On 27th May 2024, the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) in partnership with six partner organisations participating in The Electoral Integrity and Political Microtargeting: An Evidence-Based Analysis in Six EU Member States project issued an open letter addressed to Google (Alphabet) and the European Commission concerning Google's compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Our open letter concerns Google's advertisement repository, which the undersigned signatories find insufficient at capturing political advertisements. This is because Google's definition of election adverts, which only covers adverts featuring a politician, candidate, political party, or referendum, is inadequate. Meanwhile, the incoming Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) defines political adverts far more broadly, covering not only political actors but also adverts "liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level."

Google's own policies are far from reasonable, proportionate or effective

We take issue with Google's narrower definition because Article 3 of the TTPA, which defines "political advertising" is already in effect. Additionally, the Commission's Guidelines for Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes under the DSA, recommend that platforms maintain a publicly searchable political ad repository and align their policies with the TTPA in advance of its entry to force. Whilst these guidelines are only suggestions for compliance, large platforms and search engines that choose not to follow the guidelines must demonstrate that their policies are reasonable, proportionate and effective. According to our analysis, it is highly unlikely that Google could meet this standard.

We find that narrowing the definition of political advertising can have detrimental effects on democracy in the EU. We can point to evidence that covert and potentially illegitimate attempts to influence electoral outcomes have already occurred through Google's flawed ad repository. The Balkan Insight reported that the Hungarian government interfered in the politics of other EU Member States through online anti-immigration ad campaigns. Because those campaigns did not endorse specific political actors, they were not classified as political advertising and reached vast numbers of people.

No keyword searches allowed ...on Google

Furthermore, watchdogs and researchers are unable to efficiently monitor political discourse due to inadequacies with the general ad repository. We found that Google's general ad repository interface poses challenges for research, as it does not allow keyword searches nor filter ads based on Google services (for example, filtering to see only YouTube ads or Search ads).

In our open letter, signed by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, VoxPublic (France), the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Responsible Politics Foundation (Poland), Xnet (Spain), Who Targets Me and Liberties, we urge Google to revise its advertising policy to ensure comprehensive coverage of political advertisements. We also urge the Commission to take decisive action to address these shortcomings and enforce compliance with the relevant EU regulations.

Read our open letter here.

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