Disinformation Affecting the EU: Tackled but Not Tamed (Special Report 09/2021)

The European Court of Auditors' 2021 Special Report on EU counter-disinformation is the most rigorous independent audit of the EU's institutional response to disinformation available in the public domain. The ECA examined the performance of the East StratCom Task Force, the Code of Practice on Disinformation, the European Democracy Action Plan, and the broader coordination architecture across the Commission, EEAS, and member states — assessing whether the EU's counter-disinformation efforts were adequately resourced, effectively organised, and producing measurable results.

The report's headline finding — 'tackled but not tamed' — captures the ECA's assessment precisely: the EU had built an institutional response, but it was systematically under-resourced relative to the threat, poorly coordinated across institutions, and unable to demonstrate concrete impact because the measurement frameworks were inadequate. The ECA identified specific accountability gaps: the Code of Practice's voluntary nature produced inconsistent platform compliance, the East StratCom Task Force operated with a fraction of the funding available to the adversaries it monitored, and the EU lacked the indicators needed to assess whether its interventions were changing anything.

For practitioners and policymakers working on EU counter-disinformation architecture, this audit report is essential for two reasons. First, it provides the most credible independent assessment of where the EU's pre-DSA, pre-EDS counter-disinformation architecture was failing — an evidence base that directly informed subsequent legislative and institutional reforms. Second, it establishes a baseline against which current efforts can be measured: the question of whether the DSA, the strengthened Code of Practice, and the European Democracy Shield have addressed the gaps the ECA identified remains the right question to ask.