The European Commission has confirmed the activation of a ‘rapid response’ mechanism to “streamline” cooperation between civil society organisations, fact-checkers and online platforms ahead of the upcoming Hungarian parliamentary election, citing fears about potential interference and disinformation campaigns.
In response to a question about how the European Commission and other platforms intend to address “the Russian disinformation campaign online”, European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said that the 44 signatories of the “rapid response system” decided to activate that mechanism this week.
“This is very good, because what does it mean? It’s a voluntary system where not only big platforms such as TikTok and Meta will cooperate together with fact checkers, civil society organisations to make sure that in the context of elections, they can quickly flag potential interference, potential disinformation campaigns.
“This rapid response system will remain active until one week after the Hungarian elections,” Mr Regnier said.
The rapid response system in question appears to be that agreed upon by signatories of the European Union’s “voluntary” Code of Conduct on Disinformation, which was integrated into the Digital Services Act (DSA) earlier this year.
According to the European Commission, the Code of Conduct “aims to combat disinformation risks while fully upholding the freedom of speech and enhancing transparency” under the DSA.
The 44 signatories to the Code of Conduct include online platforms; advertising-related organisations; ‘fact-checking’ organisations; civil society organisations; research and other organisations.
Google, Meta and Tiktok are among its largest and most influential signatories, alongside organisations like the European Factchecking Standards Network, Reporters without Borders, Alliance4Europe, the Global Disinformation Index and Democracy Reporting International among others.
The European ‘Transparency Centre’ describes the rapid response system, which was first piloted during the 2024 European elections, as:
“…a time-bound dedicated framework of cooperation and communication among relevant signatories, which allows non-platform signatories to swiftly report time-sensitive content, accounts, or trends that they deem to present threats to the integrity of the electoral process and discuss them with the platforms in light of their respective policies.”
Put simply, the mechanism enables fact-checking and civil society organisations to flag content and/or trends that they deem to be “threats” to electoral integrity with major online platforms such as Google, Meta and TikTok, that they might be dealt with according to their “respective policies”.
Information integrity fears have played a central role in the run up to the April 12 Hungarian parliamentary election, with Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar and European observers expressing concern about Russian campaigns to affect the outcome of the vote.
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the Kremlin had allegedly launched a covert “disinformation campaign” aimed at seeing incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán re-elected next month.
Meanwhile, Mr Orbán has frequently stated that Brussels is attempting to influence Hungarian democracy in a direction more favourable to it, a worry stoked by the growth and development of extensive European content moderation rules and practices that critics describe as censorious and politically motivated.
Those criticisms gained additional fuel earlier this year when the House Judiciary Committee released a report that made the case that European content moderation activity was politically motivated, and had already been leveraged to affect political outcomes in numerous European countries, including Ireland.
The heated 2024 Romanian Presidential Election received prominent focus in that report, an election which featured similar dynamics as the upcoming Hungarian parliamentary election, including allegations of Russian interference operations and political interference from the European Commission.
According to the House Judiciary Committee report, documents it received in the course of its investigations undercut the claim that Russia had interfered in the election – despite the fact that they had formed the basis of the justification for annulling the results of the first round of the election, won by populist candidate Calin Georgescu.
Under the DSA, of which the Code of Conduct is now a part, there are a number of provisions intended to enable large-scale, rapid coordination between the Commission, CSOs, fact-checking organisations and major online platforms in the event of serious crises.
Such crises, in the view of the European Commission, are deemed to have occurred “where extraordinary circumstances lead to a serious threat to public security or public health in the Union or in significant parts of it”.
Examples of such include wars or terror attacks, public health emergencies, but could also include such things as major, extensive ‘disinformation’ campaigns.