Effective regulations governing electoral campaigns have played a vital role in preserving the integrity of election processes and, in a broader sense, upholding the essential tenets of democracy. The emergence of digital technologies and social media has transformed the field of electoral campaigns, offering political entities broad outreach capabilities at a relatively low cost. Despite the advantages, many political actors started to abuse these tools to spread misinformation, fracture political discourse, and influence voter behaviour. The national regulations designed for traditional political campaigns have proven insufficient to address these campaign techniques. The EU has already tried to regulate the electoral field, yet evaluations have highlighted shortcomings in existing measures.

The European Commission (Commission) announced its intention to complement the rules on online advertising from the Digital Services Act through a legislative proposal on political advertising. The Commission presented the proposal on 25 November 2021 as a part of its European democracy action plan.

The proposal for a regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising seeks to establish a common regulatory framework to enhance the transparency of online and offline sponsored political advertising. The key features of this proposal include:

• harmonised rules on clear labelling of a political advertisement, including information on its sponsor (the person on whose behalf the advert was prepared, placed, published or disseminated), who and how much paid for it;
• creation of a mechanism for individuals to notify if a particular advert does not comply with those transparency requirements;
• harmonised rules on targeting and amplification techniques in political advertising, especially when targeting and amplification techniques involve the processing of sensitive personal data;
• national authorities would end up in charge of imposing administrative fines and financial penalties on those infringing the regulation;
• infringements of the proposed regulation would be considered particularly grave during electoral periods.

The proposal entered the ordinary legislative procedure in the European Parliament and the Council. At the Council, the General Affairs configuration agreed on a mandate for negotiations with the Parliament on 13 December 2022. The Council proposed several amendments to the original text of the proposal, including modifications that seek to streamline the definition of political advertisement; soften the obligations imposed on micro, small and medium-sized undertakings providing political advertising services; and reinforce the obligations imposed on providers of political advertising services in the last month preceding an election or a referendum. The Council’s position would also allow targeting and amplification techniques involving the processing of sensitive personal data based on the explicit consent of the data subject given separately and expressly for political advertising. Those techniques would not be allowed for minors. 

The European Parliament referred the proposal to the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO). The Committees on Culture and Education (CULT) and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) were involved as associated committees. The IMCO Committee rapporteur, Sandro Gozi (Renew, France), presented the draft report on 21 June 2022. 686 amendments were tabled in total. The amendments sought various modifications of the Commission’s proposal, such as:

• banning the foreign financing of political advertisements in the EU;
• exempting political opinions expressed under the editorial responsibility from being classified as political advertisements;
• restricting targeting strategies only to personal data explicitly provided for online political advertising;
• creating an online repository for all online political advertisements and related data;
• allowing the periodic penalties imposed for a repeated violation and the obligation for large advertisement service providers to suspend their services for 15 days with a particular client in the case of severe and systemic infringements;
• allowing the Commission to introduce EU-wide minimum sanctions;
• strengthening the powers of the national authorities.

The IMCO Committee adopted the legislative report on 24 January 2023. The plenary approved this negotiating position on 2 February 2023.

After several rounds of trilogues, on 6 November 2023, the Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on the main political elements of new regulation. The deal covers political advertising provided for remuneration and political advertising through in-house activities. It guarantees more information about adverts for citizens, authorities and journalists; sets strict limits on targeting and delivery techniques; enhances protection of personal data in online political advertising; bans profiling (a usage of special categories of data, including a user’s racial or ethnic origin and political opinion); bans the non-EU based entities from financing political advertisements in the EU three months before an election or referendum; launches a dedicated database, a European public repository for online political advertisements, to make publicly available information on all online advertisements.

The IMCO Committee approved the Interinstitutional Agreement on 24 January 2024. Then the Parliament in the plenary vote overwhelmingly approved its first reading final position on 27 February. The Council followed when it adopted the text on 11 March. The Regulation was signed on 13 March 2024 and published in Official Journal.

The rules will apply 18 months after the entry into force. However, the measures on the non-discriminatory provision of cross-border political advertising will apply 20 days after the publication, i.e., they will be in force for the upcoming 2024 EP elections.

References:

• EUR-LEX, Regulation (EU) 2024/900 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 March 2024 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising.
• European Commission, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, 2021/0381(COD), 25 November 2021.
• European Parliament, Draft report on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, 2021/0381(COD), 16 June 2022.
• Council, Proposal for a Regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising- General approach, 13 December 2022.
• European Economic and Social Committee, EESC opinion: Reinforcing democracy and integrity of elections package, 23 February 2022.
• Committee of the Regions, Reinforcing democracy and integrity of elections, 27 April 2022.
• European Parliament, Plenary endorsed the Parliament's negotiating position, 2 February 2023.
• European Parliament, Political advertising: deal on new measures to crack down on abuse, 6 November 2023.
• Council, Transparency and targeting of political advertising: EU co-legislators strike deal on new regulation, 7 November 2023.

Further Reading:

• European Parliament, EPRS, Towards new rules on transparency and targeting of political advertising, Briefing, July 2022.
• European Parliament, EPRS, Transparency and targeting of political advertising, Ex-ante impact assessment, March 2022.

Related legislative train: 

• European Democracy Action Plan
• Digital Services Act

Author: Kamil Baraník, Members' Research Service, legislative-train@europarl.europa.eu