EU pulls sponsorship from Disinfo2026 event in Lithuania

The European Union on Thursday offered its reasons for withdrawing sponsorship for a disinformation event in Lithuania, following media reports claiming that it did so after pressure from the US government. 

The EU's foreign affairs division, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and the governments of Canada and Lithuania all pulled their support from the event at short notice. Sponsors' logos on flyers and placards at the event were hastily covered over with paper strips. 

They withdrew participation in Disinfo2026 after pressure from the US State Department, according to reports in several media outlets, including the British newspaper The Guardian.

What did the EU say about its decision? 

EU spokesperson Christian Wigand made no mention of the US or external pressure on Thursday but also did not repudiate the reports. 

"We were not comfortable with the framing of some of the discussions at the event," he told reporters in Brussels. 

"The organizers chose to frame some of the discussions in way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU," he said. 

He refused to discuss details of which discussions or what framing had perturbed the EEAS. He also would not comment on whether there had been talks with US officials on the matter. 

"I'm not commenting on diplomatic exchanges as a matter of principle," he said. 

What signs of potential controversy at Disinfo2026 were visible? 

While a number of the sessions planned on the event's website across two days at the Radisson Blu Lietuva Hotel in Vilnius appeared to have the potential to perturb more sensitive members of Donald Trump's administration, the opening two sessions on Wednesday morning stood out. 

The opening of the conference was an interview with Kimberly Prost, a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has come under sustained and heavy fire from Trump and his administration during his second term. 

This was followed by an hourlong session entitled "USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back," using the acronym for Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference. One of the planned speakers was a former CIA officer. 

Strong US free speech safeguards in the First Amendment to its Constitution mean the US has maintained a comparatively hands-off approach to combating disinformation — both in the political and legal spheres. This has arguably intensified, however, under President Donald Trump's leadership, with critics alleging it's partly because of his own often uneasy relationship with the truth.

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