Debate: Transparency and targeting of political advertising
Date: MONDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2024
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

I can confirm what we already heard from the speakers before me: that we have achieved an agreement on a complex and innovative proposal. It sounds a little bit dry. This proposal has been one of the most complex and most difficult ones, because the more we worked on it, the more we had to cope with a totally new situation, uncharted territory – something which also contained a lot of dilemmas, not having inspiration or some proposal which might serve as a good example of how to set up the rules in this regulation, so that it can work as a very strong, let’s say, younger sister of the Digital Services Act. All that was on our table. And also I remember the trilogue – that it was one of the most exciting and interesting moments for common work with the Council and with the Parliament. I believe that the outcome is both ambitious and balanced. It establishes a harmonised, high standard of transparency for all political advertising services provided in the internal market, as well as strict and effective protection of the personal data used for the targeting and ad delivery of political advertising. It clarifies the scope of application of the regulation to cover advertising sponsored by political actors and other advertising when it is liable and designed to influence the outcome of a democratic process. And what we already heard today from Sandro, who mentioned that very important for all of us was that the law must protect the freedom of speech by providing clear exceptions for political opinion expressed in a personal capacity and journalism. The internet has to remain the space for free  But, as we all know, the freedom of speech is not the same as freedom to reach, and the agreement clearly bans the use of profiling based on sensitive personal data to target or deliver online political ads. It also strictly limits the use of other personal data to situations where the individual has provided it, and consented to its use for its purpose. I want to be shorter, so, finally, the deal guarantees the cross-border role that the European political parties and groups play within the Union in the European Parliamentary elections. This is now becoming very important, a few months before the elections. For the record, the Commission has a formal statement on the resourcing of the European repository for online political advertising, which colleagues will be aware of, and which is being sent to the Parliament’s services for inclusion in the verbatim record of this debate. Elections are coming. We will all agree that the elections must remain a festival of democracy; a competition of real people, ideas, visions, and not the competition of dirty digital methods and abused procedures. And Anna indicated it very well that this is one of our biggest values in the EU – that we still have a high chance of having free and fair elections – but we have to work in that direction. So once again, thank you and well done to the rapporteurs and his team, and your teams, for having worked closely with the Commission and successfully concluded the hard-fought negotiations. The provisional agreement resulting from interinstitutional negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council includes an obligation for the Commission to set up a European repository for online political advertising. This repository has the tasks to enable public access to online advertisements, together with the information provided by political advertising publishers via a single portal, i.e. the European repository, and to ensure that this information is stored, hosted, indexed and made available to the public through a dedicated single portal for a period of seven years. The Commission recalls that, in comparison to the initial Commission proposal ( Indeed [In particular], the provisional agreement introduces a number of tasks and obligations for the Commission which will entail a substantial increase in workload, both in the short and in the long-term i.e. beyond the current programming period. These include: - the adoption of implementing acts in areas which the Commission had not envisaged,  - the development, deployment and future maintenance and upgrades of uniform and effective IT tools for this repository, including to ensure:  - that political advertising publishers are able to access this mandatory service;  - that the public, interested entities and competent national authorities are able to access the information provided by this Repository; and  - that compliance with relevant laws is guaranteed, including during periods affecting national elections. This has a direct impact on the human resources required for the Commission services, as well as on the budget, which was not anticipated when the Commission submitted its proposal, amounting to around four to six additional FTEs at the European level and, at minimum, around EUR 1,5 million additional annual budget costs. The Commission has prepared a Legislative Financial Statement to this effect. For the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), tasks that are to be performed internally in the Commission will need to be addressed by reallocation and redeployment within the services, and financed through redeployments within the available financial envelope of existing programmes or prerogative budget lines, which would therefore be reduced so as to increase the EU contribution to an agency or other management body entrusted with the management of the Repository. Funding after 2027 cannot be prejudged and will depend on the outcome of the preparations and negotiations of the MFF post-2027. In parallel, the Commission will explore possible options to entrust the responsibility for the management and operations of the European repository for political advertisements to an agency or management body, which is a flexibility that is provided for in the provisional agreement.