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

🇷🇺 Belgian authorities have opened an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the European Parliament. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the country's authorities had opened an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the European Parliament. According to De Croo, the investigation concerns a Russian propaganda network whose objective is apparently to favor the election of pro-Russian MEPs in the next European elections as well as to weaken EU support to Ukraine, and whose members also paid some European parliamentarians from various countries.

De Croo said the Belgian investigation was launched after Czech authorities unmasked, at the end of March, pro-Russian propaganda actions carried out by the online newspaper Voice of Europe that allegedly even paid European lawmakers to promote a pro-Russian agenda.

💶 The false story that Romania refused to introduce the Euro. After 13 years of waiting, Bulgaria and Romania partially joined the Schengen area at the end of March. In the same days, in Bulgaria, false claims spread on social media that Romania had refused to adopt the Euro. These posts spread, without any credible source, especially on Facebook, in groups with strong pro-Russian leanings, with names such as “Bulgarians for Exit from EU and NATO” or “Bulgaria and Russia brotherly nations”, undermining trust in EU integration processes and reaching over 200,000 users.

In fact, Romania, which joined the EU along with Bulgaria in 2007, is required to adopt the euro once it meets certain convergence criteria set out in the Maastricht Treaty, but it has not yet done so. This false history was detected in BG.

🤖 It's hard to spot a deepfake. Defined as the manipulation or artificial generation of audio, video, or other digital content to spread false information, a recent CEDMO survey shows that the majority of the population in the Czech Republic does not know what a deepfake is. The majority of respondents by the regional EDMO hub could not identify the generated content they were asked to evaluate, much less be prepared to identify it if seen on social media or untrustworthy news sites.


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This tool gathers material from the inputs of the EDMO fact-checking network, as well as a recently launched public database from the EFCSN network (Elections 24 Check), and the various national EDMO hubs, including community initiatives and insights from individual fact-checking organizations.