The EU’s plan to fight disinformation dates back to 2018, and the European Court of Auditors’ report did not hesitate to issue sharp criticism.

Media literacy 

Even if the court finds that the plan has "triggered positive developments", it hasn’t kept all of its promises. No review has taken place for three years, "even though disinformation tactics, actors and technology are constantly evolving." It also points to a certain disorder in the action: in 2020, the European Commission published the action plan for European democracy, which also provides for measures to combat disinformation, without clearly specifying how it relates to the 2018 action plan. The fear is that “pursuing similar objectives through different initiatives makes coordination more complex, and increases the risk of inefficiencies.”

Another downside is the lack of comprehensive arrangements "to ensure that the EU's response to disinformation is well coordinated, effective and proportionate to the type and scale of the threat." The efficiency of the European External Action Service (EEAS) should also be reviewed, even if this service has “improved the EU’s capacity to forecast and respond to disinformation in neighbouring countries.”

In addition, while the action plan involved the private sector and civil society jointly, “it has been unsuccessful in holding online platforms accountable for their actions, and in inducing them to play a greater role in actively tackling disinformation.”

Media literacy also figures into the report. The auditors “highlight the absence of a media-literacy strategy that includes tackling disinformation, and the fragmentation of policy and actions to increase people’s capacity to access, understand and interact with media and communications.”

No European legal framework

Faced with this observation, "We recommend that the EU’s response to disinformation should be stepped up, and that its coordination be improved,” said Baudilio Tomé Muguruza, member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report.

But what is a huge difficulty is that member states bear the primary responsibility for combatting disinformation. Apart from a series of strategic initiatives and Article 11 of the Charter on Fundamental Rights which deals with freedom of expression and information, the EU does not have a real legal framework to deal with disinformation.

This article was originally published in French on Paperjam and has been translated and edited for Delano.