Countering Disinformation Amid Democratic Backsliding: Difficult Comparisons Between the European Union and Serbia

This research examines the contemporary policy framework through which the European Union seeks to counter-disinformation, situating this agenda within the broader challenges posed by ongoing democratic backsliding. It focuses on the EU media regulatory architecture and addresses the institutional and normative capacity of candidate countries such as Serbia to achieve alignment. The applied theoretical framework conceptualizes the disinformation within the contemporary processes of democratic backsliding and the growth of autocratization. The analysis further explores the regulatory challenges that arise in the context of current autocratization processes. The study is guided by two central research questions: (1) What are the main challenges associated with defining and implementing counter-disinformation policies within the EU and Serbia? (2) How do differences in political systems shape the respective approaches to countering disinformation? The research design combines theoretical source analysis with descriptive comparative methods. The paper maps the principal obstacles that hinder Serbia’s alignment with the EU’s evolving media regulatory framework. Also, the findings highlight several contextual patterns that characterize the approaches to disinformation across EU member states and Serbia.