(a)

to conduct a thorough analysis of the investigations showing that crucial electoral rules have been breached or circumvented, in particular the existing provisions on the transparency of campaign financing, with allegations of political spending by various legal and illegal forms of conduits and straw donors from third-country sources;

(b)

to identify possible areas which would require legislative and non-legislative actions which can result in intervention by social media platforms with the aim of labelling content shared by bots, reviewing algorithms in order to make them as transparent as possible in the factors which lead them to display, prioritise, share, de-rank, and remove content, and closing down accounts of persons engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour online or illegal activities aimed at the systematic undermining of democratic processes or at instigating hate speech, while not compromising on freedom of expression;

(c)

to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to enhance the responsibility for countering foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation, not exclusively by public authorities but also in cooperation with technology and social media companies and the private sector at large in order to raise awareness of the role, duty and responsibility that these have in countering foreign interference while not undermining freedom of expression;

(d)

to assess national actions able to provide strict restrictions on the sources of political funding, since foreign actors have found legal and illegal ways to circumvent national legislations and have offered covert support to their allies by taking out loans with foreign banks, providing in-kind things of value, through purchase and commercial agreements, through shell companies, through non-profit organisations, through citizen straw donors, through emerging technologies offering anonymity, through online advertisements, through extremist online media outlets, and through the facilitation of financial activities; to identify possible areas which would require actions regarding the funding of political parties and political campaigns;

(e)

to suggest coordinated action at EU level for tackling hybrid threats, including cyber-attacks on military and non-military targets, hack-and-leak operations targeting lawmakers, public officials, journalists, political parties and candidates, as well as cyber espionage for the purpose of corporate intellectual property theft and the theft of sensitive citizen data, since these threats can neither be addressed solely by national authorities working in isolation nor by pure self-regulation of the private sector, but require a coordinated multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach; to assess the security aspect of these threats, which can have severe political, economic and social implications for European citizens;

(f)

to investigate on the EU’s dependence on foreign technologies in critical infrastructure supply chains, including internet infrastructure, inter alia, hardware, software, applications and services, as well as on the required actions to strengthen the capabilities for countering the strategic communication of hostile third parties and to exchange information and best practice in this area; to support and encourage coordination between Member States on exchanging information, knowledge and good practices in order to counter threats and address current deficiencies;

(g)

to identify, assess and propose ways to tackle security breaches inside the EU institutions;

(h)

to counter information campaigns and strategic communication of malign third countries, including those through domestic European actors and organisations, that harm the goals of the European Union and that are created to influence European public opinion in order to make it harder to achieve an EU common position, including on CFSP and CSDP issues;

(i)

to call upon all relevant services and institutions at the level of the EU and its Member States as it may deem relevant and effective in order to fulfil its mandate;