Slovenia asks EU to probe alleged election interference

BRUSSELS (AFP) — Slovenia’s prime minister on Thursday asked the EU to probe alleged election interference after secretly recorded videos were aired ahead of this weekend’s parliamentary polls.

The case in Slovenia is the latest to fan fears that the rise of social media and artificial intelligence can enable outside actors to influence elections in democracies.

Prime Minister Robert Golob’s liberals are in a tight race against the conservatives of nationalist former premier Janez Jansa, whom Golob unseated four years ago.

In the weeks leading up to the election on March 22, a series of secretly recorded conversations were published, featuring a Slovenian lobbyist, a lawyer, a former minister and a manager.

The videos allegedly show the officials suggesting ways to influence decisionmakers in Golob’s center-left coalition government in order to speed up procedures or win contracts.

A Slovenian rights group, together with an investigative journalist and two researchers, on Monday claimed that an Israeli intelligence firm, Black Cube, was behind the videos and that the firm was linked to Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS).

SDS has rejected the charges, saying in a statement it had never heard about Black Cube.

Earlier this week, Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon slammed the videos as “a direct attack against our sovereignty.”

Attending an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, Golob called on the bloc to investigate the affair.

“I call on the commission to investigate the reports and to refer the matter to the European Center for Democratic Resilience for an immediate threat assessment,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Golob “was the victim of clear-cut interference” by “third countries” and misinformation.

“Today, in every election in Europe, there is interference that disrupts electoral processes,” Macron said, calling on the EU executive to come up with guidelines on how to fight the interference.

France wants the EU to require social media networks and other platforms to assess to “mitigate these systemic risks with regard both to fake accounts, illegal content, content that has been altered or generated by artificial intelligence, and political advertising,” the French presidency said in a statement.

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By Agence France-Presse