2025: Meet the Future of AI
Support for the European Democracy Shield

02 December 2025 | 14:00 - 18:00 CET | Euregio, Representation of the European Region Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino

In an era of rapid technological advancement and rising geopolitical tension, protecting Europe’s democratic processes has never been more urgent. The “Support for the European Democracy Shield” event brings together leading policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to explore how innovative AI solutions, cross-sector collaboration, and effective policy frameworks can strengthen democratic resilience against online disinformation.

This event will showcase how European research and innovation are driving forward new capabilities to detect, assess, and counter disinformation — particularly in the age of generative AI and large-scale digital manipulation.

Sessions Overview

1. Policy context: The European Democracy Shield

Evolving EU initiatives (e.g., European Centre for Situational Awareness) and how research projects can contribute actionable insights.

2. Disinformation, Elections & Democracy: Insights from EU and Eastern Europe

A roundtable highlighting the regional challenges and insights from recent election cycles, featuring perspectives from policymakers, media experts, and researchers.

3. AI and Disinformation: Tools, Evaluations, and Regulation

Demonstrations of project outputs from AI4TRUST, AI-CODE, AI4DEBUNK, and ELLIOT showcasing the latest AI-driven solutions and frameworks for detecting, assessing, and countering disinformation.

Get Involved

Speakers and participants are invited to contribute through short talks, panel discussions, and interactive exchanges. Together, we will shape the future of trustworthy AI and resilient democracy in Europe.

Co‑organised by the Horizon Europe projects:

AI4TRUST
AI-CODE
AI4Debunk
TITAN
VeraAI
ELLIOT

With the support of:

EU Disinfo Lab
EDMO

Our Cluster projects

AI4Trust

AI4Trust (in full: "AI-based-technologies for trustworthy solutions against disinformation") is co-ordinated by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy. It aims to provide a hybrid system in which machines cooperate with humans, relying on advanced AI solutions against advanced disinformation techniques to support media professionals and policy makers.

AI-Code

The main goal of the AI-CODE project is to evolve state-of-the-art research results (tools, technologies, and know-how) from the past and ongoing EU-funded research projects focused on disinformation to a novel ecosystem of services that will proactively support media professionals in trusted information production through AI

AI4Debunk

AI4Debunk aims to revolutionize the fight against disinformation and support trustworthy online activity. Through the development of AI-powered human-centered tools, this EU project is committed to safeguarding democratic values and fostering a more informed and resilient society in response to the challenges posed by the digital age.

Vera ai

Vera.ai is developing trustworthy AI solutions in the fight against disinformation. These are to be co-created in close collaboration between leading technology experts in the domain and prospective future users–all brought together in via a co-creation approach. The expected solutions will deal with different content types (audio, video, images, and text) and do so across a variety of languages.

ELLIOT

ELLIOT is a pioneering Horizon Europe project aiming to develop advanced AI technologies capable of robust generalisation and seamless integration across multiple data modalities. The project aspires to develop more than a typical LLM but rather to develop a new generation of Foundational Models that combine multiple modalities and have a wide range of applications.

AI4Media

AI4Media aims to become a Centre of Excellence for AI-related matters in the media sector, also bringing together various actors in the field such as academia and industry.

Of particular interest: AI4Media’s work on including ethical and trustworthy aspects in AI development and deployment.

DG CNECT

The Commission is tackling the spread of online disinformation and misinformation to ensure the protection of European values and democratic systems. Large-scale disinformation campaigns are a major challenge for Europe and require a coordinated response from EU countries, EU institutions, online platforms, news media and EU citizens. The Commission has developed a number of initiatives to tackle disinformation

The initiatives below are our sister projects as they are based in the same unit at the European Commission (DG CNECT).

2025: Meet the Future of AI Support for the European Democracy Shield