C 347/72
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
9.9.2022
Wednesday 9 March 2022
CB. whereas trying to instrumentalise vulnerable groups, including the national minorities and diaspora living on EU soil, represents an important element of foreign interference strategies;
CC. whereas different state actors, such as the Russian, Chinese and, to a lesser degree, Turkish Governments, have been attempting to increase their influence by setting up and using cultural, educational (e.g. through grants and scholarships) and religious institutes across Member States, in a strategic effort to destabilise European democracy and expand control over Eastern and Central Europe; whereas the alleged difficult situation of its national minority has been used in the past by Russia as an excuse for direct intervention in third countries;
CD. whereas there is evidence of Russian interference and online information manipulation in many liberal democracies around the world, including but not limited to the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential elections in France and the US, and practical support of extremist, populist, anti-European parties and certain other parties and individuals across Europe, including but not limited to France, Germany, Italy and Austria; whereas more support for research and education is needed to be able to understand the exact influence of foreign interference on specific events, such as Brexit and the election of President Trump in 2016;
CE. whereas Russian state-controlled Sputnik and RT networks that are based in the West, combined with Western media and fully or partially owned by Russian and Chinese legal and individual entities actively engage in disinformation activities against liberal democracies; whereas Russia is resorting to historical revisionism, seeking to rewrite the history of Soviet crimes and promoting Soviet nostalgia among the susceptible population in Central and Eastern Europe; whereas for national broadcasters in Central and Eastern Europe it is difficult to compete with Russian-language TV content funded by the Russian Government; whereas there is a risk of unbalanced cooperation between Chinese and foreign media, taking into account that Chinese media are the voice of the Chinese Communist Party at home and abroad;
CF. whereas more than 500 Confucius centres have been opened around the world, including around 200 in Europe, and Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms are used by China as a tool of interference within the EU; whereas academic freedom is severely restricted in Confucius Institutes; whereas universities and educational programmes are the target of massive foreign funding, notably from China or Qatar, such as the Fudan University campus in Budapest;
CG. whereas the EU is currently lacking the necessary toolbox to address elite capture and counter the establishment of channels of influence, including within EU institutions; whereas situational awareness capabilities and counterintelligence instruments remain scarce at EU level, with a high degree of reliance on national actors’ willingness to share information;
Deterrence, attribution and collective countermeasures, including sanctions
CH. whereas the EU and its Member States do not currently have a specific regime of sanctions related to foreign interference and disinformation campaigns orchestrated by foreign state actors, meaning that these actors can safely assume that their destabilisation campaigns against the EU will meet with no consequences;
CI. whereas ensuring clear attribution of disinformation and propaganda attacks, including publicly naming the perpetrators, their sponsors and the goals they seek to achieve, as well as measuring the effects of these attacks on the targeted audience, are the first steps towards effectively defending against such actions;
CJ. whereas the EU should strengthen its deterrence tools and tools for attributing such attacks and categorising their nature as violating or not violating international law, with a view to establishing an effective sanctions regime so that malicious foreign actors have to pay the costs of their decisions and bear the consequences; whereas targeting individuals might not be sufficient; whereas other tools, such as trade measures, could be used to protect European democratic processes against state-sponsored hybrid attacks; whereas deterrence measures must be applied transparently with all due guarantees; whereas hybrid attacks are calibrated so that they deliberately fall below the threshold of Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty;