Political Ad Rules Need Urgent Reform

Commentary from the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA).

Editor’s Note:
As election activity accelerates across Europe and beyond, the unintended consequences of new political transparency rules are becoming a global concern. What begins as regional policy often signals broader shifts in how platforms, agencies, and marketers must operate—particularly when major players like Google and Meta alter their advertising policies across multiple markets.

In this context, the European Union’s emerging framework for political advertising is reshaping digital reach, complicating compliance, and raising questions about how younger voters and issue-based campaigns can be effectively engaged. These themes matter to all marketers—across regions, sectors, and disciplines.

To help clarify the realities on the ground, The Internationalist is pleased to share this timely Commentary from the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA). CEO Charley Stoney and Senior Public Affairs Advisor Mónika Magyar outline the operational challenges, legal ambiguities, and the urgent need for reform across the political advertising ecosystem in the EU. Their perspective provides an essential look at how regulation and media practice now intersect—and what’s at stake for the future of informed public discourse.

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Political Ad Rules Need Urgent Reform

BY: EACA CEO Charley Stoney and EACA Senior Public Affairs Advisor Dr. Mónika Magyar

Agencies, digital media owners and voters are suffering because the EU’s Political Transparency regulations are too onerous and not clear. Charley Stoney, CEO, and Monika Magyar, Senior Public Affairs Advisor, from the European Association of Communications Agencies, explain.

Europe is entering election season, and many political parties are having to campaign with the equivalent of one hand tied behind their backs.

This autumn agencies and political parties have struggled to navigate the new rules on political transparency in Ireland, the Netherlands and Czechia as well as regional and local votes in Portugal, Latvia and Denmark among others.

Google and Meta have already announced that they’re not taking political ads as a result of the new rules, which came in during October, and many other digital media owners and agencies are also facing extremely onerous challenges.

Since its introduction, the European Commission has issued detailed Guidelines on the implementation of the Political Advertising Regulation and launched a call for a new ‘Expert Group of Providers of Political Advertising Services’.

This group will gather practical feedback from agencies, digital media owners, and platforms — underlining just how complex and unclear the rules have become in practice.

Our members tell us that digital media owners face heavier verification, labelling and repository obligations, plus ambiguous “issue-based” scope and cross-border divergence. That cocktail raises legal and operational risk, so many have restricted or paused these ad categories altogether – far more than in traditional media.

For agencies, it’s a double hit: extra compliance workflows (sponsor due diligence, multi-format disclosures, archiving and cross-border checks, for example) and a contracting digital market because some publishers won’t accept these ads.

In Denmark, the country’s media association has warned that all major social platforms and Google Ad Manager have withdrawn from political ad placements, leaving only print, radio, and outdoor as campaign options. With TV ads not allowed in the country and digital ads blocked, younger voters are effectively unreachable.

In Latvia, local digital media are abandoning political advertising, citing unrealistic compliance burdens and lack of alternative tools. As local platforms exit the space, national campaigns lose vital reach, and voters lose choice.

The end result is that it’s becoming increasingly hard to reach younger voters, because digital media advertising is disproportionately affected by the requirements of rules designed to stop political misinformation. Other losers include NGOs and smaller civic campaigns that relied on cost-effective digital reach.

When we talk to our members, we find that many are struggling, with the impact of major ad-server decisions effectively stripping out the category for a big section of the market. The scale of the potential turnover-based fines – up to 6% of global annual turnover – has led some media owners to step back from the category due to corporate risk.

Beyond this, even long-standing campaigns on issues such as animal welfare and public interest advocacy now risk being reclassified as political, so agencies and media owners must conduct legal reviews for every campaign, adding cost and slowing launches.

This is not a small issue. Millions have been spent on digital political advertising across Europe over the recent years. Forty-three million euros was spent on digital political advertising in Europe the 20 weeks leading up to the 2019 European Parliament elections, while Belgium’s most recent local, regional and national elections last year saw €15 million invested in online ads in 2024.

The goals behind the new rules are certainly laudable. The EU wants to prevent manipulation and create greater cross-border oversight of political advertising to combat foreign interference in elections and safeguard an open democratic debate across member states.

What’s wrong is the way that the rules set out to achieve this with obligations in everyone in the chain of command with a role in preparing, publishing and disseminating political ads. The rules also ban targeting and ad delivery techniques based on profiling using sensitive personal data such as racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or political opinions.

We believe that it’s possible to achieve the ambitions behind the rules without the current unclear and onerous framework. That’s why EACA is calling for the EU Commission to meet with us and immediately apply some constructive fixes.

These could include a tighter, clearer scope; harmonised disclosure templates; interoperable repository standards; proportionate verification tied to spend/scale; and clearer liability allocation along the ad chain.

The end goal for these regulations was surely not to create a new class of un-informed voters. Because without clearer rules, this autumn’s elections will be flawed with younger voters in particularly suffering from a lack of information about what political parties are actually proposing.

What’s happening now is that the ethical players are trying to comply, facing added costs and complexity, while the real target of the regulation, continue to behave as they always have with minimal oversight.

Election season is now upon us and we can’t stress how important it is for urgent action.

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