US pressure strips three official sponsors from Europe's main disinformation conference

At least one sponsor kept paying after its name came off. The EU continues to fund the conference even though it withdrew its branding as an official supporter, the Guardian reported ^[20]. Canadian officials are still taking part, Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Samantha Lafleur said ^[19]. That leaves two of the three withdrawing sponsors with a working tie to the event ^[22]. Lithuania's foreign ministry went further. "Lithuania has cancelled its participation in 'Disinfo 2026' as several parts of the conference programme differ from the official position of the Government," it wrote ^[8].

Washington's interest was in one session. An internal State Department document said the US was "grateful" Lithuania had found that panel "reprehensible and surprising" and welcomed its decision to limit involvement, according to the Guardian ^[13]. It appears to be the first time the conference has entertained the idea that the US could be a disinformation actor in Europe ^[15]. EU Disinfo Lab, the independent Brussels non-profit that runs the event, had drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists and policymakers to a Vilnius hotel ^[2].

A sponsor's defender would say a government may keep its name off a session that contradicts its policy, and the EU's policy is on record. Its diplomatic service named Russia and China as "threat actors" in a March report on foreign information manipulation ^[21]. EU officials did not agree with describing the US as a disinformation actor, the Guardian understands ^[11]. An EU spokesperson said the organisers "chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU" ^[10].

The calendar weakens that defence. Lafleur said: "Following changes to the framing of several panel discussions, GAC decided to revise its participation in those sessions at the EU DisinfoLab 2026 conference." ^[9] By the Guardian's account, the programme had been in place since June, months before the sponsors withdrew ^[7]. The logos came off the conference website days before it opened ^[3]. By then the State Department had been in touch with multiple governments, according to three people familiar with the matter, including European officials ^[5].

Nina Jankowicz, a former US official who briefly headed the Biden administration's Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, said she understood Washington had pressured Lithuania and Canada ^[17]. "What this amounts to is a purported defender of free speech at the state department using the enormous power of the US government to try to pressure Americans from criticizing their government," Jankowicz said ^[18].

For organisations that depend on government sponsors, the case is narrower than a funding cut. It covers one conference, three sponsors and one panel, and it does not show any organisation losing a grant. It does show sponsors acting on a third government's request, prompted by a single session, in the last days before an event ^[5][13]. The trade-off for a sponsor is between its name on work it funds and its standing with an ally that objects to that work. This quarter's choice for a programme committee is whether to book sessions that name a sponsor's ally as a disinformation source. In my view, next quarter's consequence is sponsor agreements negotiated with that programme in mind, and the sponsor's diplomatic relationships sitting beside the grant amount as a term of the deal.