EU now fears US interference in European elections

andsoitis

> US Vice-President J.D. Vance urged Hungarians to vote for the outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, Hungarians voted Orbán in, but they also voted him out even with Vance influence.

ingonealan3

So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.

benrutter

As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations). I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago. The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.

protocolture

They should. Election Interference is their chief export.

elendilm

The headline makes me chuckle.

stymaar

I've been talking about how the EU was slowly turning into South America for the past 40 years, so this is just the next step in this direction.

vdsk

>now Completely unserious continent.

runtime_lens

Every major power dislikes election interference until it's strategically useful. The surprise isn't that countries try to influence each other. The surprise is that anyone still treats it as exceptional.

mono442

This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.

JKFSOM

UK Labour party had activists in the US encouraging people to vote for the Democrats in 2024. This isn't unique to the US.

Frieren

> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections. The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.

keiferski

This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms. It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree? Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies? (This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.) It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.

elric

From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer. From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse. More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...

ReptileMan

A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it

watwut

Aaaand flagged.

rsynnott

I think they would have to get a lot _better_ at it for it to be a major concern, honestly. See Vance and Orban; if anything that probably hurt Orban. Like, thus far, American attempts seem _extremely_ crude relative to Russian ones.

penguin_booze

Fear? The American circus went to Hungary to prop-up Orban. Thankfully, the people of Hungary gave the clowns an emphatic whack across the face, and kept them in their place.