The following article provides an overview of the risks of disinformation in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections. The aim of the article was to identify possible solutions to combat disinformation online. At the European Union level, it was realised that disinformation had been present on a larger scale since 2014, so steps were already taken in 2015 to counter it. From 2015 to 2019, tools to fight it were developed like the General Data Protection Regulation, the Code of Practice on Disinformation and the Action Plan against Disinformation. According to experts, the 2019 EP elections went without major incidents and the effect of the adopted regulations was satisfactory, despite inaccuracies in the transparency of advertisements and scant cooperation between online platforms and research centres. However, the EU and the work did not stop there. The EU authorities began to analyse the existing tools, as well as analysing further cases of emerging disinformation. After 2019, the approach of the EU authorities has changed. It was necessary to find out a certain legal framework that would define fake news, disinformation and the activities of online platforms. Briefly, the EU’s actions can be characterised: from alerting, over cooperation with the media, researchers and fact-checkers, to the definition of legal acts for digital services. Work on disinformation has intensified. It is likely that further work on normalising the phenomenon will follow in the coming years.
