New research on Cyprus’s parliamentary election identifies serious vulnerabilities in Europe’s new political advertising regulatory framework ahead of crucial elections in France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

According to the research by MedDMO — Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory — major technology companies, including Meta and TikTok, repeatedly sold political advertisements to election candidates and anonymous third parties in the European Union despite saying they had banned the practice. Many of these ads were purchased through candidates’ official accounts in the weeks before the election. Others were anonymous campaigns that spread false claims about opinion polls in the days immediately prior to voting day, a practice prohibited under Cypriot electoral law. These findings raise questions about companies’ compliance with the Digital Services Act and the new Transparency and Targeting of Political Ads (TTPA) regulation. Researchers fear that the gaps could allow foreign actors to exploit the systems to influence elections in Europe, which next year will include votes in France, Spain, Italy and Poland.

Meta and Google announced last year that they would each be banning the purchase of political ads on their platforms in the EU. These bans came in response to the TTPA, a new regulation mandating that platforms label political ads, maintain archives of them, and provide information on spending and targeting. It took effect last October, nearly a decade after the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election intensified scrutiny of political advertising on social media.

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