EU Troll plans blasted

Plans by the EU to influence social media discussions to tackle increasing Eurosceptism have been slammed by local MEP Paul Nuttall.

“People are waking up in an Orwellian nightmare of the EU's making. The EU Big Brother is watching you which is very disturbing.

“The EU talks in public about rights of online privacy and data protection but behind the closed door bureau meeting of the European Parliament they are scheming to introduce surveillance of your social media,” said Mr Nuttall, UKIP Deputy Leader and member of the Culture committee.

“People are mature enough to converse with others and make up their own mind without the European Parliament secretly monitoring what they are saying, interjecting and trying to influence what they think.

“This new aspect of EU communication policy really is sinister and is like something out of Orwell's ‘1984’ or the old Soviet Union.

“Given that the EU spends over 2.4 billion euro per year on communication, it is frightening what they can do with this money. One thing is certain, this level of intrusion into people's lives by the EU is unwarranted, unnecessary and dangerous. This surveillance of our Facebook and Twitter has got to stop," said Mr Nuttall.

His comments follow the revelation that the EU is planning an unprecedented propaganda blitz ahead of next year’s European elections. A confidential document talks of particular attention needing to be paid to countries that have experienced a surge in Eurosceptism.

Key to the new strategy will be ‘public opinion monitoring tools’ to ‘identify at an early stage whether debates of political nature among followers in social media and blogs have the potential to attract media and citizens' interest’.

“The amount spent on propaganda already is staggering and now they want to spend even more so they can crush anti-EU feeling,” said Mr Nuttall.

Despite calls for EU spending to reflect national austerity an additional £787,000 will be need to be raised to fulfill their plans, he added.

The document states, "Parliament's institutional communicators must have the ability to monitor public conversation and sentiment on the ground and in real time, to understand 'trending topics' and have the capacity to react quickly, in a targeted and relevant manner, to join in and influence the conversation, for example, by providing facts and figures to deconstructing myths."

“This violates the neutrality of the EU civil service by turning officials into a "troll patrol", stalking the internet to make unwanted and provocative political contributions in social media debates,” said Mr Nuttall.

"Spending a fortune for EU public servants to become Twitter trolls in office hours is wasteful and truly ridiculous," he said.

"It strikes me as bizarre that the EU administration is playing such an explicitly political role with a brief to target Eurosceptics - that's code for parties like UKIP, and this is hardly neutral," added Mr Nuttall.