{"id":924669,"date":"2026-10-08T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924669\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T01:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:00:10","slug":"eu-drops-sponsorship-of-disinformation-conference-at-trump-officials-request-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924669\/","title":{"rendered":"EU drops sponsorship of disinformation conference at Trump officials\u2019 request | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration<\/a> pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with Canada, Lithuania and the EU\u2019s diplomatic service subsequently agreeing to do so, the Guardian understands.<\/p>\n

The conference, #Disinfo2026, taking place Wednesday and Thursday, is the annual meetup of Europe\u2019s counter-disinformation community and has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania<\/a>. It is run by an independent Brussels non-profit, EU Disinfo Lab.<\/p>\n

Days before the conference, the logos of its main supporters \u2013 the Lithuanian ministry of foreign affairs, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and Global Affairs Canada<\/a>, the country\u2019s foreign ministry \u2013 were wiped off its website.<\/p>\n

Photos of the event shared with the Guardian also show white stickers affixed over the logos of these organisations printed on official conference materials, appearing to indicate they were struck from the program in haste.<\/p>\n

\"aA #Disinfo2026 flyer shows portions blocked out. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian<\/p>\n

Three persons familiar with the matter, including European officials, confirmed that the US state department had been in touch with multiple governments over their support for the conference.<\/p>\n

Internal state department documents seen by the Guardian also show US officials thanking Lithuania for \u201ctaking US concerns seriously\u201d. The document says Washington was \u201cgrateful\u201d Lithuania supposedly found a panel framing the US as a foreign information threat \u201creprehensible and surprising\u201d and welcomed its decision to limit involvement in the conference.<\/p>\n

That panel \u2013 called \u201cUSA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back\u201d, with the acronym FIMI referring to \u201cforeign information manipulation and interference\u201d \u2013 took place Wednesday. It explored how Europe\u2019s disinformation community could rebuild resilience without Washington, and is the first time the conference appears to have entertained the idea that the US could be a disinformation actor in Europe. Sources and the internal document indicate the state department was explicitly focused on this panel, which included three American speakers, among them a former CIA officer.<\/p>\n

According to one person familiar with the deliberations, other communications appeared to originate from the office of Sarah B Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Nina Jankowicz, a former US official and disinformation expert who in 2022 briefly headed the Biden administration\u2019s Disinformation Governance Board, which Republicans assailed<\/a> as a vehicle for policing Americans\u2019 speech, said she understood that Washington had pressured Lithuania and Canada to withdraw from the conference. The Guardian understands that France was contacted as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this amounts to is a purported defender of free speech at the state department using the enormous power of the US government to try to pressure Americans from criticizing their government,\u201d said Jankowicz.<\/p>\n

In statements, Lithuania, Canada and the EU said the program of the conference did not align with their official views on the US role in disinformation \u2013 although that program had been in place for months before they withdrew their support, since June.<\/p>\n

\u201cLithuania has cancelled its participation in \u2018Disinfo 2026\u2019 as several parts of the conference programme differ from the official position of the Government,\u201d Lithuania\u2019s foreign ministry wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n

Global Affairs Canada \u201ccarefully assesses participation in, and sponsorship of, external events on a case-by-case basis,\u201d GAC spokesperson Samantha Lafleur said. \u201cFollowing changes to the framing of several panel discussions, GAC decided to revise its participation in those sessions at the EU DisinfoLab 2026 conference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian officials are still participating in the conference, Lafleur added.<\/p>\n

An EU spokesperson confirmed that the European External Action Service had decided to withdraw its support from the conference because \u201cthe organisers chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n

EU officials, the Guardian understands, did not agree with the characterisation of the US as a disinformation actor.<\/p>\n

Despite withdrawing its branding as an official supporter, the EU continues to fund the conference.<\/p>\n

In its latest report<\/a> on foreign information manipulation and interference threats, published in March, the EU\u2019s diplomatic service named Russia and China as \u201cthreat actors\u201d without any negative reference to the US.<\/p>\n

A diplomatic source at France\u2019s foreign ministry said \u201cthere\u2019s absolutely no reason for us to change our commitments\u201d when it came to supporting the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stick to supporting civil society. It\u2019s not just principled, it\u2019s operational,\u201d she said, adding that the conference was a \u201claboratory\u201d that helped Europe develop key policy around disinformation.<\/p>\n

The US state department has taken an increasingly interventionist posture towards free speech and civil society in Europe over the past year. The Guardian has revealed<\/a> that the state department is awarding<\/a> millions of dollars in non-competitive grants to organisations across the continent supportive of Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

Lithuania\u2019s withdrawal comes just after the prime minister, Mindaugas Sinkevicius, said Lithuania would pay for a permanent US military base if the US agreed, a day after Trump said he would consider the request. Sinkevicius called a lasting American presence a critical guarantee of deterrence against Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are great people, so we will certainly look at it,\u201d the US president said on Monday.<\/p>\n

Sinkevicius said he first proposed the idea<\/a> in a meeting with Trump\u2019s envoy John Coale, and called it a \u201ccritically important guarantee of deterrence and security.\u201d Lithuania, a member of the EU and Nato, borders Russia and its close ally Belarus.<\/p>\n

The US has kept a rotating armoured battalion of almost 1,000 troops in the country since 2019, the US Army has noted<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration pressured multiple countries to withdraw their sponsorship of a leading European conference on disinformation, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-924669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}