Our investigation exposes critical flaws in Meta's political ad moderation ahead of EU parliamentary elections. By analyzing Meta's Ad Library data since August 2023, we identified numerous undeclared political ads among 30 million publications.

Key findings reveal:

• Less than 5% of undeclared political ads are caught by Meta's moderation systems
• 60% of ads that Meta does moderate fail to adhere to their own guidelines
• A specific pro-Russian propaganda campaign reached over 38 million users in France, Germany, Italy, and Poland
• Most ads were not properly identified as political content.

Following our report, the EU Commission launched investigation proceedings into Meta's breaches on political advertising. This marks a significant test of the Digital Services Act's effectiveness against foreign influence operations. We're calling for the European Commission to mandate all platforms to disclose ad contents in a transparency repository, facilitating external investigations and ensuring political advertisements are clearly labeled and monitored.