New EU regulation: Google switches off political ads

The US company Google has announced that it will no longer show political ads to users in the European Union (EU) next year. The company cites the EU's new transparency regulations as the reason for this. These have led to uncertainty, Google explains in a new blog post. "The European Union's upcoming regulation on transparency and targeting in political advertising (TTPA) unfortunately brings significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms," the company writes.

The new EU regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising adopted this spring is intended to prevent election interference and help voters make an informed choice. In future, EU citizens should be able to better identify political advertising as such. However, it was not enough for a broad ban on interest-based political ads at EU level.

Google, on the other hand, believes that the definition of political advertising in the regulation is too broad. This makes it difficult to reliably determine which ads in connection with local, regional or national elections in the 27 EU member states should be restricted and to what extent. The search engine group will therefore stop placing political advertising in the EU before the regulation comes into force in October 2025, according to the announcement. Furthermore, paid political advertising, insofar as it is considered political advertising within the meaning of the regulation, will no longer be permitted on YouTube in the EU. The decision will be reviewed further and more information about the exact date will be announced next year, it said.

Google has already discontinued the placement of political advertising in countries such as France, Canada and Brazil due to similar problems with the "specific implementation" of local regulations. The US company is also engaged in a trial of strength with the EU in other areas. Just yesterday, Google announced that it would remove news from European publishers from its search results on a trial basis in the dispute over EU copyright law. The test is intended to show publishers (and EU regulators) how much traffic they would lose without Google.

(akn)