LAST UPDATE | 12 Nov 2025

Daragh Brophy in Brussels

THE EU HAS unveiled its new Democracy Shield, a suite of measures aimed at protecting elections and “winning the battle of influence” with Russia. 

The centrepiece proposal is the new ‘European Centre for Democratic Resilience’ which is to be headed up by Ireland’s EU Commissioner Michael McGrath.

This new body will be tasked with detecting and responding to threats posed by foreign interference and disinformation.

An independent European network of fact-checkers will also be set up to boost fact-checking capabilities – operating in all of the bloc’s official languages, the European Commission said.

The 30-page document from the EU executive setting out the plans warned that authoritarian regimes viewed democracies as a threat and were deploying “increasingly aggressive tactics, including by relying on state or non-state proxies” to weaken them.

Highlighting the threat posed by Russia, it said that Moscow had been “escalating hybrid attacks, waging a battle of influence against Europe”.

“The tactics used are reaching deep into the fabric of our societies, with potentially long-lasting impacts. By spreading deceitful narratives, sometimes including the manipulation and falsification of historical facts, they try to erode trust in democratic system.”

As an example of the risks, the Commission pointed to the first round of Romania’s presidential election in November of last year, which was annulled after allegations of Russian interference and social media promotion of a far-right outsider who unexpectedly topped the poll. 

Today, we paved the way for stronger & more resilient democracies.

🛡️The European Democracy Shield will help protect & promote our democracies.

Our democracies are only as strong as those who believe in them.

Now more than ever, we must defend them.

🔗 https://t.co/8zdRWm38Km pic.twitter.com/huIP0J3Kxr

— Michael McGrath (@EUCssrMcGrath) November 12, 2025

McGrath, whose portfolio takes in democracy, justice and the rule of law, gave a more recent example of potential election interference – the deepfake ad of Catherine Connolly shared in the final days of last month’s Irish presidential campaign.

The clip, which featured fake RTÉ presenters and manipulated footage of Connolly announcing her withdrawal from the race, went viral in the final week of the campaign. 

“They’re getting better and better all the time,” McGrath told a group of Irish reporters in Brussels last night, in advance of the announcement. 

“Unsuspecting voters could very easily fall for something like that – so you can’t deny the potential impact that the ever-improving quality of these deepfakes could have on elections within the European Union.”

EU countries won’t be obliged to sign up to McGrath’s new Centre for European Resilience, the document released today confirmed. 

The centre, it said, “will fully respect EU and national competences” and its plans will be rolled out “based on Member States’ voluntary participation, and on their input and needs for support and cooperation”. 

The centre plans to bring together expertise from governments and agencies across the EU in order to improve information sharing and boost capacities to “to monitor, detect and anticipate information manipulation and disinformation campaigns”.

Media organisations, academics and fact-checkers will be able to contribute to the centre by way of an independent stakeholder group. 

Do the measures go far enough? 

MEP Barry Andrews, a Fianna Fáil colleague of McGrath’s, said the plans were broadly welcome but that more needed to be done to protect the integrity of democracies.

Andrews highlighted in particular the lack of progress in an investigation into Elon Musk’s X platform, which is accused of breaching EU rules on content moderation. The European Commission is still progressing the probe, which was launched in December of 2023. 

🗳️ Today the EU launched its plan to defend our democracies and elections against foreign interference.

While this 'Democracy Shield' is most welcome, we need to now urgently:

▶️ Strongly enforce EU law (DSA) on illegal online content (the @X investigation is now two years… pic.twitter.com/UiMgKcwVSj

— Barry Andrews MEP (@BarryAndrewsMEP) November 12, 2025

Two major groups representing journalists and broadcasters also called on the EU to go further in ensuring citizens have access to information they can trust.

In a joint statement journalist group Reporters without Borders and the EBU, which represents public service broadcasters, described the Democracy Shield as a “first step” but said it should lead to legislation to: 

• Ensure the prominence of trustworthy general interest media on all devices (connected TVs, remote controls, voice assistants, etc.) that citizens use to access information;
• Require social media algorithms to, by default, give greater visibility to content from reliable sources instead of enabling the proliferation of disinformation and propaganda;
• Regulate AI-based services so that they meet minimum standards for media pluralism and the integrity of information.

A recent review of last month’s presidential campaign by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue noted that the account behind the deepfake RTÉ/Catherine Connolly clip also released at least two other videos which promulgated disinformation about the eventual winner of the election and the integrity of the process.

As part of its conclusions the anti-disinformation group said efforts to regulate online platforms “should focus not only on the removal of harmful content, but on reducing systemic risks created by algorithmic amplification of misinformation and hate”.