While researching the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), I came across the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF) and from there the Polish organisation Demagog. The latter has announced a fact-checking programme to ensure that the narratives of the right will not be widely believed in the election campaign:
“Key activities include real-time monitoring and verification of candidates’ statements, particularly during debates and press events, ensuring accurate information reaches the public promptly. A dedicated subpage will feature verified updates on candidates’ programs, election promises, and analyses of disinformation trends, enabling voters to access credible insights on campaign.”
Demagog also intends to “analyse election advertising, language and persuasion techniques, raising awareness of emotional and manipulative messages”. This is a clear hint that the exercise is mostly directed at the populist opposition-part PiS, as you will certainly find more “emotional and manipulative” messages with them. It is just normal that an opposition party is trying to evoke strong feelings of dissatisfaction, while governing parties tend to say, that everything is okay. Manipulation, in the sense of influencing, is the raison d’être of election campaigns.
From here on, I will use the expression “truth-checking” instead of “fact-checking”, following a lead of the Atlantic Council. They frankly admitted that only facts can be objectively right or wrong, while different people can derive competing truths from the same undisputed facts. Their study propagating truth-control was thus aptly titled ‘Whose Truth?’. Actual fact-checking is the lesser part of the typical fact-checkers’ work. Much more important and problematic is the truth-checking that they carry out by discrediting inconvenient conclusions from undisputed facts.
Demagog can hardly be considered an impartial referee. In a recent article on the website of Demagog, a quote from Prime Minister Tusk denouncing PiS MEPs as “friends of Russia”, is prominently highlighted. Demagog makes their loyalties even more explicit in a post on 6 February, in which the group links its “fact-checking” on the election campaign to a programme of the Polish government:
“With regard to the security of democratic processes in our country, the government has announced a new initiative – the “election shield”. Its implementation should help, among other things, in the fight against Russian attempts to influence, cyber attacks or disinformation. We want to strengthen this area and are therefore proposing a number of solutions to strengthen public resistance to disinformation.” (translated from Polish with deepl.com)
If Demagog was a genuine non-governmental organisation, i.e. not funded by the state or the EU, its partisan stance would not be a problem and its truth-checking execise would be a legitimate undertaking. They should be free to weigh in with their political preferences in an election campaign, unless…
Hidden funding from the EU
Demagog’s activities can be called external interference in the election campaign because they are funded by the EU Commission and because Demagog is an organisation dependent on direct and indirect EU funding.
Demagog’s project “Fact-Checking and Countering Disinformation: Poland’s 2025 Presidential Election” is funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF). EMIF is a fund for the financial support of fact-checkers in Europe, which Google has endowed with 25 million euros in 2021, presumably under pressure from the EU Commission.
EMIF is managed by the Calouste Goulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute in Florence. The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which was set up and is funded by the European Commission and also managed by the European University Institute, provides key advice on the selection of funding applications. The programme director of EMIF, Paolo Cesarini, is also the programme director of EDMO and a former high-ranking employee of the EU Commission. EDMO was set up and is financed by the EU Commission.
The funding of Demagog*s meddling in the Polish election is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other organisations founded or supported by the EU Commission through which it can distribute money. But there are also more such projects at the EMIF. For example, the Commission funding a project of the European Media Group in Poland via EDMO and EMIF which is aimed at countering EU-critical truths, “at a time when Polish euro-enthusiasm has decreased”. A focus is Ukraine and its aspirations for EU membership. The opposition PiS party in Poland is much more critical of the EU and tends to be more critical of Ukraine’s EU membership than Prime Minister Tusk’s ruling party. Partisanship in this area by the indirectly EU-funded truth-checkers can therefore – and is probably intended to – influence the outcome of the presidential elections.
Interim conclusion
The EU Commission is thus funding a Polish truth-checking organisation with the aim of influencing the Polish elections, presumably in favour of a candidate favoured by the EU Commission. This can be called covert election interference.
The role of the US and NATO
Demagog describes the geopolitical objective and methodological background of its EU-funded programme as follows:
“We will pay special attention to monitoring hostile foreign influences. We have created a new special team for Demagog, dedicated to analyzing the activities of external actors, hostile interference, disinformation and propaganda serving the interests of countries hostile to Poland. The work will be based on the DISARM method, which is internationally recognized and used, among others, by the European Union.” (translated from Polish)
The DISARM method is a system developed between 2018 and 2019 by the US military and US intelligence services in collaboration with selected scientists to analyse and combat foreign disinformation. DISARM was formerly known as AMITT and is based on the ATT&CK information security model. The latter is a development of the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute (HSSEDI). This is a public-private co-operation between mayor defense contractor MITRE and the US Department of Homeland Security.
DISARM stands for Disinformation Analysis and Risk Management. There is a ‘Disarm Red’ for cataloguing hostile influence operations and a ‘Disarm Blue’ for describing possible countermeasures. These include censorship in all shades and discrediting the sender of unwanted messages, organising advertising boycotts and even conducting own influence operations. Unlike its direct predecessor AMITT, DISARM has the particularly objectionable measures labelled “not recommended”. This presumably serves to avoid providing a target if the wrong people happen to read the relevant documents. There had been a critical report on the methods advertised by AMITT, which caused quite a stir in the US.
The DISARM classification is formally used for the exchange of data on foreign influence operations between the US and Europe and between governmental and cooperating private organisations within the US and Europe. It is important to note that in this context foreign influence operations and disinformation does not only include misinformation and propaganda disseminated by hostile foreign countries. To fall under this definition, it is sufficient for information or opinions to undermine trust in domestic authorities and thus weaken their position in the propaganda war with foreign countries, especially Russia.
The developer of DISARM, Sara Jayne Terp (aka Sara Farmer), sits on the advisory board of GADMO, the German-Austrian EDMO base. The advisory board monitors “compliance with important guidelines and principles by the project management’ of GADMO”. Terp works for the British Ministry of Defence. She developed DISARM for the US military and heads the DISARM Foundation, which is responsible for its further development, dissemination and application. NATO therefore has a watchdog at GADMO/EDMO.
Warsaw – Brussels – London – Washington
The Polish government is also cooperating directly with the NATO-EU truth complex in order to counteract the messages and election slogans of the right-wing opposition, which is categorised as Russia-friendly. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw is financing a project called Information Defense Alliance, led by the organisation Alliance4Europe. The initiative is working to coordinate efforts in monitoring and strategic communication, ostensibly to safeguard the integrity of elections and support other democracies in their fight against disinformation, ‘”with Poland at the forefront”.
As part of the project, “advanced tools” will be used to continuously monitor “disinformation campaigns”. These tools are the DISARM framework developed for the US military and NATO’s StratCom attribution framework. The aim is to promote co-operation between local and international actors, in particular by developing a joint warning system and a joint communication system. The existing network of analysts, investigative journalists, influencers and researchers is to be promoted and expanded, enabling them to exchange data in real time between themselves and with government units and to take coordinated action.
Note: Governmental and state-funded private organisations form a network with investigative journalists, using systems of information exchange developed by military and intelligence agencies. That can help to explain, how some investigative journalists repeatedly uncover supposedly highly secret information.
The local media, influencers and so-called civil society are to be mobilised to spread the right truths among the population. This is because, according to the programme description, the success of right-wing parties in the EU parliamentary elections, in France and in other countries, has made populations increasingly susceptible to disinformation. This suggests that the Polish government is using taxpayers’ money and is cooperating with the EU and NATO to fight the oppositional right-wing PiS party.
Alliance4Europe, which houses the Information Defence Alliance has itself direct links to the EU, to London and the US. Alliance4Europe is funded by the EU Commission and the EU Parliament, Pulse of Europe, the Alfred Landecker Foundation, the Mercator Foundation, the Quandt Foundation and the Post Foundation. Via the Global Cyber Alliance it also receives indirect funding from Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mastercard, Craig Newmark Foundation and others.
Alliance4Europe is the main funder, together with a small US organisation, of the DISARM Foundation. The money is coming from the Alfred Landecker Foundation and channelled via Alliance4Europe to the DISARM Foundation.
A small digression is in order to complete the picture: The Alfred Landecker Foundation is also funding other organisations of the truth complex, in particular the Digital Policy Lab (DPL) of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. From 2020 to 2023, DPL was funded by the German Foreign Ministry. In 2024, the Alfred Landecker Foundation took over funding. In the DPL, representatives of ministries and regulatory authorities of NATO countries and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance coordinate regulatory action against so-called disinformation and hate speech online.
Back to Alliance4Europe. The self-description of the alliance reads as follows:
“Alliance4Europe is operating a network to identify and defend against disinformation threats and to enable scalable collaboration with those who want to defend democracy during and post the 2024 European Parliament elections. 2024 (…) We support groups of actors to come together to cooperate. We develop the effective digital tools for impact. Then, we roll out campaigns for impact with those communities.”
Alliance4Europe offers courses to train practitioners and self-driven people to become certified DISARM analysts. Organisations can book private training courses for their employees. The organisation, with which the Polish government cooperates, thus trains (government-funded) NGOs in a system developed by the military and intelligence services for the international coordination of content control of digital media in partnership with government agencies.
Conclusion
The EU-funded organisations EDMO and Alliance4Europe use and fund a tool developed by the US military and intelligence services to monitor and moderate the content of digital media and to instruct truth-checkers to coordinate the use of this tool against inconvenient truths. EDMO (indirectly) finances Polish truth-checkers who evaluate the statements of candidates during the presidential election campaign in a one-sided manner and who work to promote the EU. The Polish Foreign Ministry is using taxpayers’ money and cooperating with Alliance4Europe to coordinate the “civil society” truth-checkers and position them against the truths of the political right. This is most likely just the tip of the iceberg of concealed election interference in Poland and Europe by the EU and NATO.
This article has been translated from the original German version.
