A Brussels-based non-profit that has collected more than a million euros in European Union funding has formally classified the United States as a source of foreign information manipulation - a designation typically reserved for adversarial states. EU DisinfoLab made the move at its annual conference, #Disinfo2026, held October 7 and 8 in Lithuania, where panel titles openly debated how to "push back" against Washington and rebuild counter-disinformation work "without Washington."
A Label Usually Reserved for Rivals
The term at the center of the controversy, FIMI, stands for foreign information manipulation and interference - language developed within EU institutions to describe coordinated influence operations from hostile states. Applying that framework to the United States, a treaty ally and the EU's largest trading partner, marks a notable shift in how some European civil society organizations now frame the transatlantic relationship. Sessions at the conference examined alleged US influence operations in Arctic policy debates and featured speakers including a researcher from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and a former CIA officer. Another panel addressed US travel bans imposed in December 2025 on five figures associated with anti-disinformation work, describing the measures as "legal intimidation" and an "unprecedented escalation" by Washington on behalf of corporate interests resisting regulation.
Funders Quietly Step Back
Days before the event, the European External Action Service, Global Affairs Canada, and Lithuania's foreign ministry removed their logos from the conference website; printed materials reportedly had sponsor branding covered with white stickers. Lithuania said parts of the program diverged from its government's official position, while the EU offered a similar explanation, noting the framing did not align with its stated views. Yet the Guardian reported that EU funding for the conference continued despite the public distancing - a distinction that matters. Withdrawing a logo is a reputational move; withdrawing money would have been a substantive one. The gap between the two suggests discomfort with optics rather than a genuine reassessment of the group's direction.
A Pattern of Flagging and Blacklisting
EU DisinfoLab and its conference participants are not newcomers to efforts aimed at flagging accounts, websites, and individuals as threats. One affiliated researcher previously flagged tens of thousands of social media accounts as suspected political operatives, a claim that platform investigators later found largely unsupported. Other organizations linked to the conference, such as HateAid and the Global Disinformation Index, have pursued legal action against speech they characterize as harmful or have built advertiser-facing blacklists of websites. The US State Department responded to the FIMI designation by calling it counterproductive to shared transatlantic goals.
What's Actually at Stake
This dispute is less about disinformation as a concept and more about who gets to define it, and who pays for the defining. Organizations that have spent years building frameworks to label, flag, and restrict the reach of content now describe themselves as targets of a "chilling effect" when similar pressure is applied to them. The underlying tension is structural: taxpayer-funded research networks like Horizon Europe's ATHENA project were built to counter foreign interference, not to adjudicate disputes with allied governments. As funding scrutiny intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic, the episode raises a harder question for European institutions - whether continued public financing of groups engaged in overtly political framing serves the stated goal of safeguarding information integrity, or undermines public trust in it.