EU Political Ad Rules Leave Elections Open to Foreign Manipulation

Liz Carolan is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

New research on Cyprus's parliamentary election identifies serious vulnerabilities in Europe’s new political advertising regulatory framework ahead of crucial elections in France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

According to the research by MedDMO — Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory — major technology companies, including Meta and TikTok, repeatedly sold political advertisements to election candidates and anonymous third parties in the European Union despite saying they had banned the practice. Many of these ads were purchased through candidates' official accounts in the weeks before the election. Others were anonymous campaigns that spread false claims about opinion polls in the days immediately prior to voting day, a practice prohibited under Cypriot electoral law. These findings raise questions about companies’ compliance with the Digital Services Act and the new Transparency and Targeting of Political Ads (TTPA) regulation. Researchers fear that the gaps could allow foreign actors to exploit the systems to influence elections in Europe, which next year will include votes in France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

Meta and Google announced last year that they would each be banning the purchase of political ads on their platforms in the EU. These bans came in response to the TTPA, a new regulation mandating that platforms label political ads, maintain archives of them, and provide information on spending and targeting. It took effect last October, nearly a decade after the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election intensified scrutiny of political advertising on social media.

However, new research by Cypriot academics found that the platforms are not consistently enforcing their own policies and that election-related advertising continues to be sold in Europe. Speaking to Tech Policy Press, author of the research, Michael Sirivianos and Andreas Andreou, said that despite these announced bans, political ads “are not yet a well policed environment” and that detection mechanisms “are not there yet.”

The researchers used machine learning tools to monitor the commercial ad libraries and APIs of three platforms, Meta, Google and TikTok, searching for ads containing the names of the candidates and parties, and starting at the commencement date of the TTPA. The researchers were not able to access the required data from X.

Their analysis was based on the official list of candidates for Cyprus' 2026 parliamentary election, which included 753 candidates representing political parties across the country.

The researcher found that Meta platforms allowed at least 2,457 ads to pass internal checks and be pushed to voters. Many of these ads were purchased by candidates' official accounts in the weeks before an election in which they were participating. Candidates who had already had ads found to be in violation of the rules were allowed to continue posting ads unimpeded, including one case where a candidate continued to run ads after having received 19 violations.

Researchers also identified five anonymous campaigns spreading falsehoods about candidates and about polling to voters in the days before the election. Cypriot electoral law prohibits campaigning in the days before polling stations open, and bans the publishing of any polling in the seven days before a campaign.

A structural problem that MedDMO identified was that enforcement on Meta appeared to be at the level of the content, not the identity of the advertiser. Ad purchasers were asked if they were running a political ad, but no checks were made to see if the advertiser was a political candidate. Google takes a different approach, verifying at the level of the account, with the researchers finding that “Google's identity-verification requirements substantially constrained political-advertiser entry.” They identified only one advertiser that violated Google's political advertising ban, running 15 ads that were categorized as "Arts & Entertainment" or "Jobs & Education."

TikTok has had a global moratorium on the sale of political ads on its platform since 2019, though concerns have been raised about its effectiveness. The European Commission has opened official proceedings against TikTok for failing to adequately enforce this ban, driven in part by a scandal that saw Romania cancel its most recent presidential election due to concerns over manipulation via paid campaigns on TikTok.

The researchers' review of TikTok’s API found that the moratorium was not being fully enforced in the Cypriot election. They identified 887 political advertisements from 67 advertisers spanning all 15 registered parties.

The capacity of platforms to identify and remove policy-breaking ads was a particular concern in Cyprus. The research found that just a single removal occurred on TikTok during the first 220 days post-TTPA implementation (up to May 16th). On Meta, less than 1% of the ads identified during the election were removed while they were active.

Instead, a pattern emerged of ads being taken down following MedDMO’s interactions with the companies about these ads via an EU coordination mechanism. The researchers noted in their report that in the 30 hours following their meeting with Meta, “687 takedown notices appeared,” which was “172 times the prior single-day record.” On TikTok, they noted that “631 removals followed within five days” of their meeting.

The findings raise questions about the extent to which adequate resources were being put into companies enforcing their own bans (a requirement under the DSA) and into compliance with the new TTPA. The MedDMO team estimated that the project took about one month each of two people’s time, which was covered partially by EU grants, by their university salaries or their own volunteer time. No platform funding was provided.

For Sirivianos and Andreou, the broader concern is that the enforcement gaps they identified could be exploited by foreign actors seeking to influence elections across Europe. As they write in their report, “non-compliance with the political advertising regulatory framework leaves an enforcement vacuum primed for Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference actors to exploit.”

Tech Policy Press contacted Meta for comment on the findings and its election enforcement efforts, but the company did not respond before publication.