Council of Europe: new guidelines addressing the risks of digital political campaigning

The Council of Europe issued a set of guidelines to address new challenges that come along with the dynamic development of innovative digital political communication techniques.

According to the Council of Europe, there is an urgent need to create tools that will keep digital electoral processes fair and lawful and democratic processes unthreatened. Nowadays, political advertising often takes place online. Thereby, we have to deal with new risks such as abusive use of microtargeting, personal data, bots and algorithms or disinformation campaigns.

The guidelines, adopted by the Committee of Ministers in a Recommendation on electoral communication and media coverage of election campaigns, establish a number of principles to guarantee the legality, equality and transparency of online electoral communication and terms of competition. The guidelines address six issues: governance; political advertising online; transparency of campaign support, financing and electoral spending; transparency and accountability relating to the use of algorithms, content curation, content moderation and handling of problematic accounts; privacy, consent and microtargeting; and media and election campaigns.

Regarding the governance of the online election campaigning, the recommendation calls for a co-regulatory approach, which means that states, online platforms and civil society organisations should collaborate in order to create common solutions, mechanisms and a proper framework of sanctions for non-compliance. Regarding the transparency of political and electoral advertising online, the recommendation requires placing disclosure obligations, the clear identification of campaigners and the archiving of the advertisements placed or distributed online. Another recommendation concerns the need to establish safeguards against the intentional spread of electoral disinformation while ensuring that any restrictions of content are carried out in a transparent, proportionate and non-discriminatory manner.

Last update

20/4/2022