Welcome to Disinfo Bulletin, your daily update from the EDMO network. Today's most relevant stories: 

🪖🇪🇺 Surge of anti-Ukrainian disinformation ahead of EU Parliament Elections. With the European Parliament elections on the horizon and the support for Ukraine being one of the key issues at stake, disinformation campaigns pushed by pro-Russian actors are intensifying, fact-checkers and experts from different countries warn. Using false stories, these efforts seek to portray Ukrainian refugees as criminals or unfairly privileged over local citizens and falsely accuse Ukrainian officials of misappropriating Western aid, two of the most common pro-Russia disinformation narratives. Spreading these false stories – experts warn – appears to be strategically designed to erode EU support for Ukraine and bolster far-right and nationalist parties, leveraging on anti-immigration and anti-EU sentiment. This kind of false stories circulated in: DE, CZ, HU, IT, ES, EL, NL, BG, AT, and other EU countries.

🕋 The false stories that Muslims protested against Holy Week. A well-known disinformation narrative depicting migrants as opposed to the Western way of living resurfaced in the context of the just passed Easter holidays. Stories circulated that Muslims had taken their host country to the European Court of Human Rights to have Holy Week declared offensive, or that Muslim worshippers had protested against Christians over Easter weekend in Sweden. These false stories circulated in: ES, SE.


🧻 The false story that the EU is considering banning toilet paper. According to unfounded claims circulated on the internet, European institutions would be banning toilet paper in the name of climate change. Since toilet paper should be climate unfriendly – false content says – EU institutions would be planning to make it forbidden in the European Union. This false narrative has been circulating since August 2023, but it seems to be recirculated as the EU elections loom. This content was detected in recent months in: PL, SK, RO.

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