European countries’ flags fly at the European Parliament on April 23, 2024, in Strasbourg. The European election will take place on June 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

France has urged social media platforms to increase monitoring of disinformation online in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, a Minister said on April 24.

Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister for Europe at the Foreign Ministry, said two elements could possibly upset the poll on June 9: a high rate of abstentions and foreign interference.

His warning comes as French officials have repeatedly cautioned over the risk of disinformation — especially from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine — interfering with the polls.

To fight absenteeism, France is launching a vast media campaign to encourage its citizens to get out and vote.

As for disinformation, a new government agency mandated to detect disinformation called VIGINUM is on high alert, Mr. Barrot said.

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The junior Minister said he had urged the European Commission to help ensure social media platforms “require the greatest vigilance during the campaign period, the electoral silence period and on the day of the vote”.

He added he would be summoning representatives of top platforms in the coming days “so that they can present their action plan in France… to monitor and regulate” content.

VIGINUM head Marc-Antoine Brillant said disinformation had become common during elections.

“Since the mid-2010s, not a single major poll in a liberal democracy has been spared” attempts to manipulate results, he said.

“The year 2024 is a very particular one… with two major conflicts ongoing in Ukraine and Gaza which, by their nature, generate a huge amount of discussion and noise on social media” and with France hosting the Olympics from July, he said.

All this makes the European elections “particularly attractive for foreign actors and the manipulation of information,” he said.

Mr. Barrot mentioned the example of Slovakia, where September parliamentary elections were “gravely disturbed during the electoral silence period by the dissemination of a fake audio recording” targeting a pro-EU candidate.

A populist party that was critical of the European Union and NATO won and has since stopped military aid to Ukraine to fight off Russian forces.

Image used for representational purpose only.
| Photo Credit: AP

When Herve found out he had glioblastoma — the most aggressive form of brain cancer — at the age of 40, he made a deal with himself.

“I said to myself: it is serious, but you are at war — and you’re going to win,” the French teacher, who did not want to give his surname, said.

Eight years later, following surgery to remove the tumour, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Herve is still winning his war.

He is just one of the thousands of people across the world to have survived an extremely deadly cancer for which there is no known cure.

“We call them outliers,” said Nicolas Wolikow, the CEO and co-founder of the Paris-based firm Cure51.

“For unknown reasons, when these people face an illness they take a completely different trajectory from other people,” he said.

The start-up is working on creating “the first global clinical and molecular database of exceptional survivors” of cancer, according to its website.

So far, the firm has partnered with 50 cancer centres around the world to get data from a wider variety of survivors and found 1300 patients to be part of the project.

Once the data is collected “we will begin analysing medical reports, images, tumour cells,” Mr. Wolikow said.

The ultimate goal is to create new drugs or treatments that mimic the molecular characteristics of those few who do survive these killer cancers.