the integrity of the democratic
functioning of the EU Member States and requires thorough investigation to hold those
complicit accountable; whereasEl País has revealed the involvement of the Iranian
National Council of Resistance in the funding of far-right political movements in the
EU; whereas Russia and Iran, together with other countries such as Venezuela, share a
common goal of weakening democratic states;

BE. whereas the legislators are currently negotiating the proposal on political advertising
which aims to complement the DSA, tackle the harmful fragmentation that currently
exists in this area and help to strengthen our democracies in Europe and our democratic
processes, allow citizens to make an educated decision during an election or referendum

78 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 through an open process and shelter EU citizens from disinformation, fake news,
opaque political advertising techniques and foreign interference in general; whereas the
legislators should reach an agreement on the proposal as soon as possible in order to
ensure that the new rules are in place before the European elections in 2024;

BF. whereas in the first half of 2021 alone, there were as many recorded cyberattacks on EU
institutions as in the whole of 2020 1 ; whereas instances of attacks on EU and national
institutions have increased following Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, as exemplified by
a cyberattack that hit the European Parliament during the November 2022 plenary
session, shutting down the website after a vote on a resolution to declare Russia a state
sponsor of terrorism;

BG. whereas the EU has significantly increased its efforts and investments in developing
cybersecurity capacities, including through the EU programmes Horizon Europe and
Digital Europe; whereas there is still a need for more efficient cybersecurity supported
by the relevant funding; whereas strong cybersecurity infrastructure could reduce the
costs of cyber-incidents; whereas the impact assessment of the proposed cyber
resilience act estimates that the initiative could lead to a cost reduction from incidents
affecting businesses of roughly EUR 180 to 290 billion2 ; whereas the Commission has
been slow to take measures in response to the hacking of EU citizens in the EU with
spyware by third countries, including of prominent figures such as heads of state or
commissioners; whereas there is currently no action plan in place to prevent the hacking
of EU citizens within the EU by people operating outside the EU;

BH. whereas the Council has recently adopted the NIS2 Directive to ensure a high common
level of cybersecurity across the Union; whereas the NIS2 Directive has established the
EU Cyber Crises Liaison Organisation Network (EU CyCLONe), which will strengthen
the resilience of information systems; whereas a proper level of cybersecurity can only
be achieved through the cooperation of multiple actors from the public and private
sectors; whereas the EU still faces major dependencies in the field of cybersecurity;

BI. whereas the cyber defence of Ukraine requires the action and the cooperation of all
partners; whereas western IT corporations have provided assistance to Ukraine in
identifying vulnerabilities in its infrastructure; whereas there is a lack of technical
capacities within the EU to identify vulnerabilities in its critical infrastructure; whereas
cooperation and exchange of information with targeted partners, such as the US, the
UK, Ukraine and Taiwan, is key to improving the EU’s capacity to attribute attacks;

BJ. whereas the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking was established in 2021 to
enable European actors to shape global 6G standards; whereas collaboration between
the Commission and Member State authorities on the implementation of the 5G cyber
toolbox is ongoing in the framework of the Network and Information Systems (NIS)

1
Impact analysis report accompanying the document Proposal for a Regulation of the
European Parliament and of the Council on information security in the institutions,
bodies, offices and agencies of the Union (SWD(2022)0066). [Link]
[Link]/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022SC0066.
2
Executive summary of the impact assessment report accompanying the proposal of a
pegulation for the European Parliament and of the Council on horizontal cybersecurity
requirements for products with digital elements and amending Regulation (EU)
2019/1020 (SWD(2022)0282).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 79

 cooperation group; whereas the European Court of Auditors has concluded that since
the 5G toolbox was adopted, progress has been made in reinforcing the security of 5G
networks with a majority of Member States applying or in the process of applying
restrictions on high-risk vendors, but that none of the measures put forward are legally
binding, meaning that the Commission has no power to enforce them;

BK. whereas there have been instances of third countries transporting migrants and asylum-
seekers to the EU’s external border as part of their hybrid foreign interference strategies
to challenge the EU and its Member States, such as in the autumn of 2021 by Belarus
against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia; whereas these hybrid interference attempts also
take the form of spreading disinformation by polarising the EU’s societies and
undermining European values and fundamental rights;

BL. whereas migrants, minorities and diasporas are frequently used by foreign actors, who
orchestrate disinformation campaigns to exploit and amplify negative preconceptions
about migration to build up tensions within European societies, such as with the
Ukrainian diaspora being the victim of targeted Russian disinformation campaigns;
whereas platforms play a key role in the dissemination of such information;

BM. whereas Europe is seeing a growing number of anti-gender movements, specifically

targeting sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights and LGBTIQ+ people;
whereas such movements proliferate disinformation in order to reverse progress in
women’s rights and gender equality; whereas these movements have been reported to
receive millions of euros in foreign funding, either public or private, including from
Russia and the US;

BN. whereas this instrumentalisation of migrants and minorities at the EU’s external borders
highlights the importance of having an effective and integrated border management
system and of applying operational, financial and diplomatic measures to remain
resilient;

BO. whereas Parliament supports the Commission’s proposal to include provisions on the
instrumentalisation of migrants in the Schengen Borders Code, which will enable
Member States to act in a more effective and coordinated manner;

BP. whereas Russian disinformation and propaganda campaigns also influence indirect
opinion forming in Europe by focusing on the Russian-speaking diaspora in Europe and
neighbouring countries; whereas Member States should play a key role in making fact-
based news sources available for Russian-speaking population groups, in order to
counter the pro-Kremlin narrative; whereas Russian disinformation and propaganda
campaigns are also widespread in numerous post-Soviet countries, including in Central
Asia;

BQ. whereas the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation regarding
suspicions of money laundering, corruption and participation in a criminal organisation
originating from third countries; whereas several arrests and searches took place from
9 December 2022 onwards, affecting both current and former Members of the European
Parliament, as well as staff; whereas these allegations need to be followed by effective
measures by Parliament and the other EU institutions to close the loopholes for foreign
interference, as well as to increase transparency and accountability in order to protect
the integrity of the institutions;

80 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 BR. whereas trust in Parliament’s integrity and the rule of law is paramount for the
functioning of European democracy; whereas it is key to ensure that democratic
processes are not captured by private and external interests and that citizens’ rights are
fully respected; whereas the ability of interest and group representatives to influence
decision-making in Parliament by way of arguments is a vital part of European
democracy;

BS. whereas the INGE I report already highlighted that there is a serious lack of legally
binding rules regarding lobbying and enforcement of the EU’s lobbying register, and
that former high-level European politicians and civil servants are often hired or co-
opted by foreign authoritarian state-controlled national or private companies; whereas
this makes it practically impossible to track lobbying coming from outside the EU;

BT. whereas the capture of elites by foreign interests, facilitated by the non-restriction of
“revolving doors” between the EU institutions and autocratic countries with a high risk
of harmful interference against the democratic interests of the Union, continues to
represent a significant form of foreign interference in the democratic functioning of the
European Union and can be considered an issue related to corruption;

BU. whereas China and Russia have imposed sanctions on European researchers and
research institutions owing to their writings or views;

BV. whereas more clarity is needed regarding foreign influence through interest
representatives at the EU level, especially in cooperation with non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), consultancies, foundations, think tanks and private companies;
whereas this should not prevent the normal outreach activities of embassies; whereas
the number of Russian Embassy staff is decreasing around Europe, while it keeps rising
in Budapest, proving that Hungary is susceptible to Russian intelligence activities;

BW. whereas lobbying on behalf of foreign interests, especially when it concerns companies
in strategic sectors and their governments, may open the door to foreign interference in
our institutions; whereas the Transparency Register was significantly strengthened
following an interinstitutional agreement; whereas strengthening transparency
requirements for CSOs, consultancies, foundations, think tanks and private companies
could serve the purpose of detecting foreign interference;

BX. whereas there have been several cases of hostile intimidation and harassment campaigns
against Members of the European Parliament orchestrated and coordinated by foreign
countries; whereas countries such as Russia, China and Iran have put entry bans and
sanctions on individual Members and bodies of the European Parliament and Member
State parliaments, because of their criticism to the respective governments’ human
rights policies;

BY. whereas some authoritarian states are falsely accusing European citizens of having
committed crimes or offences and are holding them in prison in order to influence the
decisions of EU Member States; whereas citizens are currently being held and convicted
in Iran without any justification, including the Swedish national Ahmadreza Djalali and
seven French nationals;

BZ. whereas in March 2022 the EU imposed sanctions on the Russian propaganda outlets
Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, temporarily suspending their broadcasting activity, as

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 81

 well as ordering internet access providers and search engines to block access and search
engines to de-index their content; whereas since the adoption of the ninth package of
sanctions, satellite operators such as France’s Eutelsat and Luxembourg’s SES have
ceased to provide broadcasting services in the EU to RT and Sputnik; whereas Eutelsat
36B continues to broadcast programming by Russian Trikolor and NTV plus in the
Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia; whereas SES continues to broadcast RT News
in India, Mexico and South Africa; whereas other national satellite operators such as
Hellas Sat and Hispasat, as well as Hungarian national channels, continue to broadcast
sanctioned TV channels; whereas RT France and RT News are still available online;
whereas Russian propaganda is often amplified by various international media outlets
with very wide reach in certain regions of the world;

CA. whereas in clear contradiction of the EU’s imposed sanctions, Serbia, an EU candidate
country, has become a safe haven for some Russian companies looking to evade or
weather out sanctions imposed by the EU, as since July 2022, Belgrade has been
hosting multiple offices of RT (formerly Russia Today), which has launched its online
news service in Serbian;

CB. whereas criminalisation of foreign interference would target and stigmatise this malign
behaviour; whereas there is currently no general prohibition on foreign interference in
the EU, meaning that perpetrators may engage in it without fear of penalty, unless their
conduct amounts to an existing offence; whereas pursuant to the third subparagraph of
Article 83(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), on the
basis of developments in crime, the Council may adopt a decision identifying other
areas of particularly serious crime with a cross-border dimension; whereas there is a
need to impose sanctions and place restrictions on perpetrators of foreign interference to
prevent them from taking future actions;

CC. whereas the Commission has proposed to harmonise criminal offences and penalties for
the violation of EU sanctions; whereas a number of Member States have considered
extending the competences of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in order to cover
these violations;

CD. whereas the EU has already developed several important pieces of legislation to counter
malign foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI); whereas there is a
danger that EU regulatory frameworks to combat disinformation may be copied and
might be selectively used by other (authoritarian) countries in order to curb media
freedom and freedom of expression; whereas an evaluation of the effectiveness and
impact of existing instruments on the strengthening of societal resilience has not been
properly undertaken at EU level; whereas such an evaluation would further improve the
orientation of future policies and tools to address foreign interference and hybrid
threats;

CE. whereas, following its economic growth and political expansion on the global stage,
China is trying to maximise the diffusion of its propaganda abroad, spreading positive
narratives regarding the country while simultaneously attempting to suppress critical
voices; whereas China is taking control of all of the traditional media information
channels in Africa, which are still the continent’s most used tools for accessing
information; whereas Russia is also expanding its disinformation operations in Africa;
whereas the Wagner Group is directly involved in those operations; whereas those
operations could jeopardise the safety of European citizens and the development of

82 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 cooperation with African partner states;

CF. whereas the EU is taking a leading role in the work of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on
Cybercrime, under the UN Third Committee, with the aim of safeguarding the
fundamental and procedural rights of suspects;

CG. whereas the overall awareness of the dangers of information manipulation and
interference in other countries in the world has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic;
whereas the UN has proposed several initiatives to enhance governance in the digital
sphere and create more coherence among UN member states, such as the Global Code
of Conduct to promote the integrity of public information and the Global Digital
Compact;

CH. whereas in discussions with the ING2 Special Committee, representative of some
platforms and other stakeholders have reacted positively to the establishment of global
standards, and in particular European and, when possible, transatlantic standards, in
countering FIMI;

CI. whereas successful common foreign and security policy (CFSP) / common security and
defence policy (CSDP) missions and operations and EU delegations abroad are among
the best strategic communication campaigns by the EU in non-EU countries;

CJ. whereas the Council approved the Strategic Compass in March 2022; whereas the
Strategic Compass outlines that by 2024 all CSDP/CFSP missions and operations
should be equipped with sufficient strategic communications tools and resources to
counter FIMI; whereas a process of modernisation and professionalisation in missions
communication is required, including supporting initiatives to combat disinformation
vulnerabilities; whereas the European External Action Service (EEAS) Strategic
Communication Task Force (StratCom) has stepped up its cooperation with CSDP
missions and operations to help them detect, analyse and understand FIMI campaigns;

Coordinated EU strategy against foreign interference

1. Underlines that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine brought to the fore the links
between attempts at foreign manipulation of information and threats to the EU and its
immediate neighbourhood, Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership countries, as well
as to global security and stability; notes that Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine made the
effects of Russia’ interference in democratic processes, which began long before the
invasion and is based on historical revisionism, even more obvious;

2. Stresses the need to develop the EU’s open strategic autonomy in order to limit
opportunities for interference through EU dependence in strategic sectors such as
energy, digital technology and health; supports the efforts of the European Commission,
the Council and other institutions in this respect, particularly in the context of
REPowerEU and the EU Digital Agenda;

3. Takes notes of the Commission’s follow-up of the first recommendations adopted by

Parliament on 9 March 2022; reiterates, however, its call for a coordinated EU strategy
to tackle foreign interference, taking into account both the complexity and the multi-
dimensional nature of the threats, based on an articulated and multipolar geopolitical
analysis; considers that this whole-of-society strategy should include measures to

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 83

 enforce existing provisions on foreign interference better, create a focal point for
investigation and strategic responses to counter foreign interference, and secure funding
for capacity-building activities to tackle disinformation and uphold democratic
processes; believes this strategy should bring together and create synergies between
isolated efforts, strategies, action plans, roadmaps and underlying projects and funding
streams; believes it should establish the strategic goals, necessary mandates and
operational capabilities, such as threat information sharing and technical attribution, the
legislative and diplomatic tools, such as new legislation, norms, toolboxes, political
attribution, sanctions, and other countermeasures, as well as capacity-building
requirements, such as additional funding of EU agencies and CSOs that contribute to
these efforts with key performance indicators to ensure that sufficient scale and reach of
results is obtained;

4. Welcomes in this regard the announcement by the President of the Commission of a

Defence of Democracy package; recalls the Commission’s statements to carefully take
into account INGE and ING2 committee recommendations that a robust Defence of
Democracy Package be developed together with legislation to counter hybrid threats in
the EU;

5. Calls on the Commission and the member States to ensure that all measures taken to
protect the EU against foreign interference and information manipulation need to
include strong and resolute safeguards to fundamental rights, including the freedom of
expression and the freedom of opinion;

6. Is of the opinion that efforts to move from a country-agnostic approach that treats all
foreign influence efforts in the same way, regardless of their source country, towards a
risk-based approach based on objective criteria should be given careful consideration,
1
similarly to the Directive (EU) 2015/849 , and lessons drawn from other countries;
believes the risk-based approach would function as one of the building blocks of a
tiered approach that informs policies and countermeasures against foreign interference,
removes unnecessary legal complexity, and uses the limited capabilities and resources,
from operational to policy level, more efficiently by taking into account the very factor
that matters most in evaluating and responding to foreign influence, namely its source
country; believes also that this approach should include a clear set of potential
sanctions, and therefore function as a form of deterrence towards transgressors and as
leverage towards emerging malicious actors that could be added to the list; considers
that potential criteria could include:

(a) engagement in activities of foreign interference,

(b) an intellectual property theft programme directed against the EU and its Member
States,

(c) legislation that forces national non-state actors to participate in intelligence

1
Directive (EU) 2015/849 of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial
system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, amending
Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and
repealing Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and
Commission Directive 2006/70/EC (OJ L 141, 5.6.2015, p. 73).

84 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 activities,

(d) consistent violation of human rights,

(e) revisionist policy towards the existing international legal order,

(f) enforcement of authoritarian ideology extraterritorially; calls on the Commission

and the EEAS to present specific recommendations for introduction of this
approach and direct them to the Council for approval;

7. Considers that the EU, in collaboration with the Member States, should step up its
strategic communication on countering and debunking, information manipulation by
widely reporting ongoing operations as they happen (debunking), in particular in the
Global South; calls for strengthening of and further investment in EU prebunking
capabilities; recalls the examples set by Ukraine and Taiwan in pre- and debunking
information manipulations and the need to build on the lessons learned from their
experience; recalls similarly that in order to prebunk or rapidly debunk information
manipulation, there needs to be a framework for rapid sharing of information provided
by civil society and private companies;

8. Supports Vice PresidentVěra Jourová’s public call in Tallinn in January 2023 1 for
independent communication channels for Russian speakers to be expanded; calls on the
Commission and the EEAS to follow up with concrete proposals and measures
accordingly;

9. Condemns the dangerous phenomenon of disinformation-for-hire, whereby providers

offer disinformation services to government and non-government actors, for example
over the dark web, setting out lists of services and prices; deplores that this kind of
service has been used to attempt to undermine electoral processes, among many other
uses;

10. Calls for the establishment of an EU structure tasked with analysing statistical data,
coordinating research projects and producing reports to increase situational awareness
and threat intelligence sharing, attribution and countermeasures in relation to FIMI,
including involving the EU’s external action service, and which serves as a reference
point and specialised knowledge hub to facilitate and foster operational exchange
between Member States’ authorities, EU institutions, and EU agencies; considers that
this structure should be financed from the EU budget and take the form of a Centre for
Information Integrity that collaborates with all EU institutions in using all available
tools to avoid duplication;

11. Calls on the Member States to acknowledge the fact that foreign interference, including
disinformation, is a national and cross-border security threat; stresses the need for
solidarity between the Member States so that such activities can be effectively
combated; calls for Article 222 TFEU to be amended to include foreign interference;

12. Calls for the national parliaments of the EU Member States to consider establishing
their own parliamentary bodies tasked with overseeing actions related to the protection
of their democracy against foreign interference and information manipulation, and to set

1
Vice-President Jourová speech on Defending EU values in the time of the war.

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 85

 up regular exchanges on these topics;

13. Notes with interest the conclusion of the EU Integrated Resolve 2022 joint exercise,
which aimed to boost the EU’s ability to respond to a complex, hybrid crisis with both
an internal and an external dimension; regrets, however, that Parliament was not
involved in this exercise and calls on the other EU Institutions to involve Parliament in
the structure of all exercises of this kind;

14. Encourages all types of cooperation between the services of the different EU
Institutions in charge of operational activities concerning monitoring and counteracting
disinformation, such as that existing between Parliament’s task force on Disinformation,
Commission services and the EEAS StratCom division with its Rapid Alert System;
welcomes the engagement of the EEAS and the Commission with Parliament to
regularly update it on significant developments in the FIMI threat landscape, especially
when it concerns EU elections; suggests the establishment of a Rapid Alert System for
Members of the European Parliament and members of national parliaments to counter
disinformation on online platforms and prevent the sharing of disinformation;

15. Welcomes the facilitation by the EEAS of an Information Sharing and Analysis Centre
(ISAC) to develop a common methodology and framework for the collection and
sharing systematic threat intelligence and evidence and ultimately provide better
situational awareness; highlights the progress made by the EEAS on a common
analytical framework and methodology on FIMI as described in the EDAP and
underlines how, as part of the ISAC, such an open-source, collaborative and
interoperable protocol to support situational awareness can contribute to closer
collaboration among EU institutions, bodies and agencies (EUIBAs), Member States,
social media platforms, news agencies, and civil society actors; calls for sufficient
funding to be channelled towards the continuous development, involvement of society,
and capacity-building that contributes to the wide adoption of this model with
significant reach and scale across the Union;

16. Calls for a permanent body in the European Parliament to ensure a transversal approach
to effectively monitor and fight foreign interference;

Resilience

17. Calls for a collective effort by the EU institutions, Member States, partner countries,
civil society, the business world and independent media to raise social and institutional
awareness and invest in education about disinformation, information manipulation and
foreign interference and how to counteract it, in a holistic way;

18. Underlines that the EU must learn lessons from Ukraine’s, Taiwan’s and other
countries’ experience and expertise in countering foreign interference and aggression
and continue close cooperation with such countries in this field; notes however the
different context in which Taiwan operates;

19. Welcomes the fact that the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), an
independent network for fact-checkers, academic researchers and other stakeholders,
will soon have hubs covering all EU Member States, thus reinforcing its mission in
detecting and analysing disinformation campaigns, misinformation and other content
created by third countries with clear propagandistic intent, and organising media

86 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 literacy activities and other activities supporting the fight against disinformation;
emphasises the potential need for a legal framework in the EU or in the Member States
to ensure quality fact-checking;

20. Reiterates its call for Member States to include media and digital literacy, civic
education, common European history, respect for fundamental rights, critical thinking
and the promotion of public participation on school and university curricula, in parallel
with general efforts to raise awareness among adults, including the elderly, and efforts
to bridge the digital divides based on age, gender and socio-economic status; calls for a
concerted EU media literacy strategy with projects that create tangible results with
significant scale that reach the whole Union; encourages the sharing of EU Guidelines
for Media Literacy with candidate countries, translated into national languages, to tackle
disinformation and promote digital literacy through education and training; asks
Member States, in this regard, to consider developing and distributing, within
educational institutions, educational materials aimed at different age categories from
which children and young people alike can learn how to inform themselves properly and
how they can check the accuracy of information; calls for the creation of an observatory
of foreign influences and their impact on higher education and research;

21. Highlights the importance of historical remembrance and research on totalitarian

regimes, such as on the Soviet regime, and a transparent, fact-based public debate about
such regimes’ crimes in order to strengthen the resilience of our societies against
distortions and manipulations of history; reiterates the importance of CSOs, such as
Memorial, working in the field of historical remembrance, particularly with regards to
recent European history, which is the target of systematic disinformation and
revisionism by Russia in its efforts to justify its ongoing interference and aggression;

22. Calls on the Commission to develop an effective Defence of Democracy Package,

taking into account the unique Conference on the Future of Europe experience and final
proposals, including the initiatives to strengthen our democracy from within, by
nurturing a civic culture of democratic engagement and active participation by citizens
at all times, including outside the election period;

23. Underlines the need for public administrations at all levels to have specific training on
identifying and countering acts of information manipulation and interference, and
emphasises that this training should be gender-sensitive; reiterates the call on EUIBAs
and on national authorities to continue and strengthen similar training and current
situational awareness actions as hybrid threats are persistent and widespread and
increasingly aimed at influencing EU policies and legislation; calls on EUIBAs to set up
interinstitutional training to promote the overall resilience of EUIBAs as a whole;

24. Calls on EUIBAs and national authorities to adopt a dedicated communications

framework containing measures to rapidly detect foreign interference and attempts to
manipulate the information sphere in order to prevent and counter such attempts;
welcomes the role of the EEAS, NATO StratCom CoE and Hybrid CoE as important
partners in developing increased situational awareness and additional responses to
counter FIMI;

25. Reiterates its call on the EEAS to build its expertise on strategic communication and
public diplomacy, which requires a strengthened mandate and the allocation of more
resources to its Strategic Communication division and its task forces in particular,

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 87

 following a risk-based approach and taking into account the Russia’s ongoing war of
aggression against Ukraine and the hybrid warfare and propaganda coming from both
Russian state and non-state actors, as well as the impact of that hybrid warfare on EU
candidate countries in the Western Balkans, and on Moldova and other Eastern
Partnership countries; stresses that dialogue with citizens is indispensable in order to
raise awareness about the EU’s foreign and security policy priorities; acknowledges and
praises the work on the EUvsDisinfo website and database, and calls for further
expansion of this platform with appropriate funding;

26. Notes the urgent need to step up efforts to counter malign FIMI campaigns aiming to
limit EU candidate and potential candidate countries’ abilities to progressively align
with the EU’s common foreign and security policy (CFSP); welcomes the contribution
of the EEAS in supporting institutional capacity and transparency of media ownership,
specifically in the Western Balkans, taking into account the fragile security situation
and the risk of spillovers; underlines the need to proactively counter malign actors’
propaganda in the region, which aims to undermine EU interests and values;

27. Calls for the EU and Member States to step up support for CSO efforts on countering
FIMI, as they have proven effective at raising awareness of the risks associated with
information and disinformation transmitted via social media, in particular, and they
have also shown themselves to be effective in the case of traditional media, as many
CSOs operate at local level, so are closer to the targets of disinformation and know
better how to communicate with them; believes that technology and media companies
should engage with CSOs, who are able to provide expertise on political and cultural
contexts, in order to devise strategies to mitigate risks of interference in electoral
processes;

28. Calls for sufficient and sustainable funding to be made available, in a clear and
transparent manner, to investigative journalists and CSOs commensurate with their
efforts to raise awareness, expose efforts to interfere in democratic processes and
neutralise their impact;

29. Calls for the earmarking, boosting and leveraging of public sources for the relevant
CSOs, and also for efforts to increase private funding such as facilitating a conference
of donors; calls for a joint initiative to be launched bringing together EU funds and
programmes, including the upcoming Defence of Democracy package, along with
financial organisations, bilateral donors and beneficiaries, so as to enhance
harmonisation and cooperation in investments for democratic resilience and countering
FIMI, and that this investment framework should provide tailor-made grants, on the
basis of objective, transparent and monitored criteria for independent fact checkers,
investigative journalists, academics, think tanks and CSOs engaged in increasing
situational awareness (such as researching, investigating, and identifying the origin of
information manipulation and interference, developing cooperation in the field as well
as developing and operationalising ISAC methodologies and open-source tools to tackle
the challenge of FIMI) and include measures to promote media, digital and information
literacy, as well as other resilience-building activities and support for human rights
defenders through annual or bi-annual calls for proposals that would cover long-term
multi-year funding;

30. Emphasises that it is essential that whistleblowers, journalists and other media
professionals are guaranteed the necessary conditions to contribute to an open, free,

88 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 impartial and fair public debate, which is vital for democracy and a key aspect of
helping society counter disinformation, information manipulation and interference;
emphasises the need for secure equipment and strong, open source, end-to-end
encryption to protect the confidentiality and integrity of communications between
journalists and their sources;
1
31. Welcomes the anti-SLAPP proposal , consisting of a proposal for a Directive and a
recommendation to improve the protection of journalists, human rights defenders and
CSOs from abusive court proceedings; welcomes furthermore the analysis made by the
Commission in its 2022 Rule of Law Report of existing threats against the safety of
journalists in the EU and legal threats and abusive court proceedings against public
participation; highlights the rise in spyware surveillance of journalists and CSOs in the
EU as a means of intimidating and harassing them; stresses the need to include this
dimension in the Commission’s assessment on rule of law;

32. Recalls that independent, pluralistic, quality media services are a powerful antidote to
FIMI; recalls in that regard the Journalism Trust Initiative, established by Reporters
without Borders, which aims to set industry standards; reiterates its call for a permanent
EU news media and magazine programme; considers that media freedom and pluralism
must also be protected and promoted in the online environment, in particular as regards
the availability of journalistic content on online platforms;

33. Notes the need to ensure that the fight against disinformation also involves traditional
newspapers and news channels; calls in particular for news channels to be more
transparent about the profile of the experts they invite on their sets;

34. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal for a European Media Freedom Act 2 (EMFA)
with a view to establishing a common framework at EU level to guarantee pluralism
and independence in the internal market for media services by laying down specific
provisions against political interference in editorial decisions and against surveillance,
as well as ensuring adequate funding of public service media outlets, the transparency
of media ownership, and protecting media content online; urges that measures also be
put in place to protect the media and its workers, especially when targeted by foreign
powers seeking to undermine the right to information; underlines that the provisions on
surveillance in particular still require substantial improvements to ensure that they do
not legitimise the use of spyware against individuals, notably journalists, and thereby
undermine fundamental rights instead of strengthening them;

35. Welcomes the proposed creation, within the framework of the EMFA proposal, of a
new European Board for Media Services bringing together national media authorities,
which should play a significant role in the fight against disinformation, including
foreign interference and information manipulation; notes, in particular, that one of the
board’s proposed tasks is the coordination of national measures on the provision of
media services by providers established outside of the EU that target audiences in the

1
Proposal for a directive on protecting persons who engage in public participation from
manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings (‘Strategic lawsuits against public
participation’) (COM(2022)0177).
2
Proposal for a regulation establishing a common framework for media services in the
internal market (European Media Freedom Act) and amending Directive 2010/13/EU
(COM(2022)0457).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 89

 EU and that may present a risk to public security; recommends that the countries of the
Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership be included in the remit of the board in
this regard; urges that the European Board for Media Services must be independent
from the Commission and Member State governments, in terms of both its organisation
and financing, so it is able to work objectively and politically independently;

36. Welcomes, in connection with the EMFA, the proposals for independent monitoring of
the internal market for media services, which would include detailed data and
qualitative analysis of the resilience of the Member States’ media markets, in particular
as regards the risks of FIMI; welcomes the proposal to organise a structured dialogue
between platforms and the media sector to monitor platforms’ compliance with self-
regulatory initiatives; stresses the importance of ensuring that the EMFA or any other
current or future media or tech legislation does not include special exemptions from
horizontal content moderation rules giving a blank cheque to those who spread
disinformation;

37. Calls for the establishment of ‘mirror clauses’ whereby the openness of the European
information space to third countries would be proportionate to the access European
media outlets have in these countries; encourages the Commission to develop an EU-
wide regulatory system to prevent media companies that are under the editorial control
of foreign governments or owned by high-risk foreign countries from acquiring
European media companies; this should apply predominantly to non-democratic or
high-risk countries in which European media organisations are not allowed to operate
freely, or are pressured to tilt their coverage in favour of national governments; these
efforts should be based on a common database to facilitate harmonised prevention
and/or prosecution across the European Union; suggests that such a regulatory system
can be based on existing FDI screening mechanisms to prevent duplications; encourages
the inclusion in the EMFA of the provisions on media ownership transparency that are
currently in the recommendations;

38. Underlines that the increase in climate change denialism can be linked to a wider
embrace of conspiracy theories in the public discourse that is based on the deliberate
creation of a counter reality and the rejection of science, and which includes false ideas
about everything from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to COVID-19
vaccines; emphasises the role of foreign actors in disseminating disinformation about
climate change and EU climate policy, which is undermining public support and is also
being used in the narratives of domestic actors who exploit climate disinformation for
their own political ends;

39. Supports the call made by leading climate experts at the 27th Conference of the Parties
of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 27) for tech companies to
tackle the growing problem of disinformation, and in particular to accept a universal
definition of climate mis- and disinformation that encompasses the misrepresentation of
scientific evidence and the promotion of false solutions, to commit to the goal of not
publishing any advertising that includes climate mis- and disinformation and
greenwashing, and to share internal research on the spread of climate mis- and
disinformation and greenwashing on their platforms;

40. Calls on platforms to take measures to enhance transparency and prevent and ban the
placement of advertising promoting climate change denial and apply them to conspiracy
theories and disinformation; recognises that there is an urgent need to demonetise the

90 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 spread of the disinformation economy around climate change;

41. Notes with concern that many of the most high-traction amplifiers of climate change
denial and attacks on climate action have ‘verified’ status on various social media
platforms, including Twitter, allowing them to spread mis- and disinformation under
this privileged status to millions of followers and that such amplifiers are often based
outside of the European Union; calls on Twitter to implement stricter checks when
selling its ‘blue check’ marks;

Interference using online platforms

42. Recalls that the business model of online platforms still relies on advertising based on
personal data and opaque algorithms whereby more engagement translates into more
advertising revenue, and that this engagement is generated by algorithms that reward
polarised and extreme opinions at the expense of fact-based information and thus pose
significant risks of data manipulation; stresses that the General Data Protection
Regulation 1 (GDPR), the DSA, the Code of Practice on Disinformation and the
upcoming Regulation on Transparency and targeting of political advertising create
additional safeguards against such abusive and manipulative practices; recalls the
support for all measures to ban micro-targeting for political advertising, particularly but
not limited to those based on sensitive personal data;

43. Calls on the Commission, Member States and tech companies to work together and to
invest more resources in developing regulatory and technological remedies to AI-
powered disinformation;

44. Regrets that larger platforms, such as Meta, Google, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter, are
still not doing enough to actively counter disinformation, and are even laying off staff
despite constant calls from regulators, civil society and even internally from company
staff responsible for integrity; recalls that platforms must have sufficient personnel to
ensure regular updates to moderation tools in order to prevent harmful content
circumventing their moderation policy; recalls that disinformation and interference
campaigns rely strongly on cross-platform coordination of disinformation and micro-
targeting; regrets the fact that the EU is dependent on non-EU companies to help
preserve the integrity of European elections; as the self-regulatory approach of the CoP
has fallen short, urges all platforms, including smaller ones, to step up their
coordination to better identify campaigns and prevent their spread;

45. Regrets that social media companies are not honouring their responsibilities and are
proving inefficient at identifying misinformation and disinformation on their platforms
and are slow to take it down when they do; laments that this inactivity by online
platforms is an expression of a lack of binding rules in the European regulatory
framework; recalls that the platforms’ business model implies that they have access to
the relevant data; regrets that they often only act when citizens, researchers or the media
flag specific content; calls on platforms to prioritise fact-based information coming

1
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April
2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data
and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data
Protection Regulation) (OJ L 119, 4.5.2016, p. 1).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 91

 from reliable sources;

46. Calls on platforms to allocate more qualified staff, resources and capacity to monitor
and moderate harmful content and behaviour in all EU official languages, local
languages and dialects, and encourages platforms to increase funding and improve the
integration of accredited third-party fact-checkers in all EU languages; underlines the
urgent need to address harmful content;

47. Notes that it is also highly regrettable that big tech platforms do not offer human-to-
human customer service in most EU Member States;

48. Denounces Twitter’s backward steps in the fight against disinformation since its change
of ownership; deplores, in particular, the fact that Twitter has significantly reduced the
number of staff responsible for disrupting disinformation, including those responsible
for global content moderation, hate speech and online harassment; deplores the recent
reinstatement of suspended accounts without a proper assessment and particularly the
reinstatement of violent right-wing and openly fascists accounts, including those that
deny the outcome of the US presidential elections in 2020; strongly repudiates Twitter’s
decision to stop enforcing its policy against COVID-19 disinformation;

49. Notes that Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has highlighted the lack of contact
points for authorities to report disinformation and illegal content; deplores that Meta
management has often transferred the responsibility for content moderation to the
security team based in the United States; is concerned by the fact that there are only two
representatives of Meta in the Baltic countries, meaning there are insufficient resources
to moderate content, leading to errors such as the banning of legitimate accounts;

50. Finds it worrying that health disinformation groups, political extremists and religious
fundamentalists such as the Taliban have been able to obtain ‘verified’ status with a
check mark by subscribing to ‘Twitter Blue’; calls on Twitter to amend its policy in
order to prevent impersonation, falsification or misleading claims of expertise;

51. Recalls that Twitter is a signatory to the strengthened Code of Practice on

Disinformation, and that a change of ownership should not have an impact on the
platform’s commitments under the Code; reminds Twitter that the company must abide
by all relevant European Union regulations, including the DSA; urges the Commission
and competent national authorities to ensure that Twitter abides by EU standards and
rules and to apply appropriate sanctions if tech companies fail to comply with EU
standards;

52. Calls on platforms to facilitate full access, in particular to researchers, to the data
underpinning the findings and to keep a repository of take-downs to help researchers in
future investigations, as well as to help other tech companies, democratic governments
and law enforcement authorities take appropriate action; calls on the Commission to
ensure this occurs in the framework of the DSA and the Code of Practice on
Disinformation and to require platforms explain why they considered it not to be
technically feasible to provide access to data;

53. Welcomes the DSA provisions that require VLOPs and VLOSEs to provide information
on algorithms, requiring them to explain how they work so it is possible to assess their
impact on elections and other democratic processes, and to take the necessary risk-

92 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 mitigation measures; calls on the signatories of the Code of Practice on Disinformation
to fully honour their commitments; regrets the lack of binding commitments for the
signatories to the Code of Practice on Disinformation; calls for the swift adoption of the
CoP as a code of conduct under the DSA, including audits that would assess compliance
as stipulated under Article 28, and for the Commission to consider what new legislative
proposals or updates are required to fill the compliance gap, as well as to provide for the
possibility for temporary or permanent suspension of platforms that systematically fail
to comply with their commitments under the CoP;

54. Is concerned that some actors whose services contribute significantly to the
dissemination of disinformation are not signatories to the CoP, such as Apple, Amazon,
Odysee, Patreon, GoFundMe, and Telegram; calls on the Commission to encourage
remaining relevant stakeholders to sign and fully comply with the CoP and take part in
its task force; calls for a legal framework to be established in order to ensure a
minimum level of commitments to fight disinformation on these services; is concerned
by the fact that Telegram does not cooperate at all with policymakers in democratic
countries and has been reluctant to work with CSOs;

55. Welcomes the fact that all the players in the online advertising ecosystem are committed
to controlling and limiting the placing of advertising on accounts and websites
disseminating disinformation or placing advertising adjacent to disinformation content,
as well as to limiting the dissemination of advertising containing disinformation, and
that this commitment also extends to political advertising; highlights, however, that
there is still insufficient data to confirm whether the measures taken are bringing results;
regrets that this business model and the recommender algorithms that underpin it remain
crucial enablers of the spread of disinformation and false, misleading and incendiary
content; is concerned by the willingness of platforms to use the pretext of ‘empowering’
users as a way of shifting responsibility for limiting the placement of advertising on
accounts and websites disseminating disinformation onto them; whereas this
responsibility should fall on the platforms, as they have the relevant data and expertise,
as long as their actions remain transparent and the data is made available to researchers;
is worried by the lack of transparency in the market for brand protection tools
addressing image-related risks, as these tools often rely on algorithms that have been
found to mislabel legitimate and trustworthy news outlets;

56. Is concerned about the use of footage created using video games to spread
disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other armed conflicts; calls
on media outlets to be more vigilant about such content and to develop effective means
of removing it from their platforms; is concerned that Russian-based video and online
game companies, including those producing mobile games, are still operating freely on
European markets and could be used to spread disinformation and propaganda;

57. Calls for the swift adoption of the CoP against disinformation as a Code of Conduct
(CoC) under the co-regulatory mechanism of the DSA, bearing in mind that its success
will depend on strict enforcement in the case of underperforming signatories through
mandatory audits under Article 28 of the DSA; calls for harmonisation of the different
user appeals mechanisms and the commitments on over-moderation as well as under-
moderation;

58. Recalls that state authorities have accounts on social media platforms including
accounts used for policing purposes and to monitor disinformation trends; notes that, as

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 93

 long as these accounts do not engage in interactions with other users, they should be
identified as safe and should not be taken down by platforms;

59. Calls for individuals and legal entities to be able to sue platforms for inaction when
misinformation or disinformation are not taken down, in particular when they are
targeted by it;

60. Supports the establishment of independent platform rating agencies to inform the public
about platforms’ practices so that people can make an informed choice when registering
to use them;

Critical infrastructure and strategic sectors

61. Welcomes the recently agreed CER Directive, the Council’s recommendation to
strengthen critical infrastructure, and the NIS2 Directive; welcomes its expansion to
cover critical infrastructure in the area of food production, processing and distribution;
believes that recent attacks, such as the sabotage of critical infrastructure and increased
cyberattacks show the need to evaluate existing legislation once implemented in
Member States and calls on the Commission to come forward, if necessary, with
additional strengthened proposals, which should include building the resilience of civil
society organisations working to counter foreign interference and disinformation;
additionally, calls on all Member States to rapidly update their national security
strategies and undertake stress tests on their critical infrastructure to identify weak
points; reiterates its recommendation to extend the list of critical entities to include
digital election infrastructure and education systems;

62. Is concerned about the EU’s dependence on foreign actors and foreign technologies in
critical infrastructures and supply chains; points to vulnerabilities created by FDI being
used as a geopolitical tool; reiterates its call on the Commission to develop ambitious
binding ICT supply chain security legislation that includes non-technical risk factors,
following up on the Council’s proposal, and a stronger regulatory framework to the FDI
Screening Regulation 1 ; believes that the stronger regulatory framework with guidelines
for further harmonisation of national FDI screening practices should include the
prevention of takeover of critical companies in vital sectors or media companies by
foreign parties that are under the direct or indirect control of high-risk countries and that
the addition of outbound investment should be considered for inclusion under the scope
of the instrument; calls on the Member States to establish ownership transparency
registers; believes that the Commission, subject to supervision by the Council, should
be able to block FDI that might be detrimental or contrary to EU projects and
programmes or other EU interests; underlines that in the Western Balkans investments
of this nature could push countries into debt traps, further destabilising the region;

63. Notes that despite such FDI screening mechanisms, Chinese companies such as Nuctech
have been granted contracts in European critical infrastructure, leading to security risks;
calls therefore on the Council and the Commission to exclude the use of equipment and
software from manufacturers based in high-risk countries, particularly China and
Russia, such as TikTok, ByteDance Huawei, ZTE, Kaspersky, NtechLab or Nuctech;

1
Regulation (EU) 2019/452 of the European Parliament and of the Council of
19 March 2019 establishing a framework for the screening of foreign direct investments
into the Union (OJ L 79 I, 21.3.2019, p. 1).

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 calls on vital sectors and other sensitive sectors to exclude the use of hardware and
software from high-risk countries that can be used to threaten the confidentiality,
integrity and availability of data and services; recalls that any software operating in a
closed loop remains vulnerable when routine checks are made or when it is updated;
considers the TikTok app, owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, to be in breach
of the European data privacy framework, making it a potential risk and a source of
Chinese-backed disinformation; welcomes the decision of the EU institutions to restrict
the use of TikTok on corporate devices; recommends the banning of TikTok at all levels
of national government and in the EU institutions;

64. Stresses the need to establish and develop tech alliances with democratic partners to
boost strategic autonomy and reduce the EU’s dependence on high-risk foreign actors
and their technologies as well as to strengthen EU’s industrial capabilities in key
technological areas, such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, the cloud and other
cutting-edge technologies;

65. Is concerned about the vulnerabilities and increasing attacks on undersea cables and
pipelines, pointing in particular to the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in
September 2022; believes FDI in undersea cables and pipelines creates an additional
security risk; welcomes the EU Maritime Security Strategy (EMSA) and asks the
Commission to update Parliament on progress to enhance understanding and resilience
of subsea infrastructure protection, improve coordination and information sharing,
advance monitoring capabilities together with industry, strengthen response
mechanisms, and to embed this issue in all aspects of external action;

66. Is concerned about the revelations of how political elites in EU Member States, for
example in Germany, have advanced the agenda of Gazprom and expressed constant
support for gas supplies from Russia; notes with concern the impact of lobbying efforts
by foreign states and corporate actors with an interest in continued production and use
of fossil fuels in the EU on policymaking processes; recalls in this regard its findings in
the INGE 1 report; welcomes the Commission’s REPowerEU proposal to transform the
EU’s energy system, ending its dependence on Russian fossil fuels; urges EU Member
States and the Commission to halt all fossil fuel imports into the EU from autocratic
regimes and to move towards sustainable energy sovereignty;

67. Is concerned about the close ties between Hungary and Russia, whereby Russia is
exerting its influence through its leverage in the energy sector; regrets that Hungary has
not taken significant steps to reduce its energy dependency on Russia; believes more
needs to be done to ensure open, strategic autonomy in the energy sector; calls for the
deployment of renewable energy to be accelerated, while minimising any further
dependency on China;

1
68. Welcomes the recently proposed critical raw materials act ; believes the proposed act is
essential to secure European supply chains needed to make the proposed European
chips act 2 a success; emphasises the need to continue to seek trade agreements with

1
Proposal for a regulation establishing a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable
supply of critical raw materials and amending Regulations (EU) 168/2013, (EU)
2018/858, 2018/1724 and (EU) 2019/1020 (COM(2023)0160).
2
Proposal for a regulation establishing a framework of measures for strengthening
Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem (Chips Act) (COM(2022)0046).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 95

 like-minded democracies in securing supply of strategic resources;

Interference during electoral processes

69. Welcomes the work done by the APPF in this regard, especially in preventing and
countering prohibited financial payments from non-EU countries into the EU’s political
system; calls on the Commission and the co-legislators to enhance the APPF’s toolbox
and to enable the effective tracing of donations to the ultimate payer, thus avoiding the
prohibition’s being circumvented by the use of intermediaries, in particular by giving
the APPF a mandate to obtain information directly from donors’ banking institutions as
well as by providing a system of push notifications for suspicious transactions from the
financial intelligence units in the Member States to the APPF; further calls on the
Member States to strengthen legal safeguards preventing that national member parties
of European political parties receive payments from non-EU origin at national level,
which are then used as contributions for European political parties and foundations; also
welcomes the operational contacts the APPF has already established with competent EU
institutions and agencies as well as with the Member States to effectively counter
attempts to use personal data for electoral purposes; calls on the Member States to
further enhance cooperation with the APPF by making specialised contact points
available and operational in the competent authorities for data protection and electoral
cybersecurity;

70. Welcomes the initiatives taken within the European cooperation network on elections
including the joint resilience plans; calls on the Commission to fully involve Parliament
in the activities of the network as well as the APPF; considers that similar networks
should be established with national parliaments in the Member States; also considers
that Member State parliaments and the electoral authorities should do more to inform
the public about the risks of interference in national electoral processes; calls on the
Commission to draw up a code of good practice on social media applicable to public
representatives and authorities, aimed at establishing common standards of conduct,
considering that politicians and governments sometimes resort to disinformation to
encourage ideological hostility;

71. Notes that the European Parliament has laid down a strategy for the 2024 European
elections, which includes a focus on preventing and addressing information
manipulation ahead of the elections, without interfering in the political or wider social
debates, with full respect for the independence of the mandate of the members;
underlines that this strategy should be based on stepping up Parliament’s existing
measures, including those involving Parliament’s task force on disinformation, and
therefore calls for the allocation of additional resources to implement the various
measures;

72. Stresses the utmost importance of protecting the security, resilience and reliability of the
election infrastructure, including, among other things, IT systems, voting machines and
equipment, election office networks and procedures, voter registration databases and
storage facilities; underlines that information and communication technologies are
increasingly prevalent in electoral management and democratic processes; notes that in
order to effectively respond to emerging electoral challenges, electoral management
bodies need to adopt new working patterns that enhance their ability to prevent risks
and demonstrate resilience, also in a complex digital environment; calls for EU Member
State and local governments to be provided with a toolkit of services and tools to

96 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 combat FIMI; notes that when elections are held, paper ballots should have a verifiable
paper trail and be subject to independent audits to ensure the results are accurate;
highlights the fundamental role of election observation and independent election
monitors;

Covert funding of political activities by foreign actors and donors

73. Reiterates its concerns about the regular revelations of massive Russian funding of
political parties and politicians and former politicians and officials in a number of
democratic countries in an attempt to interfere and gain leverage in their domestic
processes; expresses its concern about Russia’s connections with several political
parties and politicians in the EU and its wide-ranging interference with secessionist
movements in European territories and in the EU, such as in Catalonia where the
relevant authorities are urged to carry out a comprehensive investigation and suggests
the European Centre of Excellence for Combating Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) in
Helsinki conduct a study of this specific case;

74. Takes note that the European cooperation network on elections is mapping foreign
funding in EU Member States and expresses its interest in being informed about these
efforts; calls for the prohibition of foreign funding from countries outside the EU; calls
on the network to identify common EU rules on political campaigning and political
party financing, including that from third countries, in particular those standards closing
the loopholes identified in the recommendations of the INGE 1 report adopted on
9 March 2022 that would apply to national electoral laws in all Member States,
including enforcement mechanisms; calls on the Member States to urgently address the
issue of donations from third countries to national political parties, in order to close
existing loopholes in their legislation;

75. Takes note of the ongoing legislative negotiations on the statute and funding of
European political parties and foundations; expects that these negotiations will enhance
the mandate of the APPF in particular in ensuring that financial transactions from non-
EU countries into the EU’s political system are limited, transparent and subject to
stricter controls and will result in an updated framework, which should strengthen the
role of EU political parties in the European democratic sphere as well as curb
interference by foreign powers; reiterates the need for a balanced and proportionate
approach to enable political parties from like-minded third countries, including
countries within the Council of Europe, provided they have full rights of representation
therein, to participate through membership and contributions, while further enhancing
the transparency of funding and decision-making and simultaneously limit the risk of
interference by non-democratic foreign entities or high-risk states;

76. Recalls that the APPF should be provided with the necessary resources, in particular
human and IT resources, to enable it to fulfil its current tasks and any new tasks
provided for by the legislation, which can only be effectively implemented with
appropriate additional staff;

77. Takes note of the ongoing legislative work on the transparency and targeting of political
advertising; highlights the importance of this proposed regulation that will curb opaque
political advertising techniques and stresses the need for co-legislators to adopt it in due
time before the European election in 2024; in this regard, recalls its wish to prohibit the
purchase of advertisements by actors from outside the EU and the European Economic

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 97

 Area (EEA) and to guarantee transparency and non-discrimination including via the
appropriate labelling with regard to the purchasing of online political advertisements by
actors from within the EU; underlines the need for the European political parties to be
able to campaign online and EU-wide ahead of the European elections, while limiting
the risk of foreign interference;

Cybersecurity and resilience in respect of cyberattacks related to democratic processes

78. Is concerned about the serious increase in cyberattacks, in particular the recent
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the European Parliament’s website
on 23 November 2022, for which responsibility was claimed by a pro-Kremlin hacker
group and the possible hacking of three MEPs and more than fifty Commission officials
with Pegasus software; therefore calls for the resilience and protection capabilities of
EU institutions in the digital domain to be strengthened, in particular ahead of the
European Parliamentary elections;

79. Welcomes the agreement on the NIS2 Directive and believes it addresses the issue of
coordination between Member States; calls on the Member States to ensure enhanced
cooperation and to share best practices in the NIS Cooperation Group, especially on
cybersecurity for elections; asks for electoral infrastructure to be considered critical
infrastructure; believes additional legislation is needed to effectively protect the
European ICT supply chain security from risky vendors and protect against cyber-
enabled intellectual property theft;

80. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal for new rules to establish common cybersecurity
and information security across the EUIBAs; welcomes, in accordance with the ECA
special report of March 2022, the creation of a new interinstitutional cybersecurity
board, the boosting of cybersecurity capabilities, and the promotion of regular maturity
assessments and better ‘cyber-hygiene’; stresses the need for efficient, timely and close
coordination between the EUIBAs through existing structures, such as the Computer
Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU)
and European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA); believes these structures
should be bolstered and that more efficient coordination is needed; calls on these
bodies, agencies and the Commission to regularly inform Parliament about future
conclusions and findings concerning cybersecurity and information security in the EU;
calls for a complete cybersecurity audit, to determine whether the EUIBAs have
sufficient control over the security of their ICT systems and devices, including a risk,
vulnerability and threat assessment, backed up with penetration testing, by a leading and
verified external third party, when this regulation enters into force and annually
thereafter, taking the information security requirements of the institutions into
consideration; believes the reported risks and vulnerabilities need to be mitigated in
cybersecurity updates, and the recommendations from the assessment should be
implemented through the respective cybersecurity policies;

81. Calls on the Commission and ENISA to map existing and planned bodies, agencies and
other European organisations working with cybersecurity and to propose solutions to fill
potential gaps;

82. Calls on the Council, the Commission and the EEAS to strengthen cyber-related
controls on strategic communication channels (e.g. military channels in times of war
and CSDP missions);

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 83. Acknowledges that, when it comes to cyberattacks, prevention is necessary but not
sufficient; believes an accurately targeted response is key in countering cyberattacks;
believes the EU should tackle cyberattacks by considering the following aspects:

(a) the need for increased responsiveness to and resilience against cyberattacks;

(b) the need for flexibility in critical situations, while upholding the rule of law and
fundamental rights;

(c) the need for common regulations to ensure efficient coordination, calls therefore
on Member States to speed up implementation of the CER and NIS2 Directives;

(d) the need to share information between and within Member States, in particular
with regards to security vulnerabilities, while taking into account the need to hide
the critical protection level from public information sharing;

(e) the need for research and investment in new technologies that would increase
cyber resilience;

(f) the need to involve actors such as CSOs, the private sector and other partners in a
safe and sustainable way;

(g) calls therefore for Member States to adopt a more proactive stance and expand
their capabilities in cyberspace based on the ‘persistent engagement’ and ‘defend
forward’ approaches, in close coordination among Member States and in
consultation with the relevant EU counterparts;

The impact of interference on the rights of minorities and other vulnerable groups

84. Recalls that foreign interference is often linked to political objectives contrary to the EU
and its democratic values, covering up blatant violations of human rights, restricting the
rights of women and LGBTIQ+ communities, and fomenting hatred towards minorities,
migrants and the most vulnerable people;

85. Regrets the political instrumentalisation of the migration issue and its use in
interference and disinformation campaigns; calls for the efficient management of the
EU external border to be ensured in full compliance with fundamental rights;

86. Worries that the LGBTIQ+ community remains a target for foreign interference and
disinformation campaigns; is concerned about the situation of the LGBTIQ+
community in several Member States, such as Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, and the
disinformation spread by state-owned media and far-right organisations on the topic;
regrets that disinformation and hate-speech against LGBTIQ+ were the primary motive
that lead to the murder of two young people in Slovakia in October 2022; calls for the
development of long-term programmes supporting local grassroots organisations and
citizens’ initiatives to help develop the population’s resistance to right-wing extremism;

87. Is concerned about the attempts by Russian disinformation to undermine European

society’s support for Ukrainian refugees; calls on EUIBAs and on national authorities to
monitor and debunk Russian disinformation regarding Ukrainian refugees and the war
in Ukraine;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 99

88. Calls on the Commission and Member States to strengthen partnerships with NGOs and
international organisations working in the field to monitor child labour and slow the
spread of disinformation on the matter (e.g. children in armed conflicts);

89. Reiterates its call for a system to make it easy to share material in regional and minority
languages; welcomes in this regard the Commission’s support to the pilot action entitled
‘European Language Equality’ (ELE); believes additional measures need to be taken to
ensure an effective response to interference targeting minorities; also calls for the EU
and the Member States to implement accessible fact-checking in order to combat
disinformation and provide access to information in all possible formats for people with
disabilities;

90. Reiterates the need for targeted action, through a harmonised EU legal framework,
against the spread of disinformation and hate speech on issues related to gender,
LGBTIQ+ and Roma people, other minorities, immigrants and refugees and people with
disabilities as well as religious communities; reiterates its call on the Commission to
develop and implement strategies to hinder the financing of anti-gender groups,
movements and individuals that actively spread disinformation or participate in
information manipulation targeting LGBTIQ+ people, women’s rights, minorities,
refugees, people with disabilities and issues affecting them, with the aim of dividing
society;

91. Worries that women’s rights are being specifically targeted by disinformation,
particularly health disinformation, and by foreign interference; calls for a full
investigation into the funding sources of gendered disinformation campaigns; reiterates
its call for the creation of early warning systems through which gendered disinformation
campaigns can be reported and identified;

92. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop measures to strengthen
independent Russian-language media that are easily accessible to Russian-speaking
communities; also calls on the Commission and Member States to support independent
commentators in order to counter the influence of third-country propaganda on
minorities in Europe;

Interference through global actors via elite capture, national diasporas, universities and
cultural events

93. Denounces in the strongest terms the alleged attempts by foreign countries, including
Qatar and Morocco to influence Members, former Members and staff of the European
Parliament through acts of corruption, which constitute serious foreign interference in
the EU’s democratic processes; underlines the need to step up efforts to enhance the
transparency and integrity of the EU institutions, and to combat corruption,
manipulation, influence and interference campaigns; reiterates its call for updated
transparency rules and ethics, mapping foreign funding for EU-related lobbying,
including funding for non-profit organisations and proper regulation and monitoring of
friendship groups; reiterates the need to immediately suspend all work on legislative
files relating to Qatar and Morocco, as well as for the access badges of representatives
of interests of both countries, until the judicial investigations provide relevant
information and clarification and evaluate which dossiers may have been compromised
as a result of this foreign interference;

100 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 94. Welcomes the extension of the term of office and updated mandate for the ING2,
special committee and expects the ING2 committee to prepare an impactful report
identifying the flaws in the European Parliament’s rules on transparency, ethics,
integrity and corruption and to make proposals for the reforms to effectively fight
corruption and other means used by foreign actors to influence European decision-
making processes, considering that any potential enhanced disclosure requirements
should be weighed against the need to protect certain vulnerable individuals and groups;

95. Regrets that the recommendations from the INGE 1 report on introducing more
stringent transparency rules, mapping of foreign funding for EU-related lobbying, and
ensuring it is entered in the records to allow for the identification of funding from
foreign governments, have not yet been implemented;

96. Recalls the commitments made by the President of the Commission during her State of
the Union address regarding the need to update the EU legislative framework for
combating corruption; considers that such an update should target in particular the issue
of the capture of elites by foreign interests, revolving doors and trafficking in influence
in order to prevent foreign agents from interfering the EU political system; invites also
the Commission to tighten its rules to prevent such capture by autocratic or high-risk
governments or entities under their control, to deal with the issue of elite capture in the
annual rule of law reports; recalls Parliament’s repeated calls for the establishment of a
new permanent sanctions regime dedicated to targeting individuals and entities
responsible for large-scale corruption;

97. Takes note of the judgment of 22 November 2022 of the Court of Justice of the
European Union in case C-37/2013 1 , invalidating a provision of the fifth Anti-Money
Laundering Directive 2, whereby Member States had to ensure that information on the
beneficial ownership of companies should be accessible in all cases to any member of
the general public; stresses that registers of beneficial ownership information are an
essential tool for civil society organisations, researchers, investigators and journalists to
detect alleged corruption and illicit business interests, and that restricting access to those
registers severely limits future monitoring of true ownership by the general public;
considers that this invalidation constrains the work of a wide range of professionals
fighting corruption and money laundering; calls on the Commission to find proper ways
to ensure that information on the beneficial ownership of companies is accessible to the
general public; calls on the Commission to propose measures under the Anti-Money
Laundering Directive with a view to limiting the use of cash so as to discourage the use
of illegitimate money and thereby preventing corruption; regrets that some Member
States have taken the judgment as a pretext to suspend access to the register outright;

98. Is of the opinion that the data on foreign influence through interest representatives at the
EU level should be widely available and clearly presented; welcomes the changes
introduced by the interinstitutional agreement of 20 May 2021 on a mandatory

1
Judgment of 22 November 2022, Luxembourg Business Registers , C-37/20,
ECLI:EU:C:2022:912.
2
Directive (EU) 2018/843 of the European Parliament and of the Council of
30 May 2018 amending Directive (EU) 2015/849 on the prevention of the use of the
financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, and
amending Directives 2009/138/EC and 2013/36/EU (OJ L 156, 19.6.2018, p. 43).

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 101

 transparency register1 in this regard; recommends, however, that a specific foreign
influence section be inserted in the EU Transparency Register or that a foreign influence
register be established; considers that the EU Transparency Register should include a
list of high-risk countries; recommends stronger requirements and incentives for foreign
powers to register; considers enhanced registration and disclosure requirements to be
necessary for CSOs, consultancies, agencies, foundations, think tanks and private
companies receiving foreign funding;

99. Calls on the Secretariat of the EU Transparency Register to ban any entities with direct
or indirect relations with the Government of Russia, pursuant to the Council decision of
3 June 2022 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s actions destabilising
the situation in Ukraine 2 ; calls on the same measures to be applied to Belarus;

100. Reiterates its concerns about partnerships between universities and Chinese entities,
including Confucius Institutes, but especially those research facilities related to the
Chinese military complex, and the risk they may pose to academic freedom and
protection of intellectual property; is alarmed at recent findings 3 that a considerable
number of European researchers working on artificial intelligence, quantum
technologies, integrated circuits, space research, new materials research, neuroscience
and biotechnology are being directly funded by the People’s Republic of China;
reiterates its call on Member States’ authorities and research institutes to review those
partnerships, and, where alleged espionage or interference is substantiated, take action
to enforce and safeguard European economic and political sovereignty, including
through denial of funding or revocation of licences of associated institutes; reiterates
that academic freedom is a fundamental value in any democratic society; urges Member
States to make better use of existing mechanisms to protect scientific, industrial and
technical knowledge, and to extend them to the humanities and social sciences; calls for
more transparency in the funding of research activities and the financial support they
receive, notably through the establishment of due diligence procedures to assess
whether the foreign funding of projects pose a security threat;

101. Highlights that China is trying to combine civilian and military scientific research
within the framework of the civil-military integration programme; demands the
immediate termination of existing cooperation with research institutions that are directly
funded by the Chinese military or have ties with it, and to take stock of what scientific
knowledge might have gone to the Chinese side; welcomes the publication of the
guidelines on tackling R&I foreign interference by the European Commission, but
suggests proportionate measures be applied to academic and research institutions, and
that more transparency be ensured in foreign partnerships; expresses concern about the
Chinese National Intelligence Law, which requires Chinese researchers at Western
universities to share their knowledge with the state, and about China’s reliance on
spying as a means of obtaining knowledge to further its economic and military goals;

1
Interinstitutional Agreement of 20 May 2021 between the European Parliament, the
Council of the European Union and the European Commission on a mandatory
transparency register (OJ L 207, 11.6.2021, p. 1).
2
Council Decision (CFSP) 2022/884 of 3 June 2022 amending Decision 2014/512/CFSP
concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in
Ukraine (OJ L 153, 3.6.2022, p. 128).
3
Study entitled ‘How to Do Trusted Research: China-Specific Guidelines for European
Stakeholders’, published in September 2022.

102 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 calls for mandatory commitments to greater diligence and compliance in academic
cooperation with Chinese universities and researchers, and for any cooperation with
Chinese universities to be subject to a comprehensive security risk assessment;

102. Expresses concerns about the ongoing activities of Russkiy Dom (Russian House)
offices funded by the EU-sanctioned Russian federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo, whose
misleading projects spread disinformation, propaganda and the Kremlin’s agenda
among EU civil society;

103. Welcomes the publication by the Commission of a toolkit on how to mitigate foreign
interference in research and innovation in order to help European universities and
research organisations to detect and prevent foreign interference while remaining open
to partnerships; calls on the Commission to include academic and research institutions
in the Defence of Democracy Package; calls on the Commission and Members States to
further coordinate actions in this field, in particular to step up the role of ethics and
security officers in higher education institutions; calls on the Commission to further
develop guidelines for trusted research and knowledge security in order to support the
integrity of international research collaboration with European organisations; highlights
the potential in a register or database of possible sleeping or foreign agents from high-
risk states at European universities and research organisations;

104. Expresses concerns over recent reports about the establishment of Chinese overseas
police stations within the EU; calls on the Member States and EU authorities to
investigate the alleged existence of these police stations and to take coordinated action
against any illegal activities associated with China’s United Front Work Department in
Europe; reiterates that such stations constitute a threat to the national security of the
Member States concerned and of the Union in general, and should therefore be
prohibited; calls on the Member States to close them down immediately; condemns the
practice of threatening people living in the European Union, in particular the Chinese
diaspora and political dissident groups, as well as the imprisonment of their relatives in
China in order to coerce persons living abroad into returning to China;

105. Is concerned about the allegations of illegal police operations on foreign soil eschewing
official bilateral police and judicial cooperation; calls on the Commission to examine
the so-called Chinese overseas police service stations inside the EU, which allegedly
have persuaded thousands of suspected fugitives to return to China, and to take the
appropriate steps in this regard; demands the Chinese authorities and Chinese embassies
in EU Member States to adhere to standard international procedures;

106. Denounces signs of Turkish interference and persecution of political activists,

opposition leaders and minorities within the EU; condemns Türkiye’s new
Disinformation Law proposal, which poses a threat to the freedom of speech in the
country;

107. Deplores the dissemination of disinformation and the oppressive use of the internet by
the Iranian regime to conceal gross human rights violations, violence against protestors
and abuses of power; is worried by the interference of Islamist organisations inspired by
foreign states;

108. Is concerned about the growing influence activities of foreign authoritarian state
intelligence agencies within the EU, especially in Brussels; reiterates its call on national

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 103

 authorities to review and update their anti-espionage frameworks; in this regard,
welcomes the Belgian government’s announced modernisation of the anti-espionage
framework and calls for more capacity for the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre
(INTCEN) to carry out its counterintelligence mandate and deepen cooperation with
national authorities; calls on immigration authorities to be more vigilant when screening
the staff of foreign companies, such as TASS and COSCO, from high-risk countries,
when they apply for work visas; furthermore, calls on immigration authorities to
enhance coordination to make travel by foreign intelligence officers using false
identities more difficult;

109. Expresses concern about a recent New York Times investigation accusing the Russian
Imperial Movement, a supremacist group, of having organised a campaign to send letter
bombs to prominent Spanish citizens in late 2022, with the help of the GRU, the
Russian military intelligence service; warns of the risk of espionage in French airports
such as Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Brest, Quimper and Toulouse, which use the Chinese
equipment company Nuctech, linked to the Chinese regime and its military-industrial
complex, for baggage screening; underlines that Nuctech is present in 26 of the 27 EU
Member States, and recalls that Lithuania, the United States and Canada have banned
the company from their public contracts;

110. Calls on EU political parties to develop a strong response to hate speech and harassment
campaigns against Members of Parliament; calls on Parliament’s administration to
develop an institutionalised procedure to be put in place when such campaigns against
elected EU representatives occur;

Deterrence, attribution and collective countermeasures, including sanctions

111. Welcomes the EU-wide sanctions and the capacity of EU decision-makers to act
quickly to temporarily restrict the broadcasting of certain propaganda channels
following Russia’s unjustified and illegal war of aggression against Ukraine and
underlines the need to ensure consistent implementation and non-circumvention of
those sanctions; welcomes the alignment of certain EU candidate and potential
candidate countries with these measures; calls on the Commission to cooperate more
closely with Member States on imposing and implementing sanctions; welcomes the
General Court’s judgment of 27 July 2022 in case T-125/22 RT France 1 , in which the
Court rejected RT’s argument that the prohibition of broadcasting is illegal, and
therefore upheld the prohibition of broadcasting content imposed on RT France; calls on
the Commission and the Council to include satellite broadcasting in the sanctions
packages against Russia, the GRU affiliated ‘news agency’ InfoRos, as stated in its
May 2022 resolution 2 and to include all prominent Kremlin propagandists on EU lists of
sanctioned individuals; regrets that these channels are still able to spread their narratives
under false aliases or through other channels in the European Union; especially strongly
condemns the opening of an RT (formerly Russia Today) office in Belgrade and the
launch of its online news service in Serbian, thus allowing this malign actor to spread its
disinformation in the whole region; urges, in this context, the Serbian authorities to
align with the Council’s decision on the suspension of the broadcasting activities of

1
Judgment of 27 July 2022, RT France v Council, T-125/22, ECLI:EU:T:2022:483.
2
European Parliament resolution of 19 May 2022 on the social and economic
consequences for the EU of the Russian war in Ukraine — reinforcing the EU’s
capacity to act (OJ C 479, 16.12.2022, p. 75).

104 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 Sputnik and RT;

112. Welcomes the Commission’s proposal for a directive on the definition of criminal
offences and penalties for the violation of Union restrictive measures
(COM(2022)0684) and calls on the Commission to assess the possibility of the
European Public Prosecutor’s Office being tasked with ensuring the consistent and
uniform investigation and prosecution of such crimes throughout the EU; calls for the
EU INTCEN to be given greater resources to help inform on and enforce EU sanctions,
as well as to improve the exchange of forensic information and coordinate attribution
policy more effectively;

113. Expresses its concerns about the rise in the manipulation of automatic identification
systems (AIS) to subvert the GPS data and manipulate the position of vessels, allowing
certain actors to circumvent sanctions; calls on the Commission to impose stricter AIS
security protocols and calls for the inclusion of AIS spoofing technology within the EU
dual-use export control regime;

114. Reiterates its call to impose costs on perpetrators of foreign interference by means of a
strong attribution capacity; takes note of the ongoing reflection based on the Council
conclusions of June 2022 regarding the preparation of a toolbox to complement the EU
Hybrid Toolbox and Cyber Toolbox, specifically addressing activities involving FIMI;
notes that the FIMI toolbox was expected to be introduced in the autumn of 2022;
strongly believes this toolbox should include a specific sanctions regime on FIMI as
well as measures to strengthen the attribution capacity of European institutions and
national governments; notes that these measures should include guidelines for national
sanctions against FIMI and be applied by the Member States acting in a coordinated
way; calls on Member States to discuss the possibility of qualified majority voting when
sanctioning high-risk states; notes that the added value of the Hybrid Toolbox and the
proposed FIMI Toolbox, compared to the Cyber Toolbox, will reside in the agreement
of norms of responsible state behaviour that offer an enhanced interpretation of what
constitutes a violation of the principles of international law, such as sovereignty and
non-interference in the internal affairs of a Member State;

115. Reiterates the importance of the EU’s ability to defend itself from disinformation
attacks and to counteract foreign interference; calls in that regard for sufficient funding
and for possible investment and legislative gaps to be addressed; calls on the Members
States to update, if necessary, their legal frameworks to introduce a legal basis on which
to penalise foreign interference from high-risk countries; welcomes the introduction of
such a legal basis into Belgium’s draft penal code, which will allow for the better
protection of the European institutions on its territory;

116. Calls on Member States and the Commission to consider how to counter disinformation
from individual actors inside the EU, such as influencers on social media or politicians
promoting disinformation on behalf of high-risk states, etc.; highlights the potential
need to develop a sanctions regime against perpetrators engaging in FIMI inside the EU;

Neighbourhood, global cooperation, multilateralism

117. Is concerned about attempts by Russia to manipulate the discourse around global food
and energy security, which have been echoed in other communication channels,
including mainly Chinese outlets and in some instances Al Jazeera, blaming the West

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 105

 for the surge in food prices due to its sanctions on Russia; emphasises that these
manipulated narratives have gained considerable traction, primarily in the Global South
and in some candidate and potential candidate countries; recalls that Russia is solely
responsible for the disruption of Ukraine’s agricultural production and trade as a result
of its war of aggression against the country; calls on the EEAS, therefore, to take
additional measures to counter the dissemination of manipulated narratives in the
Global South, spread by Russia and China, including by strengthening the tools and
resources of its StratCom division and its CSDP/CFSP missions and operations, and
through increased cooperation and coordination with the United States and other like-
minded partners; believes the EU should work closely with Ukraine in countering
manipulated narratives coming from Russia; calls for the EU institutions, therefore, to
provide support to Ukraine’s diplomatic outreach in the Global South; calls for closer
cooperation with regional organisations from the Global South, such as the African
Union and ASEAN, to exchange best practices for countering FIMI;

118. Recalls that many information manipulation campaigns and much state-sponsored
propaganda target countries making strategic choices about their democratic reform
processes and the pro-European orientation of their countries; underlines the importance
of proactive, effective and transparent communication, and calls for closer cooperation
on strategic communication with partner organisations and countries to counter FIMI in
accession countries and strategically important areas such as the Western Balkans and
Eastern Partnership countries; believes that the EU should engage more with the US in
relation to neighbouring countries in order to build resilient democratic societies; recalls
that the stability of these countries is a matter of peace and security;

119. Calls therefore for strategic and proactive measures to counter hybrid threats and to
prevent third-country interference in the political, electoral and other democratic
processes of accession countries; calls for efforts to increase the resilience of these
countries against FIMI campaigns and encourage candidate and potential candidate
countries to take decisive steps to tackle manipulative disinformation, malign
propaganda and other hybrid threats;

120. Regrets the lack of progress made in and the continuing slow pace of the enlargement
process in the Western Balkans, which has led to a drop in support for the EU and
frustration among the population of the region; condemns the continuation of Russian
attempts to exert influence over the Western Balkans, which has to be understood as
part of a broader strategy to promote authoritarianism in Europe; observes, further, that
the pro-Russian message is being spread through Serbian and Hungarian-owned media
in the Western Balkans; is concerned about recent findings that Serbia is the country
most vulnerable to malign foreign influence in the Western Balkans, particularly from
Russia and China, and that Serbia still has not implemented sanctions against Russia
and has not aligned to the EU’s foreign policy;

121. Calls on the Commission in its upcoming evaluation of the GDPR to provide clarity
regarding whether and how the GDPR impacts data sharing to combat information
manipulation between public, private and academic actors in the EU and in cooperation
with like-minded partners;

122. Believes the Global Gateway strategy will be an important geopolitical tool in
intensifying the EU’s engagement and relations with partners from the Global South,
responding to China’s influence, through its Belt and Road Initiative, and that of other

106 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 non-EU countries such as Russia and Iran, building trust with non-EU countries and
bolstering trust among candidate countries to strengthen the image of the EU vis-à-vis
Russia and China; believes it should be approached as a geopolitical project that makes
strategic investments on the basis of Europe’s needs for the digital and green transition,
through a strong connection with the Critical Raw Materials Act and Chips Act, and
asks for the Commission to provide clarity on the priorities of the Global Gateway
initiative; believes it is of the utmost importance to act as ‘Team Europe’ in
implementing the strategy, ensure proper democratic scrutiny, the full involvement of
Parliament and coordinated action between all EU institutions and Member States, as
well as with the European private sector; calls on the Commission and the EEAS to
closely cooperate and coordinate with other connectivity initiatives involving like-
minded partners, such as the US, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, to ensure
fundamental rights are safeguarded;

123. Strongly supports the work done by the EEAS Strategic Communication, Task Forces
and Information Analysis division and its geographical task forces; believes more
attention needs to be paid to outlining the threat landscape in the context of actors
related to the Chinese authorities, as well as in the EU’s Eastern and Southern
Neighbourhoods and beyond; welcomes, against this background, the EEAS’ work on
enhancing the capacities of the EU delegations and CSDP missions and operations to
respond to FIMI, in close cooperation with international partners; believes, however,
that more resources should be allocated to strengthening their work, both within the
EEAS headquarters and in the field; calls for further capacity-building, including
tailored training for CSDP personnel, increased knowledge sharing and coordination
with other EU missions, operations and delegations, better engagement with local media
and society and proactive and reactive communication in local languages;

124. Welcomes the cooperation mechanisms in place with the US, such as the ongoing EU-
US cooperation within the Trade and Technology Council (TTC); notes with interest the
joint statement following the TTC of 5 December 2022 stating in particular that
working group 5 on Data Governance and Technology Platforms and working group 6
on the Misuse of Technology Threatening Security and Human Rights ‘are coordinating
to understand and address the spread of Russian information manipulation and
interference, particularly in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and its
impact on non-EU countries, notably in Africa and Latin-America’; welcomes the
Commission’s commitment to regularly inform Parliament on the work of the TTC and
calls for continuing efforts to address common challenges in these areas; in addition,
calls on the Commission and EEAS to further intensify the work with the US on sharing
best practices and operational knowledge, as well as on the development of common
definitions and approaches;

125. Considers initiatives such as the TTC and the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM),
to be important platforms of cooperation between like-minded partners in developing
tools and sharing best practices to counter FIMI; calls on the EU to take the lead in
these cooperation initiatives to ensure global standards are being developed in
accordance with European values; calls on the Commission and EEAS to regularly
include Parliament, through its administration, in discussions with like-minded partners
and identify areas where Parliament’s support could add value to the process; calls for
deeper cooperation between democratic partners, such as the US, and promotion of
academic cooperation in order to avoid a situation whereby China dominates the
development of AI;

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 107

126. Calls for strengthened and direct contact between specialised parliamentary committees
in transatlantic relations through the Transatlantic Legislators’ Dialogue;

127. Welcomes the UN’s Global Code of Conduct; urges the EEAS to remain closely
involved in the process and to appeal to other UN member states on the importance of
common awareness of the global challenges and the need for intensive cooperation;
believes the Code should not focus solely on platforms, but also look at other state and
non-state actors; calls on platforms to allocate more resources and capacity to
monitoring harmful content in local languages or dialects; calls on platforms to include
approaches to mitigate the risks from AI and other technologies; reiterates the need to
safeguard fundamental rights within the Code; believes a change in international law
will be extremely difficult to make and therefore suggests the EU work closely with
like-minded partners to develop international responses to FIMI;

128. Is concerned about the safeguarding of fundamental rights in the UN process of drafting
a Global convention on cybercrime; calls on the Commission and EEAS to ensure
European norms, rights and values are upheld in the process, including by promoting
the Budapest Convention as the global standard; recalls the danger of processes to fight
against disinformation being used as a pretext to curb media freedom;

129. Recalls that all efforts to counter foreign interference should do their utmost to respect
CSOs, existing rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court
of Justice as well as the EU Charter for Fundamental Rights, and should not be abused
to justify and legitimise restrictive policies, which is a concern that also extends to EU
Member States; calls for criteria to suspend or revoke agreements with non-EU
countries to be applied more rigorously, for example in the event of human rights
violations, as the current application of those criteria exposes the EU to foreign
influence;

130. Condemns the attempts of private military companies (PMCs), such as the Wagner
Group and other armed groups, militias and proxies, including as the Kadyrovites and
the Night Wolves, to influence democratic processes in several countries across the
world; condemns recent threat and intimidation messages sent by the Wagner Group to
the European Parliament; calls on the Council and the Member States to include
Russian PMCs on the EU’s terrorist list; calls on the EEAS to create an initiative with
like-minded partners to counter malign non-state actor groups, such as Wagner;
emphasises that the existing EU toolboxes should include responses, such as sanctions,
to non-EU states financing or cooperating with private military companies in vulnerable
regions;

131. Highlights the importance of close and continuous cooperation with the Eastern
Partnership countries, notably Ukraine and other candidate countries, in building
resilience against hybrid attacks; believes that this potential cooperation could take the
form of an ‘Information Ramstein’, mirroring the Ramstein Defence Contact Group,
which would bring together media experts from Ukraine, the EU and beyond to discuss
the lessons learnt from Ukrainian resilience against Russian information warfare and to
develop joint operations; encourages the EU and its Member States furthermore to
deepen cooperation with Taiwan in countering disinformation campaigns and
interference operations;

132. Calls on the Commission and the EEAS to increase cooperation with other like-minded

108 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

 partners on developing mechanisms to address election interference, for example with
the electoral authorities of Taiwan, Canada, Australia and Brazil; calls for increased
cooperation with NATO in building resilience among EU and NATO Member States;
calls for EU delegations and Member States’ embassies in third countries to constantly
monitor and map disinformation techniques and actors in the respective countries where
they are based, for which they should receive the necessary resources, and to help
partner countries in developing and strengthening their critical electoral infrastructures,
and to set ambitious standards that offer enhanced interpretation of existing
international law; considers it necessary to carry out updated training for EU officials
and diplomats concerning FIMI;

133. Reiterates its recommendation to establish regional strategic communication hubs

outside the EU, initiated by the EEAS and with sufficient funding; believes that these
multi-lingual hubs should strengthen the EU’s voice in the priority regions (i.e. the
Western Balkans, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Latin
America, and Western and Eastern Africa), improve its outreach to regional media and
rebut foreign sponsored information manipulation and disinformation campaigns
targeting EU values and interests; underlines that the activities of the hubs should also
provide support to EU delegations and Member States’ diplomatic missions, offer
synergies with the EU media service providers present in these regions and prioritise
engagement with local media and opinion influencers;

134. Calls on the EEAS and the Member States to keep working closely with like-minded
partners in establishing common norms of responsible state behaviour and definitions,
and developing tools and legislation to counter foreign information manipulation and
interference; calls on the EEAS to strengthen multilateral and multi-stakeholder
cooperation with non-EU countries, civil society and industry on countering FIMI
through like-minded partnerships and in international diplomatic dialogues and forums
while ensuring the safeguarding of fundamental rights when developing tools to counter
FIMI; regrets that some EU Member States still have not filled the vacant national
expert positions within the EU Hybrid Centre of Excellence (Hybrid CoE); calls on
Member States to appoint national representatives and experts to the Hybrid CoE;

135. Underlines the importance of parliamentary diplomacy and missions to amplify the
EU’s debunking efforts and strategic interests, and communicate effectively with non-
EU countries, especially in Africa and the MENA region; underlines the great value of
the initiatives taken by Parliament and its services in supporting parliamentary
democracy in non-EU countries by reinforcing the democratic functioning of
parliaments, parliamentary mediation and dialogue, observing elections and engaging in
debates with civil society;

136. Highlights the potential for the EU to contribute to establishing a global community of
fact-checkers and global quality standards for fact-checking inspired by the European
Code of Standards for Independent Fact-Checking Organisations; considers it
necessary, furthermore, for the EU to support fact-checking efforts in candidate and
enlargement countries;

137. Welcomes the support channelled through the European Endowment for Democracy,
but believes more action needs to be taken by the EU to support independent journalism
in areas influenced by malign foreign actors, such as Russia and China, as well as to
provide strategic support and structural funding for local NGOs, CSOs, fact-checkers

EPP Group Conclusions of INGE+ING2 - 109

 and media based outside the EU, including in high-risk countries, enlargement and
candidate countries; reiterates its call, therefore, to establish a specific European
democratic media fund to support journalism in enlargement and EU Neighbourhood
and candidate countries; notes that many journalists from Ukraine have come to the EU
together with the growing number of war refugees and calls for tailored support for the
Ukrainian media environment, which has been severely harmed by the Russian
invasion; calls on the EEAS to include a parliamentary dimension in its outreach and
capacity-building initiatives in EU neighbourhood countries to support CSOs and the
independent media;

138. Considers that the EU has become a major hub for independent newsrooms from Russia
and Belarus, since these countries have eradicated independent media inside their
territories; believes that independent media can contribute to countering disinformation
spread by the Kremlin and in the long term to shaping Russia as a more democratic
country at peace with its neighbours; asks the Commission therefore to develop a long-
term structured approach including the establishment of a sufficiently funded policy that
would provide long term core support for independent Russian and Belarusian media
and journalism in exile;

139. Calls on the Commission and the EEAS to move away from a country-agnostic
approach towards a risk-based approach and to not shy away from identifying and
naming at international forums, such as the UN, those countries that have attempted to
conduct foreign interference, in order to make other countries aware of the risks posed
by the issue;

140. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.

110 - EPP Group Conclusions of the INGE+ING2

​Published by: EPP Group in the European Parliament
​Directorate Campaigns: Events Unit
Publications and Programmes
​Editor: Marek Evison
​Responsible: Fiona Kearns
​Coordinator: Daniela Steiner
​Address: European Parliament,
60 Rue Wiertz,
B-1047 Brussels
​Internet: [Link]
​E-mail: epp-publications@[Link]
​Copyright: EPP Group in the European Parliament
​Published: December 2023​