Sandra Kalniete elected Vice-Chair of the EP Special committee on the European Democracy Shield

MEP Sandra Kalniete has been elected Vice-Chair of a special committee to work on the European Democracy Shield initiative (Special committee on the European Democracy Shield EUDS). Its purpose is to strengthen the public's resilience to disinformation and to combat foreign manipulation of information. The initiative has been made a priority by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and its objectives are included in the European Commission's political guidelines for 2024-2029.

MEP Sandra Kalniete, EPP group: "In a context of hybrid war, information security is as important as the European Union's ability to defend itself militarily. Information manipulation and disinformation have been identified for the second year in a row as the main short-term risks in the World Economic Forum report. A new European Parliament committee will be tasked with analysing the loopholes in existing legislation that allow authoritarian regimes and dictatorships to undermine our democracy. I am pleased that in the new committee I will have the opportunity to continue the work I started in the last mandate on the fight against disinformation, for which I have produced two reports with proposals on how to prevent foreign interference in the democratic processes of the European Union."

The Special Committee was set up at the end of last year after concluding that the documents drawn up by the European Parliament had improved the overall understanding of the impact of malicious foreign interference in the democratic processes and raised awareness of the scale of the problem.

The European Commission's initiative states that the Democracy Shield aims to detect, analyse and proactively combat disinformation and information manipulation by setting up a European network of fact-checkers working in all the official languages of the EU. The initiative aims to build societal resilience by increasing digital and media literacy.