MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Google said Tuesday it was offering journalists, politicians, election monitoring groups, campaigns, and other important actors free protection against DDoS attacks ahead of the European Parliament elections slated for May.

"Journalists, campaigns and political parties, NGOs and election monitoring groups ensure people can stay informed during election periods… Project Shield uses Google’s infrastructure to protect independent news sites from distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and from today, Jigsaw will be offering strong, free DDoS-protections to the organizations across Europe that are vital to free and fair elections", Lie Junius, Director of EU Public Policy and Government Relations at Google, said in a post on the US company's blog.

Junius added that Google was offering in-person and online security training sessions for those most vulnerable to online threats.

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In addition, Google is introducing a new verification process for advertisers.

"Anyone wanting to run EU parliamentary election ads on Google’s platforms must provide documentation to show they’re an EU-based entity or citizen of an EU member country — and we will provide disclosures on each ad to make it clear to voters who are paying for the advertising. This includes ads for political organisations, political parties, political issue advocacy or fundraising, and individual candidates and politicians", Junius said.

Last year, online platforms, major social networks and advertisers agreed on the code of practice on disinformation, endorsed by the European Commission, as one of the steps to ensure transparency in 2019 elections.

In December, the commission suggested that more funding was needed to counter fake news. Andrus Ansip, the commission's vice-president in charge of digital single market, claimed that there was evidence of Russia spreading disinformation in Europe. Russia has repeatedly refuted such allegations as groundless.