The EU regulation of digital campaigning and its effectiveness

How does the European Union handle the regulation of digital electoral campaigning? This paper assesses the effectiveness of EU soft governance concerning digital campaigning and the democratic challenges associated with it. It tests whether an EU integrated approach or a country approach is more efficient towards dealing with the challenges of non-transparency and fake news. It examines whether the global digital platforms involved in the process are more responsive to single countries than to the EU. In doing so, it analyses the EU regulation and its specific policy instruments and the response of global digital companies. Finally, the paper will be able to ascertain whether the EU governance has a positive impact on the governance of digital platforms.