Regulatory Challenges & Gaps in Addressing Systemic Platform Abuse

This December 2025 report — the culmination of the FIMI Defenders for Election Integrity project — revisits 12 FIMI case studies through a DSA enforcement lens, assessing whether the Digital Services Act has actually produced accountability for documented platform manipulation. The findings are sobering: manipulation persisted despite platform rules, raising fundamental questions about the adequacy of the current enforcement architecture.

The report bridges civil society monitoring and regulatory accountability in a way that most counter-disinformation work does not. For practitioners working on DSA implementation, platform governance, and the civil society-regulator interface, this is the most current and most critical assessment of where the EU's regulatory architecture is falling short.