On 29–30 September 2026, the kick-off meeting of the POLINOCULATE project (Inoculating and Coaching Policymakers to Resist Disinformation) was held in Turku, Finland. The project’s legal work package is led by the Faculty of Law of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). Over the two-day meeting, the partners reviewed the project’s structure, adopted the work plan for the first six months, and agreed on collaboration between the individual tasks within working groups.
As previously reported, the total budget of the three-year research project is EUR 3.5 million (approximately HUF 1.4 billion), funded entirely by the European Union under Horizon Europe, the EU’s largest research and innovation framework programme. The project is coordinated by the University of Turku, and the consortium also includes ELTE, the University of Sheffield, the University of Bristol, the University of Passau, and GLOBSEC.
The project aims to help European policymakers better recognise information manipulation that seeks to influence policy decisions and to resist it, while preserving freedom of expression. The consortium combines legal, psychological, communication studies, and artificial intelligence research methods. Its main outcome will be CounterCoach: a freely accessible, AI-based coaching tool built on the method of psychological inoculation.
On behalf of ELTE’s Faculty of Law, Professor Gergely Gosztonyi leads the work package developing policy and regulatory recommendations. ELTE researchers will carry out a comparative analysis of EU and national legal frameworks, including an examination of the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA). They will also develop a framework for the accountability and transparency of online platforms. In addition, they will contribute to the analysis of case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as to research on the spread of disinformation and its policy impacts.
More details about the project can be found on the official POLINOCULATE website.
