A senior Brussels official has rejected European lawmakers’ calls for a total ban on personally targeted online political advertising, saying it could undermine the ability of parties to use internet campaigning.
Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice-president for values and transparency, said legislators should permit some microtargeting, as the technique is known, under new laws on political advertising being debated in Brussels, while requiring strict transparency.
The commissioner said she was open to a discussion on whether voters should be empowered to turn off internet political advertising entirely, while cautioning that it would be dangerous to allow them to select which advertisements they saw.
“We should enable the online space to be used for political ads; if we ban microtargeting, the marketing method will not be possible to use,” said Jourová in an interview. “I am not here to help the platforms to do business. But also I don’t think I am here to make it impossible — especially when the political parties and political actors need the online space.”
Brussels wants to regulate political parties’ ability to target their messages at individual voters based on their online behaviour and personal data, as they seek to make elections fairer and curb disinformation. Microtargeting practices featured prominently during the 2016 Brexit referendum and the US presidential election.
But with the 2024 legislative elections looming, the European parliament is seeking to go further with changes to Brussels’ draft legislation. In July, MEPs proposed a total ban on online platforms’ displaying political advertisements that are targeted on the basis of personal profiles and tracking individuals.
Paul Tang, a Socialist MEP who backs the ban on microtargeting, said: “The main question is not advertisement effectiveness but fair elections. That requires blocking the manipulation of voters . . . and equal access to information for all voters . . . transparency is not enough to secure fair elections.”
But Jourová said the commission would defend its view that some microtargeting should be allowed as long as the criteria used were clear.
She rejected arguments that citizens should be given power to decide which political ads they received online, warning that this would create greater fragmentation.
Jourová is also working on separate draft legislation aimed at boosting media freedom, looking to tackle a lack of variety of media outlets in some countries by eliminating barriers to the “establishment and operation of media services”.
The act would create safeguards related to the editorial independence of EU media, including protection of sources, rules on the transparency and fair allocation of public resources and transparency of media ownership.
The commission suffered a setback when the impact assessment on the proposal was knocked back by the EU’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board, which is seeking more evidence about the problems the rules would address.
The commissioner said she was now ready to resubmit the proposals and “dispel the doubts”, saying the board had confirmed there was a problem that the commission had the right to regulate.
The content of the legislation is being discussed but journalism organisations have said they hope the law will push for more transparency on who owns media companies and include a ban on state aid funding to control coverage.
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August 08, 2022 at 11:00AM
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