Facebook has repeatedly withheld key data on its alleged efforts to clamp down on disinformation ahead of the European elections, the EU’s executive has said.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been under fire from the European commission for failing to provide it with the “hard numbers” to prove that it was living up to promises made in a voluntary code of conduct.

The commission has also complained that the world’s largest social network had, despite its pledges, only set up “fact checkers” – with the job of scrutinising information shared on the site – in eight of the EU’s 28 member states.

The company’s vice-president of global affairs and communications, the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, had claimed in January that Facebook had made mistakes in the past but was now entering a “new phase of reform, responsibility and change”.

In a sign of frustration at the lack of hard evidence to back up that claim, a number of failures by Zuckerberg’s firm will be laid out on Thursday in the second monthly EU update on progress made by social media signatories – Facebook, Google and Twitter – to a new code of conduct.

Under the EU code, the web firms are encouraged to disrupt revenue for accounts and sites misrepresenting information, clamp down on fake accounts and bots, and give prominence to more reliable sources of news while improving the transparency of funding of political advertising.

EU sources said the sector was not raising its game but that Facebook was by far the worst offender of those being assessed, offering only “patchy” information on its efforts. “It is very difficult for us to see if they are doing what they should be doing,” said a source.

The EU’s security commissioner, Sir Julian King, and digital economy commissioner, Mariya Gabriel, writing in the Guardian ahead of publication of the progress report, warn that the companies have only “fallen further behind” since last month’s first report.

They said: “The results last time fell short of expectations – so we called on the platforms to go further and faster in their efforts to tackle disinformation. Sadly, despite some progress, rather than improve, they have fallen further behind. The lack of hard numbers is particularly worrying.

“Facebook has again failed to provide all necessary information, including any data on its actions in January on scrutiny of ad placements or efforts to disrupt advertising and monetisation incentives for those behind disinformation.”

The EU’s executive arm, which is threatening to bring in regulation on disinformation unless the social media companies fall into line, added that it welcomed Facebook’s recent decision to “share more information about political advertising on its platform with so-called ‘good faith’ researchers and organisations working on increasing transparency for the public”.

But “they still need to live up to the standards we are asking of them – and that they signed up to”, the commissioners warned. “It is vital that the platforms treat EU member states equally, and ensure that any relevant tools are available across the Union.”

It noted that Facebook had fact-checking partners “in only eight member states covering seven languages”.

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There are deep concerns that elections to the European parliament in May could be the target of manipulation in a similar manner to the US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum.

The commissioners did not hold back against the other two companies. “Twitter, too, did not report on any additional efforts in January to improve ad placement, or information on the implementation of its Ads Transparency Centre in the EU,” they said.

“Google has fared slightly better, reporting on scrutiny of ad placement, its new policy for election ads, and its dedicated teams to prevent election-related abuse of its services; but other information, like data on enforcement of its policies, is still lacking.”