The next EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture will take place on February 16th, 2026, at 12:30-13:30 CEST. Join them for their webinar, where Alvaro Oleart and Luis Bouza‐García will present their study on the role of Big Tech business lobbies in shaping EU approaches to disinformation.
Attendance is free but registration is required here
The increasing political power of social media companies over the last two decades has sparked significant policy debates in the EU. They analyse the emerging regulatory struggle by focusing on one specific dimension: disinformation. The most influential initiative took place within the Digital Services Act (DSA), approved in 2022. This approach, characterised as ‘co-regulation’, breaks away from the EU’s previously dominant approach of self-regulation for digital platforms by trying to regulate with these platforms rather than leaving them to set their own policies. The best illustration of this approach is the second version of the Code of Practice on disinformation, which has been ultimately included within the DSA as a Code of Conduct in 2025.
Using data from public consultations, meetings with the Commission, and interviews, they conduct a process-tracing to uncover the genealogy of the EU’s co-regulatory framework from the 2018 High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Disinformation (HLEG) until 2025. They conclude that preemptive cooperation by the platforms has sidelined regulatory alternatives. They will also present the public data set upon which their presentation has been based.
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Alvaro Oleart is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science and the Institute for European Studies of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is the author of the books « Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres: Towards an Empowering Dissensus for EU Integration » (Palgrave, 2021) and « Democracy Without Politics in EU Citizen Participation: From European Demoi to Decolonial Multitude »
(Palgrave, 2023).
Luis Bouza‐García is associate professor and vice dean for research at the Faculty of Law, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he coordinates a research group on EU politics and governance. He leads the work package on regulatory aspects of the Horizon Europe project Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Postfactual Age (2022–2025). He is a visiting professor at the College of Europe.