European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and the Rule-of-Law Michael McGrath, has said that threats to democracy have become "more common, more acute and more complex".
Mr McGrath was speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum, an annual conference on transatlantic and Central and Eastern Europe defence issues, and took part in a panel focusing on strengthening democracy in the European Union.
"The threats (to democracy) are becoming more apparent. I think they're becoming more common, more acute and more complex," said Mr McGrath.
He said that investment in digital literacy, media literacy, fact-checking and supporting local democracy initiatives were important to deal with the threat of misinformation.
Mr McGrath will announce details of the Commission’s 'European Democracy Shield’ in November, a project proposed last year by European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen to combat "foreign information manipulation and interference", also known as FIMI.
The ‘democracy shield’ will also work to safeguard the integrity of elections across the bloc, and protect the work of independent media and journalists through the terms of the European Media Freedom Act, which came into force last month.
The new legislation aims to safeguard public service media, editorial independence, and to also ensure transparency around the allocation of state advertising in budgets.
"When I think about civil society, I think about media, and then we get into the area of FIMI and disinformation," said Mr McGrath.
"We need to learn the lessons of best practice from member states, but we need to build an EU-wide system that will involve de-bunking, fact-checking and to detect interference early, and have a system where we can respond quickly so that people have access to accurate information when they go to the polls to exercise their franchise.
"That is fundamentally what the objective is here."
'New type of war'
Earlier, the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk said that the current confrontation between Europe and Russia is a "new type of war".
Mr Tusk was speaking this morning at the opening of the Warsaw Security Forum.
"Today, we are wiser in our thinking about safety and security. We understand more what a real threat is in the 21st century," said Mr Tusk.
"It is war. The biggest and most important task for European leaders today is to make Western societies aware that this is war. We didn't want it. It’s a new type of war. But this is war."
This year’s conference is being attended by Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, a number of European defence ministers, as well as top military brass from European armed forces.
The representation of so many high-level officials from European governments comes less than three weeks after Poland said Russian drones violated its territory, and 10 days after Estonia said three Russian fighter jets had violated its airspace.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Mr Tusk said: "This war is also our war. We often hear here in Warsaw and any other places in the world, 'it’s not our war'.
"We need to realise it’s not about loving Ukraine. It’s not about good or bad experiences that involve Ukraine. It’s a question about security."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke via online video link to conference attendees.
He began his speech with the words of the 20th century Polish writer Jerzy Giedroyc, that "there can be no free Poland, without a free Ukraine".
Mr Zelensky spent a good part of his speech congratulating Moldova’s pro-EU party, PAS, on winning yesterday’s parliamentary election.
"Russia failed to destabilise Moldova," said Mr Zelensky, a reference to accusations made by Moldovan government officials that Russia ran a disinformation campaign ahead of the election to discredit the European Union.
However, Mr Zelensky’s big ask to delegates was for European governments to work with Ukraine to build a common defence shield against Russian drone threats.
"We are ready to share our know-how and expertise," said Mr Zelensky.
"Ukraine proposes to build a reliable shield against Russian drone threats. If we act together, we will have enough."
Mr Zelensky claimed that Russia had used tankers in the Baltic Sea to launch drones in northern Europe, a reference to drone sightings near Copenhagen last week that forced airports in the region to halt flights for a number of hours.
Denmark’s government called last week's incident a "hybrid attack" but has not linked it to Moscow.
Russia has denied any involvement in last week’s drone sightings over Copenhagen and said the incident was an attempt to draw NATO countries into direct conflict with Russia.
