Who: The Council of the European Union (Council) and the European Parliament
Where: European Union (EU)
When: 20 March 2024
Law stated as at: 15 April 2024
What happened:
On 20 March 2024, the regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising (Regulation (EU) 2024/900) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The regulation entered into force on the twentieth day following publication, on 9 April 2024. It applies from 10 October 2025, with exceptions for article 3 and article 5(1) that apply from the date of its entry into force.
With political campaigning increasingly taking place online and across borders, the regulation was first announced as part of a package of legislative measures, titled the “Defence of Democracy Package”, by the European Commission on 25 November 2021 to reinforce democracy and protect the integrity of elections. This included plans to update the regulation of EU rules on the funding of European political parties and foundations. Two further proposals also aimed to update the directives on the electoral rights of “mobile EU citizens”.
The EU’s regulation aims to counter information manipulation and foreign interference in elections. It applies when the political advertisement is disseminated in the EU, is brought into the public domain in one or several Member States or is directed at EU citizens – irrespective of the place of establishment of the provider of political advertising services or of the place of residence or establishment of the sponsor as well as of the means used.
The main changes include:
- Clear labelling on political advertising. Political advertisements must be clearly labelled as such, allowing people to see why they were targeted, who sponsored the ad, how much they paid and which elections or referendum it refers to.
- Rules on targeting and ad delivery. The new rules allow the targeting of users only if they have given consent for their personal data to be collected. Some categories of personal data, such as ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or minors’ data, cannot be used.
- Prevention of foreign interference. There will be a ban on the provision of advertising services to third-country sponsors three months before an election or referendum.
It is worth noting that the new rules do not concern the content of political advertisements or views expressed in a personal capacity, only how the advertisements are displayed to users.
Why this matters: While the regulation in principle has a relatively limited scope across the advertising ecosystem, the new rules represent yet another example of broader EU efforts to regulate the digital world and ensure that regulations evolve with the broader societal context – in this instance, designing rule.
