Do I need a transparency notice?

You do not have to be a political party for the EU rules on political advertising to reach your campaign. This guide turns the definition in Regulation (EU) 2024/900 into three questions, tests them on three examples and explains what follows when the answer is yes.

One word first. PolAds calls the person behind an advertisement the advertiser, whom the Regulation calls the sponsor (Article 3(10)).

The definition

Everything starts with Article 3(2).

Reg. 2024/900 Art. 3(2)
‘political advertising’ means the preparation, placement, promotion, publication, delivery or dissemination, by any means, of a message, normally provided for remuneration or through in-house activities or as part of a political advertising campaign: (a) by, for or on behalf of a political actor, unless it is of a purely private or a purely commercial nature

Point (b) is the alternative: a message ‘which is liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level’. The Commission's guidelines confirm that the two points are not cumulative. A message only has to meet one of them (Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.1).

The message must also normally be paid for, made through in-house activities or part of a political advertising campaign. Three exclusions then take some messages out again.

Question 1: is it by, for or on behalf of a political actor?

Article 3(4) lists who counts:

• political parties, and entities related to the sphere of activity of a party
• political alliances and European political parties
• candidates for and holders of elected office, and people in leadership positions within a party
• members of Union institutions, with some exceptions, and of national, regional or local governments
• campaign organisations set up solely to influence an election or referendum
• anyone representing or acting on behalf of the above and promoting their political objectives

If the message is by, for or on behalf of one of them, it is political advertising under point (a) unless it is purely private or purely commercial. It does not also have to be designed to influence a vote (Guidelines, section 2.2.4). A candidate announcing a family wedding, or an elected official advertising their own hotel, stays outside (Guidelines, section 2.2.5, examples 37 and 38).

Question 2: is it liable and designed to influence?

For everyone else, point (b) decides. The message must be both liable and designed to influence an election, a referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process. A message that happens to sway voters without being designed to is not caught (Guidelines, section 2.2.6).

Article 8(1) lists the features to weigh: the content, the sponsor, the language, the context including the period of dissemination, the means of publication, the target audience and the objective. The Guidelines add that the link must be clear and substantial, and that it should not be drawn after the fact purely because a message went viral (section 2.3).

Question 3: does an exclusion apply?

Article 3(2) leaves out three kinds of message:

1. messages from official sources of Member States or the Union strictly limited to how elections and referendums are organised and how to take part, including promoting participation (point (i))
2. public communication by a public authority or the Union that aims to give official information, provided it is not liable and designed to influence an election, a referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process (point (ii))
3. presenting candidates in public spaces or in the media where the law explicitly provides for it, free of charge and with equal treatment of candidates (point (iii))

Separately, editorial content under a medium's editorial responsibility is not political advertising unless a third party pays for it (Article 1(2)), and nor are opinions expressed in a personal capacity (Article 1(3)).

Who publishes it matters

The duty to attach a label and a transparency notice sits with the political advertising publisher (Articles 11(1) and 12(1)). The Commission reads this to mean that a message an organisation posts organically on its own channels, without paying anyone to publish or boost it, needs no label and no notice, even though it can still be political advertising (Guidelines, section 2.2.2, examples 26 to 29). Paying for placement or promotion changes that.

Here are the three questions and the publisher's role in one flow.

Three worked examples

A party boosts a candidate video

A party pays a social network to boost a video of its candidate. The party is a political actor under Article 3(4)(a), the video is neither private nor commercial, and boosting is paid promotion. This is political advertising under point (a). A platform that publishes political advertising against remuneration acts as a political advertising publisher (Guidelines, section 1.2), so the boosted video needs a label and a transparency notice.

An electoral authority posts where to vote

An electoral authority pays for adverts telling residents where their polling station is and when it opens. This message comes from an official source and is strictly limited to the modalities for taking part in an election, so point (i) excludes it. The Guidelines give the same case as example 18. The exclusion holds only while the message stays strictly limited to that.

An association promotes a petition against a bill

An association with no link to a party pays a news site to run a banner asking readers to sign a petition against a bill before parliament. Point (a) does not apply, so assess point (b). A bill is a legislative process. Weigh the content (a call to act), the objective (to stop or change the bill) and the context (a live debate). The Guidelines treat a campaign launched in response to an amendment under discussion as likely to seek to influence the legislative process (example 40), while an awareness campaign that only aims to inform the public about a proposal is unlikely to (example 43). Ask which of the two your banner resembles. The assessment is made case by case, and the primary responsibility to identify and declare political advertising lies with the sponsor (Guidelines, section 2.3).

If your message is covered

Article 11(1) requires the publisher to make each political advertisement available with a statement that it is a political advertisement, the sponsor and any controlling entity, any linked election or process, any use of targeting or ad-delivery techniques, and the transparency notice or a clear indication of where to find it. Article 12(1) lists what the notice contains, from the sponsor and whoever pays to the amounts, their origin and the way to report a non-compliant advertisement. The sponsor provides much of that information and is responsible for its accuracy (Article 7(3)).

Still unsure? The ad check walks through the same definition one question at a time, lists the exclusions with its answer and stores none of your answers. If you are covered, a first campaign end to end shows how to register on PolAds.

Sources

• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 1(2) and 1(3)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 3(2), 3(4) and 3(10)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 7(3)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 8(1)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 11(1)
• Reg. (EU) 2024/900, Article 12(1)
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 1.2
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.1
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.2.2
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.2.4
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.2.5
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.2.6
• Commission Guidelines C/2025/5514, section 2.3