Drastic limitation to targeted political advertising is promising

Members of the Euro­pean Parli­a­ment (EP) today adop­ted by a large majo­rity (433 + 61 – 110 absent) its posi­tion on the Regu­la­tion on the trans­pa­rency and targe­ting of poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing propo­sal. The EP has signi­fi­cantly strengt­he­ned the propo­sal and made it more ambi­ti­ous to protect demo­cra­tic proces­ses in the EU by dras­ti­cally limi­ting the use of perso­nal data to target poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing.

The Civil Liber­ties Union For Europe (Liber­ties) welco­mes the result of the vote, because the new law will require poli­ti­cal parties, online plat­forms, and agents to be more trans­pa­rent about poli­ti­cal adver­ti­se­ments, and limit the targe­ting of people both online and offline. Also, minors will be safe from targe­ted poli­ti­cal ads. Accor­ding to the adop­ted mandate for legis­la­tion, poli­ti­cal actors will only be able to use basic data to target poten­tial voters: cons­ti­tu­ency, language, or whet­her the person is a first-time voter. They can also use data that is volun­ta­rily shared with adver­ti­sers.

“This is great news and a major deve­lop­ment for all demo­cra­cies in the EU. While the Digi­tal Servi­ces Act limits targe­ted adver­ti­sing based on sensi­tive data, with the new legis­la­tion on poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing we will have addi­ti­o­nal limi­ta­ti­ons on poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing.. This deve­lop­ment will limit poli­ti­cal actors deli­ve­ring conflic­ting messa­ges to diffe­rent segments of soci­ety, which crea­tes silos and distorts demo­cra­tic proce­du­res. Limi­ta­ti­ons on poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing supports people’s right to form their poli­ti­cal opinion without inter­fe­rence, which is the precon­di­tion of fair elec­ti­ons across Europe”, said Eva Simon, senior advo­cacy offi­cer at Liber­ties.

The next phase is the trilo­gue. Liber­ties will conti­nue advo­ca­ting for maxi­mum trans­pa­rency and mini­mum targe­ting in rela­tion to poli­ti­cal adver­ti­sing.

Back­ground

In a report rele­a­sed last Septem­ber, Liber­ties and local part­ners, Lakmusz and TASZ, found evidence showing how targe­ted poli­ti­cal ads allo­wed poli­ti­cal parties to say diffe­rent things to diffe­rent segments of voters during the elec­ti­ons campaign in Hungary. For exam­ple, Prime Minis­ter Viktor Orbán targe­ted exclu­si­vely male Face­book users with discus­sion of Russi­a’s war in Ukraine (“We help! Let’s protect Hungary! We stay out of war, we help those in need!”). As the report poin­ted out, it is fully unjus­ti­fi­a­ble for a poli­ti­cian holding or aspi­ring to public office to restrict messa­ges that are of great gene­ral inter­est to a certain gender or to any other subgroup. Liber­ties has been working on this file exten­si­vely.

About Liber­ties

The Civil Liber­ties Union For Europe is a Berlin-based human and digi­tal rights orga­ni­za­tion campaig­ning with 19 member orga­ni­za­ti­ons across the EU. Liber­ties publis­hes the largest inde­pen­dent annual Rule of Law Report in the EU, as well as the Europe-wide annual Media Free­dom Report. As an EU watch­dog, Liber­ties closely follows the deve­lop­ment of the DSA, the Propo­sal on Poli­ti­cal Adver­ti­sing & Trans­pa­rency, the CSAM, the anti-SLAPP Propo­sal, the AI Act and frequently publis­hes reports on issues about privacy or survei­llance and more.