Today’s hybrid and authoritarian threats often gain traction by exploiting divisions, distrust, and vulnerabilities from within societies. Foreign information manipulation, political interference, coordinated influence operations, and other forms of hybrid pressure can exploit existing divisions, erode trust, and reshape public perceptions without crossing the threshold of conventional conflict. Their impact depends not only on the capabilities of hostile actors, but also on the vulnerabilities and information environments they are able to exploit.

 

This panel brings together perspectives on hybrid threats, psychological defence, information resilience, and democratic backsliding to examine how external interference and domestic authoritarian pressure interact across Europe and the Eastern Partnership. It will explore how FIMI can exploit political and social divisions, while restrictions on independent media, civil society, and institutional checks can weaken societies’ capacity to recognise and resist manipulation.

 

Rather than treating information manipulation as a standalone threat, the panel will consider it as part of a broader ecosystem in which political, social, institutional, and technological vulnerabilities can reinforce one another. The discussion will consider what effective counter-FIMI requires: stronger situational awareness, coordinated responses across government, media, platforms, and civil society, and, where necessary, measures that disrupt hostile influence operations. It will explore how these approaches can strengthen democratic resilience while preserving the openness and freedoms that distinguish democratic societies from the systems they seek to resist.