The Facebook logo seen reflected in a man's eye | Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images EU agrees to fine parties for data misuse in elections The EU wants to stop political groups using data to influence voters in the European Parliament election.

The European Parliament and EU countries agreed, Wednesday, on new election rules according to which European party found to have misused personal data to influence voter behavior can be fined.

In the wake of a global outrage over Cambridge Analytica's illegal harvesting of data on some 87 million Facebook users, the rules aim to stop EU political groups from using data to influence voter behavior in the upcoming European Parliament election.

"Scandals like Facebook/Cambridge Analytica show the need to prevent data abuse in political campaigns," the Parliament said in a statement.

The institutions did not specify the amount of the fines, which applies to parties like the European People's Party and the Party of European Socialists.

The text was initially presented by the European Commission in September last year in their package on election integrity, as an update of the 2014 regulation on the funding of European political parties.

Under the new rules agreed today, European parties found to have misused the personal data of citizens to deliberately influence their voting behavior will be fined. Parliament and Council must still formally adopt the final text, but the rules have now been approved by all EU institutions and are due to update existing European legislation on the funding of European parties.

When the law goes into effect, national authorities will be able to issue notifications on the data protection infringement and inform the Authority for European political parties and foundations, which will then "trigger the verification procedure, which can lead to a financial penalty."

Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová welcomed the agreement.

"We expect European political parties to fully respect the rules, so that Europeans can cast their vote being fully and fairly informed during the campaign," she said.