EU REGULATION BANS FOREIGN FUNDING OF POLITICAL ADS

The European Union's (hereinafter: EU) new Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (hereinafter: TTPA) officially entered into force on 10 October 2025, establishing harmonised rules across the internal market. The TTPA represents a major systemic measure designed to address legal uncertainty, combat digital disinformation and enhance the integrity of elections and referenda within the member states. The regulation introduces comprehensive due diligence and transparency obligations for all involved parties, ranging from political actors to online advertising publishers. Crucially, the TTPA imposes a ban on foreign funding for political advertising in the three months preceding an election or referendum, directly targeting suspected external interference in European democratic processes.

New European Union Regulation Enters Into Effect

The regulation is the first EU-level legislation to address political advertising in a harmonised manner, with the aim of ensuring a high standard of transparency for both online and offline political messaging. The scope of the rules covers messages that are provided for remuneration and are designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative process.

The TTPA mandates that all political advertisements must be clearly labelled as such. This labelling must be accompanied by an easily accessible transparency notice. This notice must contain key information, including the sponsor who paid for the advertisement, the aggregated amounts paid and details on any targeting techniques used.

Providers of political advertising services and publishers are required to maintain detailed records of this information in a machine-readable format for a period of seven years. Furthermore, all online political advertisements and their associated transparency notices must be made publicly available in a European repository.

Ban On Non-EU Sponsorship

A core component of the regulation is the ban on foreign funding for political advertising during sensitive periods. In the final three months leading up to an election or referendum in the EU or a Member State, political advertising services may only be provided to a sponsor who is an EU citizen, a third-state national with the right to vote in that election or a company operating in the EU that is not controlled by a third-state entity. This measure aims to prevent non-EU actors from influencing democratic outcomes.

Restrictions On Data Use

The TTPA imposes strict conditions on the use of personal data for online political advertising. Targeting or ad-delivery techniques that involve the processing of personal data are only permitted if the data was collected directly from the data subject and explicit consent was obtained specifically for political advertising. Importantly, the regulation prohibits the use of special categories of personal data, such as data revealing political opinions or racial or ethnic origin, for profiling and targeting.

Concluding Forecast

The TTPA represents a definitive legal attempt to impose structure and accountability on the political information ecosystem, aiming to enhance the democratic process through comprehensive transparency. However, the core challenge lies in the tension between the new transparency obligations and the maintenance of individual rights, particularly when the transparency mandate extends to the granular level of individual political messages.

A key conflict arises from the necessity to establish who is behind a message and how it is disseminated. While the TTPA’s broad definition of “political advertising” is intended to combat foreign interference and manipulation, it risks encompassing a wide range of issue-based campaigns and communications from civil society organisations or individual opinion leaders. The required disclosure of sponsor identity, funding amounts and targeting parameters, while essential for collective accountability, may inadvertently lead to the over-regulation of legitimate political speech. For individuals, including political influencers or smaller civil society organisations, compliance with the stringent due diligence and disclosure requirements may constitute a substantial bureaucratic burden, potentially leading to a chilling effect on the free expression of political views. Consequently, the drive for systemic transparency, if not applied with precise differentiation between paid political campaigns and organic public discourse, presents the challenge of protecting democratic integrity without inadvertently infringing on the fundamental freedoms of opinion and expression for individual actors within the political space.