12 European Union countries want the European Commission to use its powers under the Digital Services Act to protect the integrity of European elections from foreign interference.
This is stated in a letter signed by 12 countries, Reuters reports.
Thus, in the letter, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Spain appealed to the European Commission to fulfill its promise to create a special EU body to counter foreign information manipulation and interference.
"The growing threats of foreign interference and destructive interference in public debates during key electoral events pose a direct challenge to our stability and sovereignty. Recent incidents require urgent and concerted action to protect future EU elections," the letter, seen by the agency, says.
It is noted that EU diplomats said that the letter refers to interference mainly from russia and China, but also to other cases.
It is recalled that Germany will hold early elections on February 23, and after warnings of espionage and sabotage by russia, it has set up a special group to prevent any attempts by foreign states to influence the vote.
At the same time, last week Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, spoke for the second time in as many weeks at an election event of the far-right German AfD to support the party.
Also in December, the Commission took action against the social media company TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, on suspicion that it failed to curb election interference during the Romanian presidential election in November.
Officials in Poland, where presidential election will be held in May, have warned that russia is recruiting people to influence the election.
“We call on the Commission to take the lead by making full use of the powers granted by the Digital Services Act (DSA),” the letter said.
Under the DSA, major internet platforms such as X, Facebook, TikTok and others must moderate and remove harmful content such as hate speech, racism or xenophobia. If they fail to do so, the Commission can impose fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover.
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