Less than two months before the event of the European elections the 27 are looking for an answer to the attempts Russia’s involvementfollowing the discovery of a Moscow-funded influence network targeting the European Parliament, leading to the launch of investigations and calls for sanctions.

“We have to be much more careful, we have to cooperate much more,” European Council President Charles Michel said yesterday, Wednesday evening, after an EU summit in Brussels.

Speaking of “a very good discussion” between the leaders of the 27 member states, Michel said it was necessary to send “a clear message” that the EU “is not naive”.

Brussels has often warned of the risk of intensifying disinformation campaigns originating in Russia in the run-up to European elections, aimed at influencing the outcome of the election and undermining Western support for Ukraine.

Already at the end of March, the Czech Republic revealed that its intelligence services had detected a Russian network that was spreading pro-Russian propaganda regarding the war in Ukraine through the website Voice of Europe.

Belgium then announced that, according to its own services, MEPs had “received money” in order to convey Russia’s message. Belgian justice has launched an investigation into these suspicions.

“We must be absolutely clear: these kinds of attempts are unacceptable, we must do everything to protect our democracy,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre de Croix said before the start of the session yesterday.

In an email sent Tuesday to European leaders and officials of three key EU institutions, Crowe and his Czech counterpart Petr Fiala called for a new round of European sanctions “to counter Russia’s malign actions.”

“It is clear that the Russian regime is trying to influence the European elections and strengthen the pro-Russian discourse in the next Parliament,” the two leaders wrote.

“We simply cannot allow Russia to go unpunished after such a blatant attack on our institutions and democratic values,” they added. “We need to arm ourselves against this, both at national and European level,” concluded de Croo and Fiala.

Intense pre-election period

The two prime ministers also asked the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) to launch an investigation into these interventions.

The President of the European Parliament Roberta Metzola also expressed its concerns to the leaders of the 27 member countries. “We are entering a particularly intense pre-election period and we must be careful,” he warned, assuring that the European Parliament “is ready to support member countries in their fight against any malicious interference.”

Voice of Europe, which is at the center of the case, is based in Prague. Now the Czech authorities have closed it down, but until recently it was broadcasting articles very critical of the aid provided by the West to Ukraine, mainly giving voice to far-right politicians in Europe.

In addition, according to German and Czech media, Voice of Europe helped finance candidates in the European elections considered acceptable by Moscow from six countries: Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, these amounts amount to “many hundreds of thousands of euros”.

The Czech Republic has already blacklisted a businessman close to the Kremlin, Viktor Medvedchuk, as well as a media personality, Artem Marchevsky, believed to be involved in the network’s activities.