The position paper “Bringing the Western Balkans into the EU Democracy Shield and the EDMO Ecosystem” was prepared by the Anti-Disinformation Network for the Balkans (ADN-Balkans) following consultations within the network and building on the discussions held at the conference “Building Resilience to Election-Related Information Manipulation,” organised on 19 May 2026 in Skopje by the Metamorphosis Foundation in cooperation with International IDEA, as part of the project “Combatting Electoral Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI),” supported by Global Affairs Canada.
The ADN-Balkans network calls on the European Commission and the EEAS to formally include the Western Balkans Six in the operational architecture of the European Democracy Shield, particularly through the European Centre for Democratic Resilience and its stakeholder platform, and to establish a structured pathway for the region’s integration into the European Digital Media Observatory ecosystem.
The position paper argues that the Western Balkans should be treated as part of Europe’s democratic security perimeter, given the region’s exposure to foreign information manipulation and interference, election-related disinformation, anti-EU narratives, media-literacy vulnerabilities, digital-rights risks and cross-border information flows that also affect EU Member States.
The Anti-Disinformation Network for the Balkans (ADN-Balkans) is a regional cooperation platform bringing together civil society organisations, media outlets, fact-checkers, educational institutions and other stakeholders working to counter disinformation, promote media literacy and strengthen professional journalism standards. Its members come from across the Western Balkans, EU Member States in the Balkans, including Greece and Bulgaria, and other EU candidate countries, including Turkey. The network connects actors across political, linguistic and institutional divides, enabling shared monitoring, exchange of expertise and coordinated responses to disinformation narratives that often spread beyond national borders.
