Information Manipulation in Europe

This paper examines information manipulation and disinformation as tools of political destabilisation in Europe by comparing the pre-WWII period and the European information environment from 2024 onwards. The comparison does not suggest that Europe is repeating the 1930s. The historical, institutional, military, technological and legal conditions are different. Europe today has the European Union, NATO, developed regulatory frameworks, law-enforcement cooperation, election-monitoring systems, independent fact-checking networks and a much broader public understanding of foreign interference. Even so, the comparison is analytically useful. In both periods, information manipulation has been used to exploit social grievances, weaken confidence in democratic institutions, rely on domestic amplifiers and present democratic systems as divided, ineffective or unable to defend national interests. Recent cases in several countries, including Romania, Moldova, Germany, Georgia and/or Hungary suggest that disinformation in Europe can no longer be understood only as isolated false claims or shortterm election interference, as the pattern is more persistent: information activity is becoming technically more sophisticated, politically embedded and harder to separate from domestic debate. Four findings follow from this comparison. First, propaganda and disinformation can weaken societies before open coercion or confrontation occurs. Second, today's information environment gives such activity greater speed, scale and deniability through social media platforms, algorithmic amplification and generative artificial intelligence. Third, domestic amplification remains a critical vulnerability, because foreign-origin or foreign-aligned narratives are most effective when adopted by internal political actors. Fourth, the main challenge for Europe lies not only in the absence of legal instruments, but in uneven enforcement, limited platform transparency, attribution difficulties and inconsistent political will. The conclusion suggests that information manipulation is not only a communications problem, but a democratic resilience problem and an early-warning indicator of institutional and political vulnerability.