OREANDA-NEWS  European Commission Deputy Head Andrus Ansip said that "convincing evidence" indicates that Russia is the main source of misinformation in Europe. He made such a statement, introducing the Commission approved the plan "counteraction to disinformation" on the eve of the elections to the European Parliament in May 2019.

According to Ansip, the East StratCom Task Force strategic communications task force, one of the main tasks of which is "countering Russian disinformation campaigns", has revealed more than 4.5 thousand cases of disinformation against the European Union.

"Since its creation in 2015, East StratCom Task Force has identified and analyzed more than 4.5 thousand cases of misinformation. There is convincing evidence pointing to Russia as the main source of disinformation in Europe," Ansip told reporters in Brussels.

The European Commission has proposed as part of the action plan to combat disinformation, in particular, to increase the budget and staff of East StratCom Task Force from 1.9 million euros in 2018 to 5 million in 2019.

The plan will be submitted for approval by the EU summit on 13-14 December in Brussels.

At a special hearing in January, MEPs called on EU Executive bodies to dramatically increase funding for the fight against Russian media. At the same time, a number of deputies said that this approach is only a search for those responsible for Europe's own problems and reflects the reluctance to admit lies in the European media, funded by the state. The European Parliament, for its part, created a special unit "to protect the reputation of the European Parliament, including responding to "fake news".

Recently, the topic of information struggle with the Russian media has become quite common in the West. In 2016, the European Parliament adopted a resolution entitled "EU Strategic communications as a counteraction to third-party propaganda". The document claimed that Russia allegedly provides financial support to opposition political parties and organizations in the EU member States. Moscow called this document the degradation of the idea of democracy in European society and parliamentarism.