The EU’s first deepfakes election?

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By PAUL DALLISON
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HELLO. There are 27 days until June 6. This is Paul Dallison in the substitute teacher role while Eddy’s away. Today marks the 4th anniversary of Madonna mentioning me in an Instagram post. In my other role as (shameless plug!) writer of humor column Declassified, I suggested that the pop icon was joining the EU after she pledged more cash to help fight the coronavirus than several current member states. The fact this was clearly (I hope) a joke didn’t stop a respected British newspaper from writing it up as fact, and then Madonna herself spread the story on social media. Why does this matter? Well, disinformation could be a big deal in the upcoming election. Here are top tech colleagues Gian and Clothilde with more…
BRACED FOR DEEPFAKES: Are June’s European elections when the Artificial Intelligence craze will really hit the fan? Over the past months we’ve witnessed, mouth agape, the rise of generative AI: tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney can create fluent text and lifelike synthetic media of everything under the sun, including actual people. This content — informally known as “deepfakes” — is regarded as a ticking disinformation timebomb. In a nightmare scenario, malicious actors or ruthless campaigners would spread AI-generated likenesses of world leaders or politicians doing/saying something outrageous, irredeemably skewing the elections.
EU rule-makers are acting: Faced with warnings from cyber officials, the European Commission has moved forward with many plans to set some rules — many of them voluntary — for political parties, social media networks and AI firms. The European Commission’s transparency boss, Věra Jourová, got European political parties to pledge not to use deepfakes in their campaigns. Social media platforms also have to limit risks to election integrity including by identifying AI-generated content under the bloc’s new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act. 
This week, the Commission’s digital wonks presented AI firms with a list of “commitments,” including the labeling of deepfakes as such. It is not clear how many AI developers signed up to the new pledge, which tech lobbyists criticized for being at too short a notice. But it is clear that the AI-aided disinfo question is keeping Eurocrats up at night.
Is this happening? We don’t know the extent to which AI-aided influence is poised to affect the elections. “The use of AI to spread this information, generally speaking, in Europe is not huge,” said Giovanni Zagni, fact-checking director for the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). Zagni said fact-checkers covering all EU countries in the EDMO task force he chairs had dealt with only a few cases of AI-generated disinformation like fake images of farmer protests in France.
Still, a fake AI-generated recording of a candidate posted two days before the Slovak election (and, we’d add, cases in non-EU member Moldova) makes Zagni cautious. “It might very well be that one specific piece of AI-generated content reaches a very big impact in the next few weeks,” he added.
And fact-checkers will likely come in too late. “We do not have the complete certainty and the necessary tools to recognize if something is fake or not, because the labeling system is not fully in place,” he said. “Fact-checkers currently use traditional journalistic checks like reverse image search or try to contact people targeted to obtain more information, losing precious time as potential falsehoods go viral.”
We might survive the AI storm, folks. Or not. 
by Gian Volpicelli and Clothilde Goujard
Dutch youth can’t afford a house and look to the far right for answers
Ask voters who backed Dutch far-right firebrand and leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party Geert Wilders why they backed him and they’ll likely tell you it was housing.
When it comes to The Netherlands’ troubled housing market, Wilders’ proposals are “the best of all,” said Bodhi, an 18-year-old who didn’t want to give his last name, outside his vocational school in the center of Rotterdam. 
Wilders’ plan is “to build more homes and close the borders,” Bodhi said, noting that that’s “harsh — maybe a bit too harsh — but I do think we need it.”
The young student was one of many young voters who backed Wilders in The Netherlands’ November election, which saw the PVV party secure one-quarter of seats in the parliament.
First The Netherlands, then the EU? Oft dismissed as a fringe party for voters stereotyped as old, white men, a November exit poll showed that Wilders had collected votes from just about every segment of society — men and women, young and old, in cities and in the countryside.
The PVV doesn’t currently have representation in the European Parliament, as the party’s only MEP, Marcel de Graaff (that name may ring a bell) quit to join the Forum for Democracy party in 2022. But according to our Poll of Polls seat projection, Wilders’ Freedom Party could win about 10 of The Netherlands’ 31 seats in the June election. That would make it one of the strongholds of the Identity and Democracy group. (Although turnout in The Netherlands has been well below 50 percent in recent EU elections, so much depends on if voters decide to cast a ballot.)
Picking voters’ brains: In Rotterdam, the PVV party narrowly outstripped the Labor-Greens alliance to become the port city’s largest party. In a series of conversations with voters, Wilders’ backers raised housing concerns as a key reason for backing him — and they invariably tied that to the country’s accommodation for migrants.
No coincidence: In the past, Wilders’ campaign has tied immigration to homophobic harassment; this time around, for the first time, it actively connected immigration with housing, said Kristof Jacobs, an associate professor at Radboud University, who’s working on a Dutch voter analysis following the election.
The problem is real: Balakrishnan Rajagopal, U.N. special rapporteur on adequate housing, screened The Netherlands’ housing market, and earlier this year reported that both on availability and affordability, the country’s housing crisis is “acute.”
Blame game: The problem has “many structural causes” that have been several decades in the making, according to Rajagopal. But instead, “an alternative narrative has emerged … that an ‘influx of foreigners’ arriving in the country is responsible for the housing crisis,” he warned.
Rapporteur’s rebuttal: About half of the migrants moving to The Netherlands are EU citizens; just 11 percent are asylum seekers. And “rather than posing a competition to Dutch nationals when it comes to access to adequate housing, these groups mostly find themselves at the bottom of the society competing for housing which most Dutch citizens are either not eligible for or would not wish to move into,” Rajagopal said.
Except: That may not change many PVV voters’ minds, Jacobs pointed out. His research has shown that migration — not housing — is PVV voters’ real concern.
“Suppose, as a government, that you bring down migration, but you do solve the housing crisis; if that were possible. Then there’s a very good chance that these voters will be dissatisfied,” he said.
Note: Besides migration, Wilders’ voters were also likely to oppose a far-reaching climate policy and to be Euroskeptic.
Then again: Several Rotterdam people who had backed Wilders in the November election said they were undecided whether they’d vote for him again. Bodhi, for one, said he distrusted all politicians, including Wilders. But, he added: “If I don’t vote, it’s also useless. I do think I should vote for something.”
by Hanne Cokelaere
Hanne’s full story will be published next week.
According to a survey Ipsos carried out for Dutch news outlet NOS on election day, the voter base of Geert Wilders’ PVV party closely reflected Dutch society, with similar age and gender breakdowns.
The data suggests that The Netherlands’ oldest voters were actually less likely to support Wilders’ party, favoring parties such as the liberal-conservative VVD and the Labor-Greens alliance (PVDA/GL). The center-right VVD’s voter base appeared to be more male than the PVV’s.
Breakdown of Dutch parties’ voter base by age and gender, compared with Dutch voters as a whole.
Seat projection per political group between January 2022 and May 2024.
Ukraine trip: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola celebrated Europe Day in Ukraine, meeting with its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and addressing the Verkhovna Rada on Thursday.
VDL on TV: Ursula von der Leyen will be interviewed on Italian TV on Sunday evening.
NEXT HEALTH COMMISSIONER ON THE ROPES? Members of the European Parliament’s health committee have questioned the nomination of Maltese Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne for the post of European commissioner after it emerged he will face criminal charges (fraud and misappropriation) in connection with a deal for three hospitals.
Fearne, who has denied wrongdoing, was considered a frontrunner to replace Stella Kyriakides as health commissioner after the EU election. But to make it into the College of Commissioners, Fearne would need to be approved by parliamentary committees (the environment and health committees if he was indeed nominated as health commissioner) and the Council. Here’s more from our health team.
CAMPAIGN TRAIL VIOLENCE: The leaders of the S&D, Renew, Greens and Left groups in the Parliament this week warned that the escalating number of attacks by the far right on politicians, activists and journalists have brought us to a “crucial moment in the history of our European project.” 
In a declaration responding to a series of violent incidents, the groups say: “Once more the far right is attempting to bring back the darkest pages of our history.”
Reminder: Last week, German Socialist MEP Matthias Ecke was seriously assaulted on the campaign trail. Days later, Berlin’s Senator for Economic Affairs Franziska Giffey, from the Social Democratic Party, was injured in an attack in a library in the German capital. Giffey was hit over the head by a man wielding a bag “filled with hard contents,” according to police, and briefly taken to hospital for treatment.
The European Parliament groups say they’re determined to resist a rightward surge: “We will never cooperate nor form a coalition with the far right and radical parties at any level,” says the declaration from the centrist and left-wing MEPs.
The EPP’s position: However, after a day of negotiations on the text, the EPP said it would not back the declaration because, it claimed, the S&D was using the violent attacks for political campaigning. 
SPEAKING OF DEALS WITH THE FAR RIGHT: Ursula von der Leyen clarified her remarks about possible alliances with hard-right parties made during last month’s election debate, when she was heavily criticized for leaving the door open to governing with the European Conservatives and Reformists group after the EU election. In a post on X, the Commission president said the basis for any coalition was “crystal clear.” It is: “Clear commitment to the rule of law. Clear commitment to Ukraine. Clear commitment to our Europe.”
POLITICO’s Leyla Aksu has made another playlist of songs to get you in the mood for the election. This week’s has some top tunes from The Netherlands. Here it is. Enjoy.
MEP trivia: This week … as it’s Eurovision time let’s focus on music and ask ‘who’s the most famous musician to have appeared in front of the European Parliament’? And remember, we may have differing definitions of the word’ famous’.
Last week, we asked you if any MEPs have a longer name than Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (28 characters).
Congratulations to Hortense Dumont De Chassart, who flagged that Spanish MEPs Cristina Maestre Martín de Almagro and José Manuel García-Margallo y Marfil both have 30 characters (minus hyphens) in their names. García-Margallo was a popular choice, with José María Arroyo Nieto and Richard Corbett also pointing out his long name. But in a shock move, Spain was not the winner! Flowers to Cristian Voicu, who pointed out that German Volt MEP Damian Hieronymus Johannes Freiherr von Boeselage has a whopping 44 characters in his name.
Speaking of quizzes… It’s Friday and that means POLITICO’s very own news quiz is out! The quiz tests your knowledge of European and EU bubble news. Take the quiz here.
Casual reminder: We’re also on WhatsApp! Follow our account here to stay up to date on the latest European election news in between Playbook editions.
Send in your campaign posters! Eddy’s building an online collection of EU election campaign posters around the Continent. Please send him your posters if you spot some on your travels.
Current election excitement level: Very much a calm-before-the-storm vibe going on.
Last word: “I would relish being involved. I hope they don’t just roll me out for some small appearance!” Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, who hosted Eurovision in Ireland in 1994 and is now running to be an MEP for Fianna Fáil, said she’d be up for hosting if Bambie Thug wins this year’s contest.
THANKS TO: Hanne Cokelaere, Rory O’Neill and Jakob Hanke Vela.
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