The EU's Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which aims to combat foreign misinformation and interference at election time, comes into force in Estonia on October 10, just over a week before the local elections.

Since they can often influence the legislative process and ordinary people are engaging in "politics" when demonstrating, a larger proportion of demonstrations would also be classified as political advertising, under the new regulations. This is the case even if no money changes hands.

"The European understanding is that, one way or another, all at least somewhat active people deal with politics, and not only politicians. That is, this European Union regulation on political advertising applies not only to politicians, but to all people who want to, for example, demonstrate or influence society in the direction of changing or adopting or not adopting one or another bill. It makes no difference whether, for example, this is the state budget law, where a pay rise is demanded. That would then be influencing the legislative process," Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200) said.

"If you read the text of the regulation, then everything that concerns elections, everything that concerns referendums, and everything that concerns influencing legislation is to be regarded as political advertising in any form," Pakosta added. "That is to say, it does not have to be only paid advertising, but all other activities which try to influence one or another paragraph in one direction or another are then, in the sense of this European Union regulation, political advertising," the minister went on.

The regulation is creating a great deal of confusion, she added, and for this reason, it is unlikely that those who violate it will be fined. Estonia also opposed the regulation.

"I stay with the proposal that the Estonian officials should approach this with a highly resolute common sense, come what may. Our concern with this regulation as a whole has been that it is not legally clear. Estonia opposed this regulation precisely because of this complete legal ambiguity," Pako

sta said.

Despite this, Pakosta said she understood the rationale behind the EU regulations.

"In fact we do see how Russia, for example, tries to interfere in many places in order to show that state institutions are unreliable, bad, to deepen this distrust between the citizen and a free and democratic state," she said.

The TTPA provides that political advertising must be done honestly and transparently and under similar rules across the EU. The aim is to avoid manipulation via information and foreign interference in elections.

The government sent the bill amending the Advertising Act to the Riigikogu on Thursday. This bill brings domestic legislation into line with the new regulation.

Once in force, political advertisements must be clearly labeled as such.

The regulation also affects online advertising. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plans to suspend political, electoral, and social issue ads on its platforms in time for the TTPA coming into force.

Several recent EU elections have been targeted by disinformation. Last December, Romania annulled a presidential election due to foreign interference via social media. This was the first time a member state had declared the results of an election null and void.

Estonia's local elections polling day is October 19, preceded by several days' advance voting, making it the first election in the EU to happen after the TTPA enters in force.