News & Cases

A clear overview of the new laws and how to comply The new EU-law ‘Political Advertising Regulation’ that ensures transparency in political advertising, will be enforced on the 10th of October. In short, the regulation guarantees that political advertisement is published in full respect of fundamental rights and thus with clarity on which (personal) data and advertising techniques are used to display the ad to the viewer. Currently, ad-delivery techniques that are widely being implemented to execute ad campaigns, use personal data to determine whether or not a person should be in- or excluded from the targeted audience. It involves the frequent use of algorithms that are opaque to the majority of people in the EU, and of which the effects are often unknown. This way of targeting results in a high risk of misuse of personal data, which threatens transparency in the electoral process and fundamental rights (such as privacy, equality and freedom of expression) as well as the right to be informed in an objective, transparent and pluralistic manner. The new EU-regulation will make it easier for individuals to identify political advertisements as such, comprehend its origins and identify the sender. They will also be able to see whether or not they were directly targeted using personal data. The aim is to provide full transparency and prevent information manipulation and interference by third-country actors in national elections. The new EU-regulation in a nutshell So, what does the new EU-regulation entail? If you’d like to read the full legal outline, you can review it here . However, in this article we’ll summarize it, and explain what the new regulation means for political parties (the advertisers in this context) as well as for publishers that display political ads. Advertisers The most important change following the new EU-regulation is that political advertisements must be accompanied by a transparency label that is easily accessible to all viewers. It must be clear: that the message is a political advertisement; which organisation is the sender/advertiser (who pays for the ad?) - including their contact details; where a declaration of transparency can be found (containing more extensive information about a.o. the funding of the ad, campaign period and an explanation of the used targeting techniques); and, where applicable: what election or referendum the ad is referring to - such as a national election, municipal elections. etc.; a statement whether the ad has been subject to targeting or ad-delivery techniques. This means that a political advertiser needs to provide all required information and a transparency notice to all parties executing their advertisement campaigns and/or running their ads. On top of that, targeted political advertisement is only permitted under stern conditions. Any personal data used to target individuals must be collected from that person themselves and may only be used if the individual has given explicit consent for its use in political advertising . Targeting based on sensitive information such as political views, religion or ethnicity, is strictly forbidden and needs to be prevented at all costs.