In December 2023, a Belarusian KGB representative entered an online seminar organised by the Belarusian Free University and told participants that everything was under the service’s control.  

The following month, the online university, run from exile, was designated an “extremist entity”.

It was a warning that being in exile in a safe country does not necessarily put independent voices beyond the reach of authoritarian states. 

For people forced into exile, reaching the EU should mean being able to continue their work without fear. Yet repression follows them into the digital spaces where they organise, report, and communicate. “We can never be sure who is behind a switched-off camera in our online meetings,” one interviewee told us.  

ARTICLE 19 Europe’s new report, 404: Safety not found?, draws on interviews with exiled targeted journalists, human rights defenders working in Belarusian and Russian language environments, as well as digital security experts who try to protect them. Respondents identified Belarusian and Russian state-linked actors as major sources of threats, while stressing how difficult it is to attribute individual incidents. 

The research documents phishing attacks that expose private communications and trusted contacts, including people inside repressive states. It also shows how platform moderation is manipulated through coordinated malicious complaints.

“Extremist” and “foreign agent” designations deter audiences from sharing or subscribing to independent media. A publication may lose sensitive records built up over years, or remain online yet lose contact with the people it exists to inform. 

The harm extends beyond the person whose accounts are compromised. Stolen information may be used to pressure colleagues and relatives, while fear and mistrust drive self-censorship and withdrawal from public work.

For dispersed organisations with few offline ways to reach audiences, losing access to a platform can threaten their ability to function. 

To an external observer, those attacks might seem like a scattering of isolated incidents. They are not. Digital transnational repression is a coordinated, evolving strategy – and treating it as anything less than a systemic risk will leave the response permanently one step behind the threat.

It’s a reality that the international community, including the European Union, must confront. 

Turning commitments into protection

EU governments should recognise transnational repression for what it is: an attack on the conditions that allow independent journalism and civil society to function.

Offering physical refuge is not enough if people in exile cannot safely investigate abuses, organise or reach their audiences.  

On 23 September, more than 130 UN human rights experts called for action against transnational repression. Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on Russia, has called for a binding UN convention. 

But the EU does not need to wait.  

The Digital Services Act already gives the European Commission a basis for action. It requires designated very large online platforms to assess systemic risks to fundamental rights arising from their services in the EU and to take effective, proportionate measures in response.

The practical test is straightforward: does a platform’s design or operation enable transnational repression? Does that amount to a systemic risk under Article 34? Has the platform adequately mitigated it under Article 35? 

Repeated abuse of reporting systems should trigger scrutiny of how those systems operate.

Platforms should provide meaningful human review, clear and accessible appeals and timely support for users facing coordinated attacks, and scrutinise government requests based on politically motivated designations.

Where the commission finds breaches, it should enforce compliance. Any measures against repression must protect freedom of expression, privacy and secure communication, including encryption. 

While attribution remains difficult, victims should not have to establish the entire chain of state responsibility before receiving support.

Investigators must pursue perpetrators and enablers, while regulators assess whether platforms have addressed recurring risks.

These are distinct responsibilities; difficulty in fulfilling one cannot justify neglecting the other. 

The EU should also establish a permanent European coordination mechanism linking national authorities, cybersecurity responders, and civil society.

It should set out clear arrangements for cross-border referrals, early warnings and support.

People reporting attacks need practical assistance, legal advice, and psychological support. Authorities must work with affected communities and build trust without treating language or nationality as grounds for suspicion. 

The test for the EU is simple: can people who have reached European soil feel safe to continue documenting abuses, speaking publicly and seeking justice without having to constantly fear the governments they fled?

If the EU’s commitment to freedom of expression is real, it must be measured by the protection it delivers. 

A new law aimed at protecting children could kill off old video games and threaten small developers, industry trade groups have warned.

The EU Kids Act was unveiled by commission president Ursula von der Leyen last month as a chance to “give childhood back to our children” and put parents “in the driving seat”.

It would require videogames to be catered to children by default with stringent requirements including an eight-hour nighttime lock-out, a ban on screenshots, and guardian supervision.

Gamers wanting to play the full version of games would have to pass age verification checks to access features, like multi-player tournaments or mystery boxes. 

The European Commission is gathering feedback on the act with respondents quick to criticise the threat posed to videogame makers.

Stop Killing Games, a campaign to protect videogames, has opposed the act.

“This could turn the EU into a pariah state for videogames,” said Ross Scott, the consumer group’s founder. He reckons the regulation could spark a race to update games or deactivate them.

MEPs have also joined in sounding the alarm bell.

Proposed law could kill games

If the law passed, developers would need to make a child mode version of games and gate the full games behind a verification step.

“This is going to bury developers with compliance steps, and a whole lot of cost,” said Scott.

Age verification with zero-knowledge proof (meaning developers cannot collect data) will likely be required. “In practice, providers would likely need to engage a third-party age assurance provider,” also said Lauro Fava, partner at law firm Pinsent Masons.

The Commission’s impact assessment claims that third-party age verification apps would reduce costs, but failed to provide estimates.

Fava called it “strange” that these were missing, and thinks the commission “arguably downplayed” the cost of compliance.

Gamer’s Voice, an advocacy group, asserted that small games would struggle to pay for age-verification and other compliance measures, likely to inlclude game redesigns.

The Kids Act would outlaw features ‘increasing social comparison’ for minors, meaning functions like leaderboards and kill counts could be restricted.

And while the cost to developers is not known, it is feared prices could increase for players.

The wide scope of the draft law means community servers and hobbyist-developed games could be subjected to the new rules. Any game, new or old, would have to follow measures unless strictly offline in a physical format or built only for educational purposes.

And since the rules would apply to games made or consumed in the EU, it is feared game makers could block access to their games on the bloc.

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Every major technological shift reshapes not just the economy but the tax system that pays for it. When big corporations emerged, corporate and payroll taxes followed. When mass car ownership took hold, fuel duties emerged to pay for the roads it required. 

As AI shifts work from people to machines, it will force a rethink of who gets taxed, on what, and where. Nowhere is that question more urgent than in Europe, which funds the world’s most comprehensive welfare states primarily through taxes on work.

Taxes on work make up 51.5 percent of all tax revenue in the EU-27, according to the European Commission’s latest Taxation Trends data — a share that rose in 2024. These charges are taken straight from the payslip. They’re hard to avoid, and scale with employment.

AI, by replacing human work with software and machines, eats away at exactly this tax base. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that around 40 percent of jobs worldwide are exposed to AI. If that leads to fewer workers, it will also mean fewer payslips, pension contributions and social charges, weakening the revenue streams that fund Europe’s pension and healthcare systems. This is not a distant problem; the costs are already mounting.

Shift the burden to corporate profits

The obvious response is to shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits, which will increasingly reflect the gains firms make by deploying AI instead of hiring workers.

Unlike a tax on machines and equipment themselves, a profit tax falls mostly on excess profits and need not distort investment. The case for shifting weight from payroll taxes to profits is strong and strengthens as AI replaces more workers with machines.

But profits, unlike payrolls, move. A company can locate its intellectual property in a low-rate jurisdiction — a pattern Europe knows well from decades of profits routed through Ireland and Luxembourg — and ensure that profits are booked far from where the jobs are lost. It is how the world’s largest technology and AI firms already operate.

Two-pillar answer

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Inclusive Framework was designed to address exactly this: profits shifted across jurisdictions to avoid tax, and e-commerce allowed sales where firms have no physical presence. AI makes these reforms more urgent. 

Pillar One of the framework put forward by the Paris-based wealthy nations’ club addresses where a corporation is taxed. It shifts partial taxing rights for the largest multinationals away from where they are headquartered and toward where their customers and users are located. 

Still under negotiation, it would apply only to a handful of the largest firms, but many AI companies would qualify. 

These firms are concentrated in a select number of countries, very few of them European, but the displacement they cause, and the public services that displaced workers will require, will weigh heavily on European budgets.

Pillar Two of the OECD framework introduces a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent on multinationals with revenues above €750m.

The EU moved first and furthest: Council Directive (EU) 2022/2523 made the minimum tax binding across the Union from 2024, and 22 of the 27 member states now apply it in full. The United States, notably, has not implemented the rules. 

Politics is undermining the fix

But the obstacles are real. US ratification of the OECD proposals is unlikely, and many of the largest companies are headquartered there. 

The pressure is already reshaping Europe’s own rules: under the G7’s June 2025 ‘side-by-side’ agreement, US-parented groups would be exempt from the EU’s minimum-tax rules: a carveout the European Commission confirmed in January 2026 and which several member states consider legally fragile. 

The Commission also dropped its proposed EU digital levy under US trade pressure, leaving a patchwork of national digital services taxes in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and elsewhere.

Such exceptions and carveouts show that big-power politics can hollow out the framework. These reforms were designed to address the tax challenges for an AI-economy. They were good policy then. They are fiscal necessities now. Fairer corporate taxation will not be enough, but it is a start. 

Europe’s choice

The EU has instruments on the table, the BEFIT common corporate tax base and the proposed Corporate Resource for Europe, but both remain politically contested.

European governments that fail to act will be managing the social costs of technological disruption with a tax system built for the industrial age, while the profits that fund their rivals accumulate beyond their reach.

Even if Europeans work less, their needs for health care, pensions, and consumption remain. As wage-based contributions shrink, Europe must shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits and close off the routes that let those profits move beyond the reach of the states bearing the costs of automation. 

Productivity gains may soften the arithmetic; they will not repeal it. The tax base must follow the economy. 

Almost 150 European politicians have become targets of AI-generated deepfake pornography, 50 of whom are MEPs. The EU’s Green party has now taken the fight to the upper echelons of EU authority to push a ban on ‘nudifying’ apps.

Research by the think tank Agora Digital Transformation (ADT), published on Monday (5 October), found that 50 MEPs have been targeted by digital platforms able to digitally strip anyone whose picture is uploaded to it. Of these, 46 are women.

Another ADT study published in September found that the chances of becoming a victim of false sexualised portrayals are one in 14 for women, against one in 500 for male politicians.

Most worryingly, a woman has no way of knowing she’s been targeted because “the harm is often unseen until it has spread,” Monday’s study read.

MEPs have rallied behind the Green party in demanding EU leaders take concrete steps to limit the influence of such software, while requiring member states to set up national authorities to roll out an effective ban on ‘nudifier’ apps from 2 December 2026.

The Green party initiated an open letter, which was endorsed by 119 MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats, liberal Renew Europe and the Left, calling on the European Commission and member states to take decisive action against AI deepfakes of women politicians.

The appeal asks to strengthen EU resolutions on AI and digital protection by requesting that the commission guide national authorities on enforcing the ban, and that there be a designated and properly resourced body in every member state ready to implement the ban from December.

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O Município de São Brás de Alportel continua a investir na modernização administrativa e na transformação digital dos seus serviços, com a atualização do Geoportal, a plataforma gratuita de mapas interativos e informação geográfica do concelho.

A nova versão atualiza a solução anteriormente disponível, proporcionando uma navegação mais intuitiva, uma maior diversidade de temas geográficos e um conjunto alargado de funcionalidades, ao serviço da população, das empresas e da gestão municipal.

Desenvolvida em parceria com a empresa algarvia WKT – Sistemas de Informação, a nova plataforma assenta em software de código aberto (open source), podendo ser instalada em servidores Linux ou Windows sem custos de licenciamento. 

A solução apresenta uma arquitetura modular, que facilita a integração de novas ferramentas, é totalmente responsive, adaptando-se a computadores, tablets e telemóveis, e tem o seu código publicado no GitHub.

Entre as novidades desta atualização, destaca-se a possibilidade de consulta de ortofotomapas de 2025 e do Cadastro Predial, da competência da Direção-Geral do Território.

Informação geográfica à distância de um clique

O renovado Geoportal permite aos utilizadores consultar, de forma rápida e simplificada, informação georreferenciada relevante para o quotidiano, para o planeamento do território e para a preparação de processos junto do Município.

Entre as principais funcionalidades disponíveis encontram-se:

• Criação e partilha de visualizadores, permitindo ao utilizador partilhar, através de um simples link, exatamente a informação que está a consultar, incluindo camadas externas que consiga adicionar, como ficheiros KML ou serviços WMS;

• Emissão automática de plantas, com geração de plantas de localização e relatórios em formato PDF para apoio à instrução de processos junto da autarquia;

• Consulta de Instrumentos de Gestão Territorial, através do acesso a extratos dos Planos Municipais de Ordenamento do Território (PMOT);

• Pesquisa e localização temática, com informação relativa, entre outros temas, a loteamentos, toponímia, coordenadas, linhas de água, pontos cotados, áreas de risco de incêndio e percursos turísticos;

• Gestão simplificada, através de um backoffice que permite à autarquia gerir utilizadores e acessos e configurar novos visualizadores de forma dinâmica.

A plataforma cumpre as diretrizes europeias INSPIRE e os objetivos do Sistema Nacional de Informação Geográfica (SNIG 2020), definidos pela Direção-Geral do Território, assegurando condições de interoperabilidade e a capacidade de consumir e partilhar dados geográficos através da internet com outras entidades da Administração Pública e da sociedade civil.

Mais transparência e eficiência através do digital

A atualização do Geoportal integra-se na estratégia do Município de São Brás de Alportel de promover a desmaterialização de processos, a eficiência administrativa e a transparência, facilitando o acesso dos cidadãos e das empresas à informação sobre o território.

A plataforma regista atualmente uma média de 100 acessos diários, prevendo-se que a nova solução permita responder de forma ainda mais eficaz às necessidades dos seus utilizadores.

O renovado Geoportal de São Brás de Alportel está disponível para consulta pública em: https://geoportal.cm-sbras.pt/mapa/geoportal