Meta has announced it will stop political, electoral and social issue advertising on Facebook and Instagram across the European Union from October 2025, as the bloc’s new regulation on political advertising transparency comes into effect. The company’s decision echoes a similar move by Google announced last November.
The parent of Facebook cited “unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties” introduced by the EU’s new Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation as the reason behind the move. Adopted in March 2024, the EU’s new TTPA established that political ads must carry a clear label identifying them as such, along with information about their sponsor, targeting methods, cost, and electoral relevance. Importantly, targeting based on personal data will only be allowed with explicit, separate user consent. The regulation also bans political ads from non-EU entities within three months of an election.
The European Council has said these rules are designed to help “citizens recognise political advertisements, understand who is behind them and know whether they have been targeted.” The paramount goal is to safeguard, simultaneously, Europe’s democratic discourse and personal privacy of its citizens.
Mission impossible
The Mark Zuckerberg company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, said the regulatory demands have reached a level it can no longer work with. “This is a difficult decision, one we’ve taken in response to the EU’s incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which introduces significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties,” the company said in a press release dated July 25, 2025.
Despite extensive engagement with policymakers to share these concerns, we have been left with an impossible choice – Meta statement
While it supports transparency and has long required advertisers to verify their identities and disclose who paid for political ads, Meta believes the new EU law makes compliance nearly impossible. “Despite extensive engagement with policymakers to share these concerns, we have been left with an impossible choice: alter our services to offer an advertising product which doesn’t work for advertisers or users… or stop allowing political, electoral and social issue ads in the EU.”
This decision comes days after Meta’s earlier refusal to endorse the EU’s AI Code of Practice, where the company cited similar concerns over legal uncertainty and regulatory overreach.
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A broader trend
Meta’s announcement follows a similar decision by Google in November 2024. Citing the same EU regulation, the tech giant said it would stop serving political advertising in the EU before the TTPA goes into effect.
The TTPA unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms – Google statement
“The TTPA unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms,” Google’s statement read. The company pointed to the regulation’s “overly broad” definition of political ads and a lack of reliable local election data, which would make consistent enforcement across 27 EU member states nearly impossible.
Like Meta, Google emphasised its prior investments in political ad transparency, including identity verification and clear disclosures on election ads. But it concluded that the regulation failed to provide the “clarity and specificity” necessary for compliance, forcing it to suspend political ad services on YouTube across the EU.
Organic political content to stay
Both companies stressed that the changes only affect paid political advertisements, not user content or political expression more broadly. Meta said that political candidates and ordinary users will still be able to post and debate political topics across its platforms. “They just won’t be able to amplify this through paid advertising,” the company clarified.
Google echoed this sentiment, stating that it remains committed to supporting democratic elections by ensuring “voters have access to high-quality and reliable information” and will continue to display authoritative content and fight disinformation through non-paid channels.
EU officials push back
EU officials were quick to criticise Meta’s decision to suspend political ads across Europe. MEP Sandro Gozi (Renew/FRA), the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the political advertising regulation, called it a sign of “an allergy to transparency, data protection, and democratic accountability.”
The Italian MEP (elected in a French constituency) accused the company of hypocrisy, saying Meta “claims to fight disinformation while profiting from it.” Ironically, he posted his message on X, a platform no less tainted than Facebook. He framed the move not as a principled stand, but as an evasion of responsibility, and one that could ultimately benefit competitors willing to comply with the EU’s rules: “It clears space for other Europeans firms who comply with the rules.”
A turning point for political advertising in Europe
Meta and Google’s decision to halt political advertising in the EU highlights the growing clash between tech platforms and new regulations. These rules were introduced to prevent problems like the one in Romania, where an election was cancelled due to foreign interference on social media.
Yet, the companies say these restrictions make it nearly impossible to offer the tools, campaigns, and voters rely on. Now, Europe faces a key question: without paid political ads on major platforms, will access to information become clearer and fairer, or will political discussions move to less transparent and harder-to-monitor parts of the internet?
