Commission opens pilot of the European register for online political advertising

On October 12, the European Commission opened the pilot version of the European register for online political advertising, designed to bring together in one place political advertisements and information about who finances them, how much they cost, and how they are targeted at the public. At this stage, use of the register is voluntary, and the official launch will be announced separately. Once fully operational, the tool should allow citizens, journalists, and researchers to track political advertising disseminated in the EU through a shared, searchable database.

On October 12, the European Commission opened the pilot version of the future European register for online political advertising, in which political advertisements disseminated in the Union may be brought together with information about the sponsor, funding, costs, and the way in which the messages were targeted at certain categories of the public. The pilot may be used voluntarily by publishers of political advertising to test the system before the official launch, the date of which will be announced separately.

The register is one of the components of the European Regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, fully applicable from October 10, 2025. The Regulation already requires political advertising to be identifiable and accompanied by transparency information, while the new infrastructure seeks to gather in one place data that may currently remain scattered across websites, platforms, and advertising service providers.

In brief

The Commission has made the pilot version of the European register for online political advertising available.

Participation is voluntary at this stage, and the official launch of the register will be announced later.

The system is designed to include information about the sponsor, the person or entity paying, costs, the origin of the funds, the dissemination period, and, when used, audience targeting.

Once fully operational, the register will have to allow searches according to multiple criteria and access to information in a format that can be processed automatically.

The Commission will discuss the implementation of the regulation with platforms, advertising providers, authorities, and other participants at an implementation dialogue scheduled for November 4.

For a citizen who encounters a political advertisement online, the Regulation seeks to make visible the relationship between the displayed message and the actors who paid for its distribution. The transparency information must allow the sponsor and, when different, the person or entity providing payment for the advertisement to be identified, together with the amounts involved and the origin of the funds. If the message uses targeting or advertising delivery techniques, information must also be provided about the intended audience and the criteria used.

Without a common access point, however, the existence of this information does not guarantee that it is easy to analyze. A campaign may run simultaneously across several services, and advertisements may appear in different formats and at different times. The European register is designed so that this information can be searched from a single portal and compared without the user having to separately reconstruct the activity of each platform.

The Regulation requires the database to allow queries according to multiple criteria and information to be available in a format that can be processed automatically. These characteristics are especially important for journalists, researchers, and organizations monitoring the financing of electoral campaigns, because a structured database can show not only who financed a particular advertisement but also broader patterns concerning spending, sponsors, or the use of targeting across multiple campaigns.

In April 2026, the Commission established the technical architecture required for the register, including a common data structure, standardized metadata, authentication mechanisms, and a common interface for the automated exchange of information. Standardization is necessary so that data originating from very different providers can be brought together and searched in the same European database.

The rules distinguish between the largest platforms and search engines and other publishers of political advertising. The major platforms, which already have obligations concerning advertising repositories under the Digital Services Act, will connect the relevant information to the European register. For other online publishers, the Regulation provides for the transmission of the advertisement and transparency information to the register within no more than 72 hours of first publication, once the register-specific obligations become applicable.

The information will have to be retained for a sufficiently long period so that public scrutiny does not disappear when a campaign ends. The Regulation establishes the availability of information concerning online advertising for seven years after the advertisement was last displayed, allowing retrospective analysis of financing and communication strategies, including after elections or referendums.

This may become important in situations where the origin of a campaign, the relationship between several sponsors, or the scale of an advertising strategy become clear only after the vote has ended. A register that preserves advertisements and associated data makes it possible for such questions to be investigated later, without the materials disappearing when the campaign closes.

The register does not, however, verify on behalf of sponsors and publishers whether all information entered is correct. The Regulation maintains responsibility for the accuracy and updating of data with the actors who publish and provide political advertising, while the competent authorities retain their supervisory and enforcement role. A database can make information more visible and easier to compare, but it does not automatically turn every statement by a sponsor into independently verified information.

Nor does the appearance of the pilot on October 12 mean that all political advertisements currently disseminated in Europe can already be found in the register. Participation at this stage is voluntary, and the Commission is using the testing period to prepare the system’s operation and its relationship with political advertising publishers before the official launch.

This distinction is important because most of the Regulation on political advertising has already applied for a year. The labeling of advertisements, transparency information, and rules on targeting do not begin with the October 2026 pilot. The register adds the European infrastructure through which information about online advertising can be centralized and consulted more easily.

The significance extends beyond campaigns for the European Parliament. The Regulation covers political advertising related to electoral, legislative, and regulatory processes at European, national, regional, and local levels, meaning that the register may become relevant for national elections, referendums, and other political campaigns conducted in the Member States.

For research into online political manipulation, the combination of funding and targeting can provide a picture that the simple archiving of advertisements cannot produce. Two people may see completely different political messages in the same campaign, and an outside observer may not know why certain groups were selected. Data on targeting criteria make it possible to analyze how a campaign separates its audience and distributes different messages to distinct categories.

European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law, and Consumer Protection, Michael McGrath, will organize an implementation dialogue dedicated to the Regulation on November 4, one year after the start of its full application. The discussion will bring together political advertising service providers, sponsors, national authorities, researchers, and other stakeholders to identify problems encountered in implementation and ways to simplify or clarify the rules.

For the register, the decisive moment will come with the official launch and the transition from voluntary participation to the operation provided for by the Regulation. It will then be possible to see whether the system truly offers a comparable picture of political advertising distributed in the Union and whether the data are sufficiently complete to allow the public to track who pays for the political messages that appear on their screens.

https://2eu.brussels/ro/news/comisia-deschide-pilotul-registrului-european-pentru-publicitatea-politica-online