A group of deputies of the German Bundestag, representatives of three coalition political parties – Social Democratic Party (SPD), Alliance 90/The Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP), declared about a threat of Russia’s intervention in the European Parliament elections in 2024, and called to increase awareness of the German society about such a threat and to counteract it. The politicians noted that work on such countermeasures is already underway at EU level.
Uli Grötsch, the SDP parliamentarian and member of Germany’s Home Affairs Committee, said the threat of Russian interference in the 2024 elections was a threat and stressed that work was now underway at EU level to counter such interference.
“We are facing the challenge of Russian interference in our federal election in 2021, we remember well the US experience in the presidential election and we see this threat in relation to the election in 2024. We are working with other EU countries to counter Russian interference in European elections, we are working on what needs to be done to counter it,” the politician said.
Robin Wagener, a member of the German Bundestag from the Greens and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said interference in democratic processes was part of Russia’s strategy, such actions were being taken systematically and the threat of interference in European elections in 2024 posed a serious challenge.
“We are aware of the Russian Federation’s modus operandi – interference in elections and democratic processes, disinformation campaigns, attempts to destabilise Western states, all part of Kremlin strategy. We have already faced such hostile processes in the past, all this is engaged by Russia right now and certainly the threat to interfere in the European Parliament elections in 2024 is a big challenge,” the politician said.
“The Russian Federation is interfering at different levels. We see disinformation being launched on social media and then picked up by some politicians or political groups. This is unacceptable. We need to strengthen our ability to effectively counter such interference,” Robin Wagner summed up.
Marcus Faber of the FDP, a member of the Defence Committee, said there was a need to increase civil society awareness in Germany of the threat of Russian interference in European elections.
“Awareness of the threat is the first step towards resilience. I believe that in Germany, after the Russian interference in the US elections a few years ago, civil society awareness of this threat was at a very high level. Two years ago, in the German parliamentary elections, I think there was a good awareness of the threat. But nowadays, in view of global challenges like war or climate change, I think the awareness of German society maybe is not as high as it was before about the threat of Russian intervention [in the European parliamentary elections in 2024 – ed.]. But the threat is there, it is there (…)”, the politician said.
“We will raise awareness about the threat of Russian interference in elections, we will do it in Germany and we are already working on it at EU level,” summed up Markus Faber.
Earlier, Christoph Hoffmann, a Bundestag member from the FDP, stated that the Russian Federation has penetrated and exerts influence in Germany at different levels of public and political life and called for investigating such influence and “cleanse” oneself from it.
