Macron wants EU agency to stop election-meddling

Bloomberg

With the European Union heading into a series of critical elections, French leader Emmanuel Macron sounded the alarm about foreign interference and called for the formation of an EU-wide body to protect voting from “cyber-attacks and manipulations.”
The creation of such an agency to counter fake news is the first proposal of its kind and came in a 1,600-word essay translated into 22 languages and to be published as an op-ed in newspapers in each of the EU’s 28 members from the UK’s The Guardian to Madrid’s El Pais. Macron’s advisers said capitals had been alerted about the coming article.
In the op-ed, Macron doubled down on his vision for bloc as an ever-closer union that includes a climate bank to fund energy transition, and a regulator for Internet platforms to force greater transparency for their algorithms.
“In this spirit of independence, we should also outlaw the financing of European political parties by foreign powers,” he went on to say. “We should ban from the Internet, with European rules, all hate and violent speech, for the respect of the individual is the foundation of our civilization and dignity.”
Macron wants to rally parties that still believe in greater European integration ahead of the late May EU parliament elections, which will be held in the shadow of the UK’s departure and and a spirit of nationalism gripping several countries across the EU, from founding members like Italy to relative newcomers like Slovakia.